How to Move from "Getting Feedback" to "Making Sales"
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #315
Inside the Office
As part of my role at Duke, I mentor the Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs, Duke’s premier program for student founders. Many of our students are navigating entrepreneurship for the first time, which means they’re not just building companies; they’re also figuring out who they’re allowed to be in the room.
I saw an example of this during the past week when one of my mentees came to office hours frustrated with early-stage sales. He wasn’t struggling with interest in the idea itself. He was struggling with how to show up.
When he introduced himself as a student working on a project, doors opened easily. Alumni, operators, and potential customers were generous with their time. They took meetings. They offered advice. They shared context. But when the conversation edged toward a possible commercial relationship, he felt awkward (almost dishonest!) like he was pulling a bait-and-switch. The shift from “I’m here to learn” to “I’m here to sell” felt forced and unnatural.
So he tried the opposite approach. He presented himself as a founder from the start. Clear value proposition. Direct ask. Professional posture. And suddenly, the meetings dried up. Without the student framing, he found it harder to leverage his network or get his foot in the door.
He felt stuck between two identities, both of which seemed to work (and fail) in different ways.
Together, we stepped back and reframed what sales actually is.
Sales isn’t about pushing your product across the table to someone else. And it’s not about convincing, cornering, or “closing.” At its core, sales is about sitting on the same side of the table as the other person, looking together at their problems, priorities, and constraints, and asking a simple question: Is there a way to create value here together?
Once you see sales that way, the identity tension dissolves.
It doesn’t actually matter whether you show up as a student working on an idea or a founder building a company. You’re not “pitch slapping” someone halfway through the conversation. You’re engaging in a genuine exploration: Is this problem real? Is it urgent? Are existing alternatives insufficient? And if so, could what you’re building help? And if all of that turns out to be true, how can we move forward?
That framing turns the conversation from a performance into a collaboration.
No one wants to waste their time. Not founders, and not the humans they’re talking to. But an open, honest conversation aimed at discovering whether real value exists is rarely a waste. As Rob Snyder, who teaches entrepreneurship at Harvard, describes it, the goal is to uncover PULL: a project that feels unavoidable and urgent, where the person on the other side is actively looking for solutions and dissatisfied with the lacking options available today.
If you can identify that PULL together, the path forward becomes obvious. If you can’t, you’ve still learned something essential, and you’ve done so without pretending to be someone you’re not.
For early-stage founders, especially students, the lesson is simple but hard-earned: sales isn’t about choosing the “right” label. It’s about choosing the right mindset. Sit on the same side of the table. Get curious. And let value, not identity, drive the conversation.
-Amy
Worth Your Time
Secrets You Can Learn From Your Customers is a conversation between Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell (of YCombinator) that explores one of the most underappreciated advantages early-stage founders have: direct, genuine relationships with their customers. The core idea is that the fastest way to learn what to build (and why) is to actually care about the people you’re trying to serve, and then spend real time with them. Yes, it seems simple, but it’s harder than it sounds.
Through stories from Airbnb, Brex, and Twitch, the video shows how breakthroughs rarely come from surveys, dashboards, or clever plans, but from founders who sit down, ask questions, and listen long enough to uncover insights others miss. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overconfident, or unsure what to do next, this is a powerful reminder that your customers are often sitting on a gold mine of information… if you’re willing to slow down and pay attention.
Tools We’re Tinkering With
I’m the kind of person who will absolutely fixate on making slides look beautiful—because design does matter, and messy slides can distract from a great idea.
Unfortunately, as a founder, you can’t afford to burn hours perfecting formatting when the real leverage is in nailing your message. For me, Gamma has been a simple way to get both. Basically, you drop in your bullet-point outline, and it turns it into a polished deck. Best of all, you can export it straight into PowerPoint, which means you still own the content — your titles, your narrative, your positioning. Gamma just removes the design busywork so you can spend your time on what actually matters… clarity, credibility, and momentum.
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