As a startup founder, you know that making sales is as important as building a great product, and is often vital to attract investments. However many founders lack sales experience and cannot afford to hire a sales team. If this is you, then you have to learn how to sell. The following ten elements are key to an effective sales program.

1. Sales is a process of moving prospects through a flow, not a one-time event. The key is to move the customers one step at a time from initial awareness to desire to buy to a completed sale. Each step increases their commitment and their understanding. Sometimes all you are doing is “selling” prospects to watch a video or attend a webinar. A sales deck is only a small part of the requirements. It is wise to use a CRM system to manage all the leads through this journey.

2. Make customers want to buy the category you lead, rather than you try to sell your product. Identify a new category in which your product is the best or only choice. Create content marketing (white papers, videos, blog posts, webinars, speeches, etc.) then promote the content in social media. The ideal is when a key opinion leader in your industry shares your content with her audience, especially with some approving message.

3. Build brand preference using repetition over time. Startups can rarely afford to run advertising campaigns to tell customers about their products. By using consistent branding and repeating the message over and over through targeted marketing campaigns startups can build a brand cheaply. After several years some customers will believe the company has been around for a decade.

4. Be clear about the ideal customer persona and reflect that consistently in all the marketing materials. You want your customers to think your product was designed expressly for them. Pay attention to your photos and the use cases you share. For consumer products, it is important to know the demographics and motivations of the sweet-spot target customer. For business products, know the ideal industry, company size, and business role of the key buyers.

5. Focus on the customer’s problem. Start with who is the buyer, how are they doing the task now, what problems or pain do they have with current solutions? It is about the customer, not about you or your product, no matter how hard you worked making it. The more you understand the problem from your customer’s perspective the more your customer will believe you are on his side. When possible calculate the economics from your customer’s perspective; how much revenue do they lose or extra costs they incur without your product?

6. Describe how your solution fully solves the customer's problem. Limit descriptions of how your product works or its technical design. Customers do not have to understand all the details. But once you describe the pain point, make it clear you are the only or best choice to address them.

7. Talk about your product in the context of everything the customer will need to get the benefits. Will they require specialized hardware? Will they need training? Can they get their data out if they decide to cancel? Address all the other customer care-abouts, beyond the value proposition.

8. Create a simple and clear pricing structure. Too many founders think of price as a stand-alone element when in many cases the customer cares about how much up-front versus ongoing, what other things the customer needs to buy, the cancellation or refund policy, whether she is paying for more of the product than she can use, leasing programs to spread fixed costs over time, or predictability of the monthly payment. Test the appeal of the pricing and refine it as necessary. Do all you can to ensure that price is not a barrier for ideal customers after you have taken all the time to move them through the process.

9. Make it easy to close the order if the customer is interested. Avoid making them work harder than necessary to complete the transaction.

10. Judge success only when the customer repurchases or uses the product on a regular basis. Just because the money is in the bank your sale is not done, even if you do not have a return or cancellation policy. Having an unhappy customer can destroy your reputation. Successful companies not only want to make sure the customers use the product, but also to share a high rating or be net promoters.