In previous posts we have looked at how sales skills can cure the "capital" problem by helping you raise funds from investors.

That is just one side of the equation because for most of us "capital" will be raised for our business ideas NOT from investors, but from our customers and clients at large.

So now we will look at the other side of the coin to see how sales and selling skills can help us raise funds for our business ideas from our potential customers.

The good thing about applying sales skills this way is that it provides us with "market validation".

This is the idea that there is a market and a demand for our business idea and we ought to stay the course.

This is also a good bit of market research because it helps us figure out if our idea is valuable and workable.

It also helps us establish the use case scenario of our idea or product, because it is a good idea to know that not only is there a demand for our business idea, we also know the different ways in which our customers use our products and services.

Using sales this way also helps us establish who our ideal customer base is. This is obvious because trying to bootstrap capital from customers involves you having loads of conversations with different classes of people to figure out who are the most profitable group to spend time with.

These early conversations and sales activities will help you focus and lean in to who your easiest and most profitable customer base is.

Once you start looking at your records, receipts, emails, phone calls and message history, a picture of your ideal client will start to emerge from all the demographics and psychographics you find.

Demographics are the basic data we get about WHO our customers are like their age, where they live, their occupation, sex, etc.

Psychographics are the data we get about WHAT our customers are interested in.

If we know WHO they are and WHAT they are interested in, that makes future sales and marketing efforts a lot easier.

All the information you get from trying to use sales this way will come in handy when you want to "up" your business promotions and communications activity.

This includes things like advertising and more spending in visibility, branding, and other marketing activities.

Using sales and selling activities this way in the beginning will provide you all the data you need to fuel your advertising, marketing, and branding activities of the future.

Investing heavily in sales activities at the beginning of the venture is also a good idea because it will help to bring in REVENUE and PROFITS which can be ploughed back into the business. This is the "capital" function that we have been discussing so far in this series.

So now it looks like we have a few questions to answer in the ensuing posts 1. How do sales skills help me with market validation and ensuring I have a workable idea? 2. How do we use sales and selling skills to bring in revenue and bootstrap our business idea? and 3. What are the pros and cons of getting capital either through "fundraising" or "customers"?

The answers to these and many more will be explored in future posts!

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