- The Follow Up
- Posts
- What You Sell Matters More Than You Think
What You Sell Matters More Than You Think
If the product is world class, even bad sales reps can look great.
Good morning! It’s National Lottery Day, and a good time to reflect on your odds. Winning Powerball? 1 in 292 million. Getting a VP to answer your cold call? Slightly better. (But not by much.) Now let’s get into today’s Follow Up. 😁
Push back on ‘circling back’❓️
The importance of the product you sell 🖥️
Testing 5 cold email generators 😬
Sales jobs & a meme 😂
Sales Tip of The Day 💡
When a prospect says something like, “We’re good for now, but can you check back in 6 months,” ask why.
❌ “Sounds good, I’ll reach out in 6 months.”
✅ “Got it. Just so I don’t waste your time later, what would need to change between now and then for this to make sense?”
This helps you uncover if this is a polite no or a real delay, and gives you leverage for a future follow up.
Unlock Your Next Income Stream: 100 Side Hustles for Ambitious Founders
In a world where financial freedom feels like a distant dream, smart women are building wealth on their own terms.
Finally, a curated database of 100 proven side hustles (that actually work)
Each idea comes with required startup costs, time investment, and potential earnings
Exclusive insights from founders who've turned side gigs into 6-figure empires
Detailed skill requirements so you can match your talents to the right opportunity
Bonus: Priority scoring system to identify which hustles align with your lifestyle
Don't let another month slip by watching others build their empire. Your next income stream is hiding in our database, waiting to be discovered.
What You Sell Matters More Than You Think
In 2013, a VP of IT asked Atlassian for a sales meeting.
Their response? "Nah, just use our website."
Now, that might sound a bit arrogant… But they were confident in that response (and for good reason).
2 years after that response, Atlassian sold $320 million of software without a single salesperson on staff.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: when customers are dying to buy your product, even average salespeople look like rockstars. But when nobody wants what you're selling, even the most talented rep will get crushed.
Today, I'm diving into why some products literally sell themselves, when that approach works, and why picking the right product to sell might be the most important career decision you'll ever make.
The Atlassian Playbook: How to Build a Self-Selling Product
Atlassian famously grew into a multi-billion-dollar SaaS company without a traditional sales team. No quotas. No cold calls. No commission-hungry reps.
Instead, they built a frictionless buying machine.
Free trials. Crystal-clear pricing. Users who became walking advertisements.
"Customers don't want to call a salesperson if they don't have to," co-founder Scott Farquhar explained. So Atlassian made sure buyers rarely needed to.
That approach paid off massively. Atlassian turned its user base into an unpaid sales team. Buying became so smooth that enterprise clients dropped $10,000+ on their website without talking to a human.
They built something people actually needed and made it dead simple to buy.
What Makes Products Sell Themselves
Three things separate self-selling products from the rest:
Remarkable Product: It solves a big problem, and customers enjoy using it. Atlassian focused on building something "remarkable" - meaning people felt compelled to tell others about it, creating organic growth (aka, product-led growth).
Low Friction: Make trying and buying effortless. Free trials, freemium options, and transparent pricing eliminate roadblocks. Atlassian even let enterprise customers spend five figures online without requiring a single sales conversation.
Buyer Control: Today's B2B buyers are much more likely to self-educate. Give them enough information and transparency so they can purchase on their own terms. Most customers "would much rather find answers on the website" than endure a sales pitch.
Together, these elements create a flywheel of user-driven growth. New users try it, love it, and bring others on board.
When Self-Serve Hits Its Limits
Despite all the hype, product-led growth doesn't work for every situation. Complex or high-ticket products need humans in the loop.
If you're selling enterprise platforms, you'll deal with multiple stakeholders and lengthy, top-down sales cycles. As Atlassian's president Jay Simons points out, companies selling to the Fortune 2000 can't rely on "try and buy" for million-dollar deals.
That kind of sale is a consultative, C-suite-driven process.
In these scenarios, skilled salespeople remain absolutely crucial. Atlassian's leadership even warns against blindly copying their no-sales model if your market doesn't match theirs.
The best approach is usually a hybrid: use product-led tactics for smaller deals, and deploy sales reps for bigger, complex opportunities.
Choose Your Product Wisely
The product you choose to sell can literally make or break your career.
This LinkedIn comment summed it up perfectly: "Great product and market fit + average salesman = quota; bad product or bad market fit + great salesman = missed quota."
Before you take your next sales job, ask yourself these questions: Is there strong customer demand and buzz around the product or industry? Do they have a steady stream of inbound interest or referrals?
If so, that's the kind of product you want to sell.
Selling gets a whole lot easier when you're offering something people already want.
What do you think matters most in your sales career? |
