I keep doing this because it feels good. I sell stuff I don’t have. I just sold a very very large company some technology we didn’t have.
While it’s technically correct we didn’t have the goods - I had the reasonable belief that we could develop and ship it in a short amount of time.
Engineers hate sales guys who sell stuff they don’t have. We had that all the time at Raindance - Todd Vernon would complain, “Why don’t they just sell the shit we have” and I’d reply, “Dude you’re gonna go there - build it.” I’m certain he is experiencing that right now as CEO of Lijit.
As a CEO I love selling stuff I don’t have - it does 3 things for the company:
1 - Drives momentum - nothing like a waiting customer to get your team cranking
2 - Focuses your efforts - you quickly have a tool to help you prioritize your work
3 - Creates a definable win for the company - getting something new into a customer’s hand is a great, concrete milestone that the company can celebrate
When you sell beyond your capabilities it stretches your company and hopefully makes it grow. If it goes wrong it is usually from over estimating your team's ability to deliver or over estimating the value of the customer.
Over estimating your team is risky business. If you put them in a position to deliver and they fail, you demoralize them and send the company backwards. I just did that - but I'm OK with it. Sometimes you need to show your team what it takes to win. Taking a high-school football team and pitting them against an NFL team will certainly give them a few bruises but teach them the lesson of what it takes to play at the professional level. In business there is no minor leagues - you either are able to play with the big boys or you will forever limit your growth. You can’t push your team to failure that often - but sometimes it happens. And frankly you should never give them a task you simply know they can’t do. In this recent case I knew the folks have more than enough talent to get the job done and I didn’t expect them to fail, but I did know I was asking for a level of performance that they haven’t demonstrated in the past.
In the case of over estimating the value of the customer, that can also negatively impact your team. Nothing upsets an engineer more than developing something that no one uses. While they initially feel good they built the product they can quickly get the sense that their work was of no value. This happens all the time and it is helpful to be able to iterate quickly on products and features so the team doesn’t focus on the last thing no one used. By keeping a fast pace in the business and building a culture of delivery no one will put too much stock in their past accomplishments - it will always be about the future. Also giving the team the broader picture of the business will help them understand that some things will be hits and others flops - but in the end the breadth of the offering will grow. And customers do lie - they may say something is important but it’s not - they may be doing a feature comparison and you just need to check a box.
As a CEO you need to make sure that when you sell stuff not on the product sheet you are using a tool to advance the business into a new market or attract a new class of customers. If you get too schizoid or allow everyone to sell stuff you don’t have, it will most likely backfire and defocus the company. In fact this is probably the most common way to defocus a business - someone sells something he doesn’t have.
