Ask HN: Desperately need “sales for nerds” advice | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Desperately need “sales for nerds” advice

171 pointsc1sc0152 comments

My background is software development but I spent my COVID year creating a brand of skincare products for climbers.

In terms of product dev we did great: we have at least one product that could revolutionize climbing & climbers really like our whole line-up. Our IG, brand & message is well-received.

BUT: I feel like I can’t SELL if my life depended on it. Talking to people, let alone selling, turns out to be extremely hard for me.

I am DESPERATELY looking for advice on transitioning from development to traditional sales. I LOVE what we built but my lack of sales acumen is slowly killing the brand. Any advice from the HN community?

The brand is http://www.chalkrebels.com

View on HN

At your price point ($10-50 per sale, $10-500 lifetime value), it simply is not worthwhile to have anyone doing 1:1 sales. You should be acquiring customers via marketing.

There's a pretty famous book called Traction that introduces founders to marketing. It goes over 19 marketing channels, and after reading, you should have a good hunch about which 3-5 channels might work well for you.

Off the top of my head:

- Partner with climbing gyms. They all have a store that sells chalk and shoes and whatnot. Either sell them 50x of your product (this does require actual sales) or see if they have a model where they get a cut for every sale made.

- Influencer marketing. Reach out to people like Alex Honnold and ask if they'd be willing to try your product out for free and give you feedback. If they like it, ask if they'd be willing to help out by talking about it on social. Could eventually explore some kind of affiliate model where they get a 20-30% cut per sale they drive your way.

- Paid search ads. If anyone on the internet is searching for "climbing chalk" then they should end up on your site via paid ads.

- Retargeting ads. If anyone visits your website or puts something in their cart and doesn't buy, make sure you use Google Display and/or FB/Twitter retargeting ads. These will be the most profitable ads you ever pay for.

- SEO. This one is pretty hard because your site is relatively small/new, but if you write articles talking about why your chalk is better for the environment, you might get some traffic this way.

Some of this work does involve "sales", in that you're selling to gyms or recreational stores or influencers 1:1. BUT, just try to think about it from their perspective. You aren't "selling them on your product", you're "helping them make more money by promoting a cool environmentally friendly chalk brand".

This is a great advice, but sales actually make sense for distribution partnerships such as gyms. To actually take on the point that you made around sales. I am an introvert who used to be nervous about people. There are definitely some people in this world who are naturally born salesmen and personally I hate these personalities :) It feels that they always hunt and they have an agenda.

Now where it gets interesting is that the other 99% of people who actually learn sales, some will realise that sales is rather about listening and seeing a fit in a potential customer. You wouldn't want to sell your product to unqualified customer (someone who won't need it and will churn anyways).

In terms of skills - you don't need to be pushy. After 8 years in sales I realized that at some point you will just develop a mental script and practice makes perfect. You will be nervous the first few times, but later realize that nobody will kill you for just a conversation. On the 20th call, you will realize its actually not that scary. On the 100th call you will have a state of flow where you already know what works and how to "feel people".

On 1000th call, you will have a sense of empathy like 99% of people don't have. You will notice people have behavioural patterns and you will learn how to work with them as well as with people who are just negative from get go and how to cut them out early.

These soft skills are invaluable for relationships, dealing with colleagues and many more.

So the only advice I can give is: push through, get better, learn and continue doing so.

I am pretty much on the same route with coding now :)

This, although to clarify you're still going to have to sell into some of your marketing channels (such as when partnering with a climbing gym as suggested above).

I'm a programmer turned business man and I have autism spectrum disorder so learning to sell was difficult, but doable. Now I'm a natural. I had this conversation with another founder last week. She'd sold nothing so far.

Here's the crux. Selling is a deeply personal experience. You're getting someone else to open their wallet and give you their money. Even if that's not exactly what the transaction is it's how it feels. Trust makes a massive difference here. Some people engender trust because of their natural trustworthy disposition. The rest of us are not naturally so likable and do not have a likely future as a con artist. Take time to understand your customers. If you don't know how to sell a relationship with a channel partner then you need to not be talking you need to be asking questions, getting to know them. How does their business operate, what do they need and want, then its your job to find synergy.

Selling is most effective when you're finding someone a solution to their problem, not when you're persuading them to change their behavior for your benefit (that's the slimy shit we all hate).

Let's take the climbing gym example. Let's imagine they have a problem with churn, or competition from other climbing gyms. You have a product climbers will like. Can the climbing gym give your product as a gift to members who sign up for a plan? See how you are both aligned there? It's just one example and perhaps not the right one but you get the idea.

Also, if you want to play the social game I find lots of products that drive most of their revenue from social content marketing (Insta, TikTok, etc...). If you want to play that game it can work. I don't know that area well so I can't give you tips. I just see lots of slick content from small brands and occasionally I buy a product from them.

Selling is completely transformed when you *know* your product is good for them they just don't know it yet. As opposed to that awful feeling of begging for approval.

Lastly, ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALE. You want to ask, and get the rejection or the sale. The rejection will teach you how to improve your offering, the sale will of course give you money.

Add to that affiliate networks. CJ Affiliate, Rakuten, Shareasale and many smaller ones still exist and still have an army of people waiting to sell your product for a commission.

Depending on how much you need to pay the network, you might want to negotiate or raise prices, but it could be worth it.

I used to do affiliate marketing (a long time ago tbf) and sin care products were always top performers.

*skin care, sorry

Can you please give an author's name for your reference on the book Traction? There seems to be several possibilities.

They're referring to: Gabriel Weinberg - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

I suspect Weinberg (duck duck go founder).

Not sure how similar selling a physical product is to a consumer saas business, but it's always worth reading widely.

Partner with regular gyms too. Lots of places don't let people use chalk because there's always some asshole who's a clapper.

Liquid chalk products seem to slide under the no chalk rules.

Thank you for the recommendation. I have been listening to the audiobook and it’s good.

Looking at your website - I don't climb, but I used to use chalk for powerlifting - I desperately want to see photos of HANDS! My immediate question was "what is chalk cream", and that makes me want to see the product in use. Does it turn your hands white? Is it powdery? How could a wet cream do the same thing as dry chalk powder? This seems like a really tactile product, so I want photos that help me understand it on a tactile level. The mountain photos are beautiful but don't sell the product. The photos of tubes could be renders for all I know.

You could also try signing up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and scanning for outdoors or climbing-related pitch opportunities. A lot of the posts on there are trash but there's the occasional good one.

Agreed! I found myself looking for a video demoing your product or showing the difference between typical chalk.

Agreed. I use chalk in the gym as well, and I'd like to see a picture of it to see how it's different from what people use currently.

As an aside, I was caught without chalk the other day and bought some liquid chalk from a climbing shop. I quite liked it as thicker than usual - more like a moisturiser than a pourable liquid.

Yeah. We worked on making the chalk "thicker" than the cheap brands because smell + texture influences quality perception the most. For the crystal chalk the different formula allows us to get rid of the "alcohol" smell. We even tried adding fragrance but that was a failed experiment, may revisit that later.

One other liquid chalk aspect you could maybe lean into - the alcohol must be a natural hand sanitiser. Obviously less of an issue for rock climbers, but might be a selling point for gym goers if that point could be emphasised or enhanced in the formula.]

Best of luck with the business!

We researched this & making hand sanitising claims would put is in the "biocide" category of products in the EU, which comes with a whole new bag of certification headaches. At best we can say something like "has light antibacterial properties".

I agree - lifting could be a tangential market that is actually bigger.

Yes. That's on our radar. Gyms are closed at the moment because of COVID so that's on the back-burner. We want to niche down on climbers first.

Gyms are open in some places now and will be open in many more places six and sixteen weeks from now.

It's fine (and smart) to be thoughtful about focusing on a niche, but don't do it because gyms are closed.

Don't forget that a lot of us have weights or other exercise setups at home now. I would definitely try something as an alternative to powdered chalk to keep my palms from getting slippery on my equipment. Especially now that summer is coming and I mostly train outside when I can.

Also, at least in Chicago, gyms have been open for months. They have reduced maximum capacity (I think it's 60% right now), but they were only closed for a short time. You may be severely artificially limiting your sales possibilities.

For most at-home exercises a pair of lifting gloves would be good enough

This is worth consideration. Many lifters who use chalk have spent money on building a home gym or attend gyms are open despite COVID restrictions.

We've been training in a soccer field set up for social-distancing training. I wouldn't make assumptions :)

Another interesting area of need is pole dancing chalk

Now that right there is a niche market ripe for the picking!

Sales is 1:1, marketing is 1:many.

Your products dont generate enough revenue / profit to dp sales, the cost of sale is too high. You want to do marketing.

0. Find all the climbing groups on Facebook and join them (also make a list in Sheets / Airtable)

1. Start adding value to the community. Do NOT talk about your product.

2. Optimize your personal Facebook page to drive people who view your page to your website or landing page

3. Be active, create a brand around you, not your product

4. Add value --> people click your profile --> they see your banner image --> they click through to your website. You might be successful linking to the homepage, product page, 'our story' page, but you may need to create "thought leadership" on climbing. The goal of this thought leadership is to indoctrinate your audience into how you think about climbing, build authority, and drive people to your email newsletter, Facebook Group and product pages.

5. Send website visitors to your own Facebook Group about climbing (also give them a reason to subscribe to your climbing newsletter)

6. Start hosting AMAs in your group with famous rock climbers that have their own audiences. Being seen with these folks will turn you into an authority.

Because I have 'an audience', I can now reach out to the leaders in my field and build relationships with them by offering them a platform --> to my audience.

Without this audience, they probably wouldn't reply to my emails / DMs.

I've used this strategy to grow my SaaS from $0 to $135k ARR in about 4-5 months.

I don't talk about my product at all .

I give value, pre-usage and post-usage,my product is just a tiny piece of the puzzle.

If you want an example of how to optimize your Facebook profile, see mine: https://facebook.com/nickfromseattle

I'm converting website visitors site wide at 20%+.

My SaaS landing page has a 44% conversion from visitor to free trial and we have almost 2,000 users.

My email list is 3.5k and my Facebook Group is 2.1k.

I'm an avid climber, and I hate the idea of OP joining all the possible FB climbing groups.

The value of the group for a marketeer might be immense, but every new marketing dweeb in the group decreases the value of the group for the people who actually climb. I don't want to be a part of a growth hacking strategy.

I think he mitigates that by NOT talking about his product. Just because he has a product doesn't mean he's a marketing dweeb. He probably made such a product as a climber scratching his own itch. If he isn't a climber he shouldn't do this as his posts won't add quality to the groups he joins and people won't pay attention to posters of low-quality advice so it won't work for him anyways.

Yes, that is correct. Thanks for highlighting step #1:

> 1. Start adding value to the community. Do NOT talk about your product.

And you are correct, if he is not a climber and can't add value to the community, this strategy won't work.

Communities will ban marketers trying to market to their community.

So the answer is, don't market to them - be helpful and add value.

If you are helpful and add enough value, your target audience will seek you out to learn more about you.

Yup. I'm on MP and a bunch of FB groups for climbing.

If you're there cause you like the community, fair enough. If you're shilling a product, folks will know it. Just don't.

At the end of the day, you'll look like the parent poster for this and even if you are well-intentioned in your contributions to the community people will suspect that you're using them.

i can relate. this is the reason i ditched fb in 09', you are the product.

Do folks who go climbing generally hang around on FB groups?

Yup! FB groups are still pretty alive.

For a lot of people, it's easier to stick with fb groups than keep up the latest trends.

Easy to add people, chat, schedule events, etc.

I think the right channel is IG not FB for climbers.

Thanks for laying it out in detail.

One of the most important parts of being a founder is recognizing when you are out of your element, and then finding someone else to help you round out that problematic area. For you this might be sales/marketing. You definitely should find someone to help you here.

On a side note, as a fellow climber, I think you're probably going to fail. Chalk is cheap relative to your product and your product doesn't offer any clear advantage aside from leaving less residue (which lets be honest most climbing areas already have a ton of chalk on them). Maybe a small minority of climbers care that much to use something that leaves less residue, but those people already probably brush the holds on the way down anyways.

I'm not so sure I'd write off this startup as a failure.

I feel like many people who can afford $80/mo climbing gym memberships might look at $5 chalk and $12 environmentally friendly chalk with nice packaging/branding and buy the latter.

If OP manages to get listed in half the ~500 climbing gyms in the USA, and makes on average 2-3 sales per day in each, they could pull in single-digit millions per year in top line. Not sure what OP's goals are, but that's plenty successful for most.

If you need a VC-caliber story, you can always expand to other products (plenty of other climbing gear to sell now that you have the gym relationships), other sellers (eg. REI, MEC), or go international.

I'm sorry, but what's better for the environment here? Not seeing chalk on holds, or producing tons of trash in the form of plastic bottles with aluminum foil inside of them along with the packaging. Chalk balls on the other hand are biodegradable, and the chalk within is a naturally occurring element. If people stopped climbing these spots the chalk would go away in years.

We're working on getting our products in recycled aluminium tubes. Chalk balls have been proven not to work in terms of reducing dust in gyms, link to the research is on our blog.

I'm not so sure it's a VC-scale business. Maybe if it's useful for weightlifting and other vertical markets. That being said I wouldn't be quick to write it off as a failure. Most of the climbers in the thread are chiming in as excited about the product.

It needs better positioning as I think it's more about being better for your hands than chalk (and a more pleasant experience to use) than it is about the environment.

But OP might be on to something here. Particularly if they want a lifestyle business.

It’s most definitely NOT a VC scale business. I’d feel bad if it were.

Our thinking is to focus on the new generation of climbers who tend to be more urban, more affluent & yes, more environmentally conscious.

It's completely antithetical to the environmentally conscious mission to build a product that is going to produce significantly more waste than chalk balls. Chalk residue is a short-term eyesore, but plastic waste lives for hundreds of years in landfills.

If you're going to target environmentally conscious customers then your packaging has to be eco-friendly too.

For environmentally friendly packaging (recycled alu tubes) to be viable at our small scale we need to produce a LOT more. In the meantime we try to improve our packaging and offset some of the damage we do by planting one tree per product sold, which is roughly a 20-30% hit on our margins. Personally I think it’s impossible to be sustainable. Working towards reaching sustainability IS possible. So that’s what we do.

How about wood / bamboo?

We looked into bio plastics and bamboo for both the tube and closing cap. It’s easy enough to find bamboo-based biodegradable tubes but the closing cap is pretty much always still normal plastic. Biodegradable plastic also has its controversies: it won’t degrade in clean ways outside of commercial composting facilities. There’s also a bamboo-based plastic controversy around toxicity of the product in e.g. bamboo-plastic cups.

As a climber and marketer, this is how I feel. You may need some help on sales copy but this is a marketing problem--who is this for and through what channels can i reach them?

There are definitely places where chalk is frowned upon. Try calling the gyms near those crags and sending them some free bottles to give out to their employees and gym climbers. Without any real differentiation for a large segment of climbers, the best you can do is use this small group of people who need to care about chalk residue and the even smaller group of people who do care, but don't need to.

I do think you could define the problem more clearly and try low-cost test channels like Google Ads & Facebook Ads (show ads in the geo's where chalk on rock is frowned upon).

After I read about the feelings about chalk from non-climbers, I can certainly understand why people care about it. The issue is real. It's just not a problem that most people know enough about to care yet. The challenge there is that it's hard and expensive to try and sell people on a new problem they don't know they have. It's much easier to replace an existing pain point they feel right now.

As someone new to climbing I find regular chalk disgusting. I HATE the feel of it under my nails. An alternative is welcome.

That’s a new one! Interesting.

You can go to the nearest climbing store and give them some samples to sell for free. Tell them if they sell and they want to order more, call you back. This is a risk free way for the climbing store to earn 100% profit. In return, you get to test out the market to see if there is a need for your product.

The only risk is that they have to trust you and you have to prove that your products does not have any chemicals that harms consumers. Perhaps have your products verified in a lab.

I don't think what you're looking for is sales, but rather marketing. But if I'm wrong and you really are looking for sales, I learned a lot at what was basically a "hard selling" course. It was 3 days, the audience was basically people selling IT projects, but the background of the teacher and the roleplay we did was much more mundane - think selling cars, phones, that sort of 'sleazy' hard selling. I'm not saying you should actually employ those tactics in the end, but I did learn a lot - about cold openings, parrying objections, script-based interactions, ... You may just learn you're not cut out for it, but it'll help you a lot understanding sales guys if you decide to hire any later on. Mine was pricey - I didn't pay for it myself but I think it was e2500 per person and that was 10-ish years ago. On the other hand, how could I have trusted a teacher who couldn't sell himself to a purchasing department?

One bit of unsolicited advice: consider moving your copy to be above the fold. At least on my screen (1920 x 1080, 125% font), all I see when I first load the page is the nav bar and a picture of people rock climbing -- no text or any indication as to what the product is. I had to scroll down to learn what the website was about, which creates more friction for me as someone curious about your website. Also, consider adding some customer success stories or other forms of validation to your landing page. I am a novice climber, but I'm initially skeptical of using a new chalk, so seeing some form of validation would help me get over that hump. Maybe copy part of your friend's review [1] to the landing page, as he seems to have great things to say about the chalk.

[1] https://chalkrebels.com/blogs/news/crystal-chalk-in-action

There literally is a podcast with that title: https://www.salesfornerds.io/

It covers many useful ideas, best practices, and suggestions from industry experts.

The key aspect to remember about sales is that it is not actually about selling but about trying to understand and solve a potential customer's problem, which is a mindset that's probably much more familiar to engineers than how traditional sales is commonly perceived ("pushy", "sleazy", "deceptive").

If you're able to understand a potential customer's problem, sales should happen almost automatically.

Thanks for the mention, BjoernKW. :-) Chief Nerd Reuben Swartz here. I found it very helpful to stop thinking of "selling", and instead think of "helping".

Plus, stop thinking of "marketing" and start thinking of "teaching".

For example, on the Chalk Rebels page, I have to scroll a ways down to find out what the real deal is. Put the whole "use less chalk" near the top.

listenercount++

That's assuming you have product market fit. If you understand a problem but don't have a product, you are a consultant.

I’m a founder/engineer and never found sales to be easy, which is the full extent of my qualifications.

After many years of struggling, I finally came to the realization that sales is simply not a systematic, “system-building” activity in the same way as engineering, and that sales gurus try to make their jobs look more like ours because ... well... they’re good at selling! They’ve figured out that we associate a certain vocabulary (e.g. “process”, “data” ...) with rigor and reliability.

Once you stop seeing sales as a system whose laws you study and turn to your advantage, you come to the underwhelming realization that sales is field work. It’s operational. There is no big trick, only small ones.

With that in mind:

- have you tried going to climbing gyms and showing people your product?

- are there big events or conferences for climbers? (Yes, I know COVID is a factor, here.)

- have you tried calling a bunch of rock climbing gyms and asking what it would take to sell your product at the front desk?

The short story is that sales is costly in time, and you kind of have to live with that until you build a distribution network. Pick up the phone, or better yet, go in person. The good news is that you don’t have to be selling per se. Just go places and ask for help.

P.S. - a few additional thoughts come to mind.

1. I think social media can actually work for niche consumer products like this. Go to your gym, have people try your product, and ask them how they like it. Video tape it and stick it on YouTube. Take pictures of people doing cool stuff, slap your logo on it and put it on Instagram. This is how you start branding. Baby steps.

2. Give out samples at a competition and include “technical” documentation about how and when to use your product. This will pique everyone’s curiosity. Everybody wants to be knowledgeable about their equipment and nobody wants to look clueless. People will read it and remember the brand if only to justify why they use something else. How do you think I know about Rust?

Again: it’s operational work. You spend a lot of time doing. It’s not like programming where you solve problems once and they’re gone forever. No sales library, I’m afraid :)

I agree with your overall message but just want to say from a sales perspective, there is still a "process" and "data" that guides the overall one on one field work you describe.

It's just about knowing how much activity you need to reach your goal based on past results and forecasted numbers, and then structuring your activity to deliver the required numbers (and the results you are seeking).

>there is still a "process" and "data" that guides the overall one on one field work you describe.

You're right of course. I'm being slightly hyperbolic because I think the process doesn't really correspond to what an engineer has in mind.

The take-home point (and it sounds like you agree with me) is that sales has an incompressible field-work component.

I do agree with you.

I've done millions in ecommerce sales for products I've created. My wife is an avid rock climber who hangs out with other rock climbers.

I started out putting computers together from parts in the 90's and sales wasn't an easy thing for me to do, would love to help.

Take 77 off my username and add gmail and you can reach me there.

Ahoy! I'm a climber! And I love to talk about "sales for nerds", so this HN thread is delightful to me.

Would you mind if I free-associated through your page, from the perspective of a climber, while speaking a bit to the sales side of things? (I've done B2B Enterprise sales in a past life, and for the consulting stuff I'm working on, I'm now doing more/different sales.)

Phew. Here we go:

1. Your primary value prop is "Use Less Chalk"

As a climber, I don't care about using LESS chalk (it's extremely cheap, afterall) I care about _sending_. So maybe instead of "Use less chalk" it's "Do more moves before you have to chalk up".

I.E. "You know that long crux sequence on your project? You have to slap like 8 compression moves in a row? With regular chalk, you're desperately wishing you could chalk up before doing the last move, but with ChalkRebel chalk, _you don't_ and you can fire the move without chalking"

(Er, I was at the Red River Gorge, Kentucky for the last month, and almost sent a climb the 5th go, but it was slopey crimps with difficult rests, and humid, and as after I fell on my last attempt, I saw damp fingerprints on the last hold. Terrible.)

So - you're not "selling chalk", you're trying to help people accomplish their goals!

Climbers spend so much money on shoes, a lighter rope, travel to the climbing area, etc.

We spend weeks/months/years hanging off tiny little edges, hanging weight off our bodies, to try to squeeze another few percentage points of strength into our muscles.

I dedicate an incredible amount of time and effort to climbing. HELP ME BE SUCCESSFUL! Sell me your chalk!

Start getting testimonials. ASK FOR TESTIMONIALS!

I'm doing this work for some other (software related) products I'm building, and the selling goes SURPRISINGLY WELL when I force myself to... sell.

I have very limited time right now, but I'd love to talk more about all this! I'd love to hop on a call to talk through it! There are some super successful sales folks leaving comments, I'm not "super successful" (yet) but I'm in a similar spot as you, I've just happened to done a bunch of sales in the past. So... we should deff talk. We'll both enjoy it! Send me an email, or visit my website (HN profile) or set up a coffee call: https://josh.works/coffee

Good luck! I'll buy some of your chalk soon!

This right here. I've never worried about the quantity of chalk I'm using, like wonder_er says it's super cheap and plentiful. BUT I do hate having sweaty slippy fingers, that's what climbers care about.

Also, you may want to offer US pricing and shipping if possible. It's a small thing, but as an American the prices in Euros slightly throw me off and present an impediment to purchasing. It's not logical per se, but it helps to see pricing in the local currency if you want to sell to me.

After quickly trying to checkout, it looks like they only offer shipping to the EU.

Yes. EU only for now.

I would like to see a promo video that is nothing but climbers doing weird climber things using completely unintelligible climber lingo, and then just a blank screen with the url.

(not expert, should probably ignore)

This... would make me so happy. As a climber, I would absolutely love this video.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I updated the landing page a bit & added testimonials. Thanks for the correction!

Amen

The marketing looks solid, but with the wrong message... change that message and your sales should soar.

So maybe it's not "Use less chalk" but "Use chalk less"?

I climb... a lot, have used 3-4 different brands of liquid chalk and many different powder ones. After reading your marketing for the chalk/skin care I really don't understand what differentiates it from other brands and why I should care.

It just kinda looks like fancy liquid chalk I guess? Your description is:

"Improves grip by reducing sweat and moisture. Climb stronger than ever with dry hands and a stronger grip. Guaranteed to reduce your use of messy chalk powder. Using less chalk means stronger skin for you, nicer rocks for everyone and healthier lungs for all. Keep your gym and the rock pristine, "

Which could literally apply to any brand of liquid chalk, and doesn't really tell me anything. You can probably assume people who care about the amount of chalk their climbing produces also know what chalk is and why it is used, and focus on why YOUR chalk is worth the larger price tag.

Same thing for the skin care, cool it moisturizes and helps repair skin, a claim that an entire aisle of cheaper products at any drugstore also makes.

Hey friend, two things.

First, this is a really exceptional product. I’m excited enough to try it that my local outdoors shop opens at 9:30 - I’ll be there bitching and moaning at 9:31. :)

Second, if you’ve got a stranger so damned excited about this that he’s going to make a spectacle of himself just to try it, you’ve got something really really special.

All that said, I need you to stop what you’re doing and give yourself a big pat on the back. Sales is damned tough even if you feel comfortable doing it. Everyone struggles especially with new products. Frankly, if you’re caring and loving enough to come up with something so great, you’ve got this.

Sorry I don’t have any specific advice. Maybe I’ll have more after I complain my way to a local supplier. :)

Fellow climber here.

First, congrats on launching your products, and also congrats on chasing innovation in this area.

After reading through parts of your website and product descriptions, I have a few comments and questions.

"use less chalk" <- this is good. It certainly gets my attention. One of my reasons to pay the premium of Friction Labs chalk is exactly that, and the extra friction I get from it compared with other chalks.

As for your revolutionary crystal chalk, I am less convinced.

First, it looks like it replaces magnesium with silica. I'm inferring this from comparing the ingredients lists on your 2 chalk creams. Not ideal.

Second, you say it doesn't leave residue on the holds. How is that so? Is there zero dust/powder?

Third, have you performed tests to know the real impact your product will have on skin, lungs (we breath it, after all), and holds, especially on the many different kinds of rocks, but also on plastic indoor holds? Will it react with the rock or plastic, perhaps altering its qualities, or eroding it? Perhaps it will make it more polished, which could render entire routes unclimbable - remember pof? How does it compare with normal chalk?

Fourth, does your regular white chalk cream also hold the promises of using less, preserving holds, better friction, etc?

Finally, is the clear cream really chalk [0]? If not (it doesn't seem to have any actual chalk in the formulation), then I feel lied to and that erodes my confidence in your company and product.

Please don't take any of this as blunt criticism. I hope it gives you insight into how to communicate better and wish you success!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk

Thanks for the criticism! We approached using silica from a different angle: we took a product sold over-the-counter in pharmacies & adapted it to climbing. This means we’re all good in terms of human product safety. The trick essentially is to use an aggregate of silica that has been tested before.

We think the trick to using less chalk is 1) switching to liquid chalk 2) using less chalk powder ... generally speaking liquid chalk uses far less chalk and last longer. Our crystal chalk is an improvement on traditional liquid chalk for those who want to use even less.

UPDATE: check the video I posted on our blog to see the diff between crystal and white chalk. Link in comment replying to OP.

My two cents here, as someone who deplores modern sales tactics. Free samples.

Go to climbing gyms, ask if they would be interested in trying out your product, and if they like it, can they hand some out to their climbers to get product feedback. They'll likely agree to do it; almost every gym I've been to loves giving out freebies to their members.

This is probably a great time to do this. It's not summer climbing season yet, still rainy in a lot of places, and gyms over here on the west coast are opening up. People want to get in shape for the summer climbs.

If your product is good, when the summer climbing season hits, these climbers will go all over the place and chat with other climbers about your product. It's a really good chance to build up both credibility and interest! I wouldn't worry so much about online marketing, if they like your product, they'll paste it all over climbing groups for you.

Read Geoffrey Moore's classic "Crossing the chasm." (The title is no metaphor for your prospective customers.) It will give you a framework for thinking about introducing a new product -- early adopters, and all that stuff.

Ask yourself: What's my "beachhead?" Where can my product find a loyal early following?

Maybe instructors? Maybe climbing gyms? Maybe among people with the "leave it cleaner than you found it" outdoor ethic? If you can find some strong spokespeople in your target beachhead who loves your product, that helps a lot.

Might sound weird, There are a few small twitch streamers who are climbers. Maybe sponsor one of them with a few small products and see if it helps marketing. twitch.tv/mathil1 comes to mind.

Suggestion from someone who hates selling, comes from software (though PM, not dev) and who left tech to start a dog treat company.

Try DTC via Facebook ads. To me, one of the nice things about selling a consumer product compared to my previous career (primarily enterprise software) is you don't have to go personally sell stuff. I have one Facebook ad that's working really well, and I'm doing 20k/month in sales on that alone (and that number is artificially low due to production constraints... I'm about to sign a production agreement with a manufacturer, at which point I'm gonna see how far I can push the FB ads profitably).

You've got what appears to be a fairly high-end product that lends itself to great visuals. I'd seriously get some good video (honestly half of it could just be stock video of climbers with your product spliced in... you can get those done for a reasonable amount on Upwork and the like) and just test a lot of FB ads.

Happy to chat about this if you'd like. In general, though, one of the nice things about starting a business is you can orient it to your strengths, especially in the beginning. If you hate selling to people, going DTC with ads rather than walking into gyms to try to get it on shelves is gonna be way more pleasant.

Happy to chat if you'd like, and congrats on creating something new during COVID.

Sales of such health and wellness products such as skincare creams/ointments/whatnot is mostly about marketing and distribution channels than traditional "sales" (i.e. talking to people). You will, of course, need to talk to people to craft distribution deals, but that's more about convincing merchandizing folks that consumers will purchase your product.

That said, given the product, I'd suggest a two prong approach that combines push and pull.

The pull means working on creating demand. This will probably seem more familiar to you. Try to engage with the target audience (climbers, outdoorsy people, etc) in forums they frequent. Online social media, etc. If you can afford it, try to get testimonials, product placements, endorsements, etc. by people who are known to the community. Even give-away freebee samples at events. There's lots of tactics around this. I would suggest reading "Guerilla Marketing" by Jay Contrad or similar books for inspiration.

The push is about sales distribution channels. It's great that you've already set up a web store. Perhaps try to get listed Amazon and other online marketplaces (tmall, etsy, etc.) But more importantly try to get retailers, both online and offline, that cater specifically to your target market to carry your product.

What I'm describing is a fairly traditional approach for lifestyle-oriented goods of this sort. It'll be a tough slog as there is always a lot of competition, but hundreds of companies succeed at this every year. Best of luck!

I have a similar background going from a software engineer to starting an e-commerce brand. My advice is to just get good at it. You may never become the best but you can become good. I really believe anyone can be good at anything, it'll just take you more time and effort than it may take other people. Once you're good at it, you can hire the best person with the confidence you actually understand what they're doing.

As for getting good at sales & marketing, there are tons of tools and advice out there by people who are very good at their jobs. From paid ads to influencers to seo to retail distribution, you have a lot of options. To me, it sounds like you need more emotional advice than practical advice. My advice is to just get over it. You're going to feel like you're bad at it. You're going to feel out of your element. It's going to be frustrating. That's okay. Learning means admitting that you don't know anything or else you'd just be executing. You just need to go for it and get over feeling uncomfortable with being bad at something. Put in the time, use the vast resources online.

Interesting product.

I can't help but wonder about the aluminium packaging bit -- another company I buy (an unrelated product) from has recently switched to using it, and I wouldn't say it was an improvement. Is it even better for the environment? From what I understand it's extremely energy intensive to smelt aluminium, and even if done in places with lots of renewable energy (Iceland), it still has to be transported afterwards (and it's probably going to take up more shipping volume).

The only other thing I can think of is that Apple's marketing may have made people think aluminium is 'better', but I don't know whether or how much this carries over to stuff like packaging.

For a similar theme, one might want to look into the recent efforts in some European countries to introduce a deposit for plastic bottles -- even though both the economic and the environmental emission calculations show that it doesn't make sense (last mile transportation of empty bottles is a disaster from environmental perspective, not to mention their nonexistent reusability).

Aluminum could be better than plastics in the sense of less phyto-estrogens and endocrine disruptors being introduced into the environment and the users' bodies. I wouldn't be surpluses if a case can be made for most packaging materials used nowadays being environmentally friendly in some way.

The alu bit is definitely up for debate. Packaging from recycled alu is better for sure for the environment. That being said, it’s a goal we work towards. Short of doing a crowdfunding to finance the startup cost switching to alu is hard for our current order sizes.

Sounds like you'd get a lot out of the Sales for Founders podcast: https://pod.salesforfounders.com/

I was in a similar situation to you ~10 years ago and had to learn sales the hard way.

The podcast is my attempt to make it easier for others to avoid all the mistakes I made when learning sales.

You don’t need to “sell” like a salesman hitting targets for this. You simply need to ask some climbing gyms and stores to stock the product for a while to test sales. Talk to someone who has done this before for advice on how to attract people to your display in the store or gym).

Once you have good data you can go to more stores or the HQ of those stores.

You've got a niche product so maybe find an influencer? One of the top rock climbing folks? I would also send a bunch of free trial stuff to the local rock climbing gyms maybe with an ad campaign.

Searching Amazon also seems to show that gymnastics and weigh lifting are a market as well.

You really want a strong brand. Shark tank might be an option too.

"...find an influencer?"

I was thinking along a similar line. There are popular rock climbing channels on YouTube. Some of these channels already include promotional or sponsored content. One option is to pay to include your product in a video ("sponsored by Chalk Rebels, get 20% off your first order with this exclusive discount code").

Or send them your products and ask if they would be willing to try and review your product, no strings attached. There may be a risk they may not like your product (hopefully not). Also, best to keep in mind that some proportion of subscribers to a climbing channel will not necessarily be climbers.

Most Subscribed Rock Climbing YouTube Channels (2017~2020):

The list of channels is in the description below the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiPIulY6v8

You have a good product.

I have a weird feeling your target market will be females.

So many women are into climbing.

I don't have much advice except offer a percentage of sales to an enthusiastic hire.

I have a sister who owns a shoe company. She started with not much, but good taste, and is a very good salesperson. She is now a multi millionaire. Don't skimp on packaging. (You didn't). You are also selling your brand along with the product.

My sister started selling Doc Martins before they were a fashion trend. She knew American women would buy them up. Within a year of her working for the old stoggy company, she was selling more shoes than all salespersons combined. Her success was she is a salesperson whom believed in the product. She ended up making so much on commissions, the middle managers were scared. When Doc Martin lowered her commission, she started her own company. Find a salesperson like my sister.

I think this program is exactly what you're looking for:

https://store.startfromzero.com/market-sell-online-program/

Try reading the sales page. Does it seem to understand your problem better than you understand it yourself? Are you compelled to invest the $1500 ticket price?

That is the type of sales the program will teach you.

There are many other ways to learn direct marketing. They even offer a $15 option if you can't afford $1500. (The textbook they will be using: https://www.thelegendsbook.com/)

You've had lots of sales advice already so I won't comment on that. How does your product compare with liquid chalk like this [1] which used to be pretty popular in France. No idea if it was popular in the US.

I know quite a lot of climbers in England and if I had this product I'd get it in local independent climbing gyms and shops, I'm sure they wouldn't take much convincing, even if you weren't getting great money for it it would be an awesome place to show off your product. Some friends own an independent gear company called alpkit.com I'm sure if you had stock in the UK they'd consider taking it on if it works as good as you think it does.

Many here are suggesting heavy marketing. That's possible if you have deep pockets or a lot of skill in that area.

In the space I work marketing doesn't lead to sales very quickly. What does is retail relationships. That is getting stores to sell our product. This can be done because our product is good quality for the price and we have an ordering channel that makes life easy for big retail.

The only way to get these relationships is to do sales. To be out there talking to the right people in retail chains. Start small with local retailers, build a name for your brand. But sell sell sell. You have to be out there calling and meeting store owners, or hire people to do so.

I am a software developer and left my job 4 months ago to start a startup. I had the same fear as you in the beginning and to add to it, English is not my first language!

You will hear this advise again and again, people buy from people. Nobody cares how good you're in talking, they will focus on why they should buy from you. What is your story? and how credible you're. So I agree with @nickfromseattle comment. Go and build your personal brand first.

Keep in mind, you're the best person who knows the product as it is yours. You can answer any question about it easily.

Just go and start talking to potential customers, it will not be easy in the beginning but you'll enjoy the learning process.

So I enjoy climbing, I have chalk, and I know about liquid chalk. I looked at your website and couldn't find what is the big difference to normal liquid chalk of you chalk cream?

Also since we're on the web, it would be good for non-American visitors to know whether you ship to their country.

Looking at the ingredients of your repair balm, I see it uses Tocopherol. I think Vitamin E would sound better here. Also you state it's 100% natural (plants + beeswax), however the ingredients list contains petrolatum, which is Vaseline, which doesn't sound like truth in advertising to me.

Thanks for catching that! We can explain better & I’ll make sure that is fixed. One of the fascinating things I discovered during research is that in terms of moisturizing effect (measured in TEWL OR TRANS-epidermal-water-loss) pretty much nothing beats Vaseline. I personally have been using a local product here which brands itself as “homeopathic” for hydration but in reality gets 99.9% of its hydrating effect from petrolatum.

I personally don't mind, I use the Elizabeth Arden 8h cream myself, which contains petrolatum and vitamin E as well. Btw do you think the salicylic acid in the cream helps? It's one of the ingredients that's "uncommon".

Maybe you could even highlight why you use petrolatum.

A lot of good things have been said in this thread. I don't climb, but I think that your selling point "use less chalk" is not particularly convincing. Maybe "your hands will thank you" would be more appealing. People talk about making the world a better place, but in the end they are mainly interested in themselves. If chalk cream is even a little better for the skin than regular chalk, I would communicate that very clearly. I would try an adwords/facebook campaign and landing page with this topic and see how the reactions and sales are.

The point of products and services is to help others and along the way, establish mutually beneficial transactions. So think of the representative person you are helping (maybe one model for each major type of person) then consider how you can best help them with your product.

If your product really helps, you can consider approaching it from a mindset of "it would be a disservice to that person NOT helping them with your product" - That tends to help with the motivation (obligation, almost?) to carry out the sales initiatives...

FWIW

Thanks for the mindset insight. I'm definitely the kind of "all marketing is evil & just wants you to convince to buy shit you don't need" nerd. It's very hard for me not to smirk when thinking through justification like "helping people discover products that will improve their life". I guess I need an attitude adjustment?

You are welcome, I hope it helps. Ethics are what you can bring to it.

Just like a knife can be used to prepare food to provide sustenance or take a human's life, it is not the tool that can be a problem, but the intent and usage of that tool...

I run an IT business, I focus on taking care of my clients so they no longer have to worry about IT stuff. In return, they reward me with the means to enjoy the life I currently enjoy, and I have good feelings about contributing positive impact/effects on/to their businesses.

You could try hiring a consultant or specialist, or bringing another person onboard with these skills. What are your growth plans for the company and how many employees do you have now/want?

You’ll want to be on the shelfs or on sites where climbers shop. I tried searching on Amazon and your product is not there. If you are not great in marketing Amazon is a much easier way to get in front of eyes. The alternative will be a lot of spending on online ads targeting climbers.

Do you have a funnel built? Who are you selling to? Do you want to be in gyms or do you want to sell to climbers directly? Sales is a numbers game. You do X amount of outreach which results in Y amount of sales. Or you add marketing which effectively does some of the outreach for you. You can be bad at selling something but if you have a good funnel and process it wont matter. Let the tools sell for you.

Large amount of climbers are cheap, typically minimalistic people who don't really care about their skin getting hammered. They wear their callous like badges of honor. When they get flappers, they share pictures of them on social media. You are trying to sell safety helmets to skaters.

Besides, a part of chalk is removing excess moisture from the holds. Especially in summer in a busy climbing gym

One thing I learned from an executive at IKEA (not sure if it was a lecture or conference) is that "eco friendly" (use less, reduce waste, reduce impact) is not marketable. You want to demonstrate that your product is good in its own right and that it just happens to be environmentally friendly. Otherwise the risk is that you are chasing the intersection of two niches.

Respectfully disagree. We have a small but growing fanbase of extremely happy users BECAUSE of our "green" products. Particularly being part of 1%FTP & planting one tree per product sold creates massive loyalty.

When was this? Sustainability is all the hype in 2021. Big brands are now rushing to be sustainable or they're seen as falling behind.

A lot of the sustainability hype this year is about how continuing doing what you are already doing is now less impactful to the environment. i.e "continue to drink Coca-Cola since we now use 50% recycled plastic bottle" vs. "drink our new Cola brand which only uses organic ingredients". The former appeals to the existing mass market whereas the latter appeals to the niche "willing to pay a bit more to feel like I am protecting the environment" sector.

> A lot of the sustainability hype this year is about how continuing doing what you are already doing is now less impactful to the environment

I completely agree. A blatant example is the smartphone market. Sure, not including chargers and headphones will reduce waste, and going 100% sustainable energy is good, but if they were serious about sustainability, they would make their products have more longevity, be more user-repairable, and stop marketing them like fashion items/Veblen goods so people don't feel the need to upgrade every year.

We’re in the “please use less of our product because it is better” sector. Long-term our goal is actually to REDUCE the use of magnesium carbonate powder in the climbing community.

> Talking to people, let alone selling, turns out to be extremely hard for me.

Recognizing weaknesses is a terrific leadership trait.

So, this is a WHO problem.

Essentially, Who can take on the public facing role of evangelizing, marketing, and selling your product?

At this stage, assuming you’re bootstrapping —- Look for individuals you can trust, (people you might afford) with non-traditional backgrounds.

+1 to this.

The poster can think of it this way: what if you there was a marketing person that was really good at it and then decided to start coding to make a product. Sure that might work for a prototype, but for anything more than some simple wireframes you would tell them to find a real programmer.

Now imagine the reverse where you are the coder that just needs to learn (overnight!) how to sell. Just as the original marketer devalues programming you are doing the same with selling.

I uploaded a short video to show the difference between "Crystal Chalk" and "Chalk Cream" a.k.a. traditional white "Liquid Chalk".

https://chalkrebels.com/blogs/news/hello-hn

You can higher a sales guy on commission give them 20%.

If you want to learn to sell get a job in a car show room. If you can get one with the sleaziest car salesman you can find, people don't like dealing with them because they are a caricature of a person but thats what you need to do, sales is a performance.

Sounds like you are most of the way there, but are missing the last step of actually asking people to buy the product. There is an 'Add to cart' button 3 clicks deep into your site, when there should be a "Buy it" button on the front page.

If you can distill what you need to a set of questions, /r/smallbusiness can be of great help in terms of offering focused and actionable suggestions (if you get them on a good day :-). Possibly also some of the other subreddits in their sidebar like /r/marketing.

Are you sure hacker news is the place to get feedback about climbing product? Like, yes, some people here do climb too. It is fairly common hobby in tech. However, this is not climbing community. Even people who climb are likely to be causal in it.

I can relate to this idea. I've never actually used chalk. My hands are the right level of tackiness with a little bit of sweating that chalk takes it to the point of slippery. All my clibming friends are like "You dont use chalk??"

That's a whole debate in itself. We did a LOT of research around this & the answer to the question "Do I need chalk?" is: "It depends". The two major factors impacting friction are: Do I sweat a lot? Do I have greasy skin? Then the four categories of climbers are:

1) high sweat, oily skin (use liquid chalk as a base layer & top up with chalk powder) 2) high sweat, dry skin (magnesium carbonate / silica will help you) 3) low sweat, oily skin (the alcohol in liquid chalk will help you) 4) low sweat, dry skin (you lucky SOB!)

My impression is that most climbers can switch to liquid chalk except for category 1.

haha, Yeah I guess that means i'm (4)

Did you reach out to Patagonia if they are interested in featuring your products? They have sold third-party products before, like the Guppyfriend microfiber washing bag. I think your product vision very much aligns with theirs.

We did. Negative. Kind of. I'm pretty sure we simply talked to the wrong people though? You got an intro?

Have you thought about partnering with 3 to 4 amazing climbers who are world famous and get them to vouch for it? Maybe equity...

Or, start local, give it to the local climbing gyms people to try etc. That might be a more up/down approach.

As a former climber, I think you need a different tag line. "Use LESS Chalk" comes across as patronizing to my eyes. I feel like many climbers take pride in how they use an excessive amount of chalk.

Interestingly enough, I had the exact opposite reaction: this is a great pitch. I land on the page, read three words and instantly know what the product is about and who it's for.

I agree. The focus should be on something that makes sense on its own, like "preserve the climbing environment".

Also sounds pretty similar to Useless chalk

I agree w others saying focus online retailing.

For local / consumer input - What do your local climbing clubs, outdoor stores and indoor climbing gyms say when you approach them?

Outdoor Retail has big trade shows - ISPO in Europe.

Approaching gyms is tough right now: lots of gyms are suffering a lot because of COVID, so they're not exactly stocking up on goods. Consumer input is good. Climbers who tried it liked it. We have some repeat customers but scale is way way way below where we need to be.

You really need to emphasize how this makes your hands crack less, etc. Your site needs to be rewritten to put info like that front and center.

"Good for the environment" etc should be framed as an added bonus.

When I see someone selling a product like this and their most aggressive value position is "good for the environment," that reads to me like you are trying to guilt me into buying something I wouldn't otherwise buy. When I then see you very prominently also announcing "one tree planted for every widget sold!" I conclude "This is a fool who knows nothing about business and should just be running a charity but for some damn reason can't commit to that or something?"

It smacks of "I want to do good works, but I'm a pathetic loser who desperately needs money, so I'm going to try to make this a business, only not because I'm all confused."

(That "Look, look, we do good works!" positioning works for big companies who are raking in the dough and trying to convince people "We aren't an evil corporation. We are decent people doing good things while making a buck. Honest!")

Planting trees should be maybe a page linked in the footer. It should not be prominently and loudly promoted.

Because people will see that and conclude the product is overpriced so you can afford your hobby of planting trees.

You could also have a whole separate page on chalk lung, a whole separate page -- with pics -- about chalk defacing the climbing environment. Etc.

Your value position needs to be something like "Protect your hands! Bonus: Protects the environment too!"

Sales and marketing are about communication. It's about getting info from your mind to my mind without benefit of a Vulcan mind meld.

You need to get random strangers to see what you see, feel what you feel, understand what you understand, envision what you experience.

You want to walk them through how glorious it is to climb more efficiently because they chalk up less often, to climb more comfortably because their hands aren't cracked and bleeding, to enjoy their sport more because they aren't going to work with injured hands still healing for several days after a climb, to take pleasure in the view of the landscape unmarred by chalk residue, to know they are really getting healthier and stronger from their sport and not being left with hidden health issues like chalk lung because of it.

I would rename it. Maybe call it "liquid chalk" or something like that.

Edit:

Rather than "rebelling" against current practices, you need to position it as "the future of climbing." Rebelling gives the power to existing practices. "The future of climbing" says "Hey, this is a done deal. You can brag about being an early adopter or be some loser who joins late, but resistance is futile."

Can you show the difference with a competitor live?

Then have both options near you and demonstrate the difference. If it's good, watch feedback from people and iterate on your sales talk.

Talking about it is step 1.

Selling is a skill and you can learn it. Read these two books:

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini

"Persuasion Engineering" by Richard Bandler & John La Valle

If you can talk about the benefits of your chalk authentically (as a climber), what's the problem? Why do you think you're not good at it?

You might find "Three Steps to Yes" by Gene Bedell helpful.

Much of the content is obvious in isolation, but put together it helps orient your outlook.

As an aside, for future potential markets: powerlifters have the same sort of needs/problems around chalking for grip.

its somewhat simple take the reasons you design it talk about climbing.

you are WAY-OVER THINKING IT! we do those things when we have such things as an anxiety disorder or ADHD, etc.

From that person who took the name Carnegie to sell a book:

"talk about the subject you know and love"

I'm surprised you didn't make a Kickstarter campaign. Any reasons?

We’re actually considering this. I feel we don’t have the channel reach yet to make it successful. Besides our ~1000 IG followers we are really small. We have a new formula for traditional “white” liquid chalk in the lab but lack funds to bring it to market. That could be a KS target.

Why does the Chalk Cream have sodium hydroxide in the ingredients?

Good question! Because we produce in the EU we need to list all ingredients. The sodium hydroxide is a Ph stabilizer commonly used in low doses in cosmetics. It was actually the FIRST thing I asked our lab when they gave me the final INCI.

Yes, I suppose having a concentration of hydroxide is good to keep the carbonate from reacting and bursting the packaging.

The way I understood it is that Ph needs to be within a certain band of values in cosmetics and the last ingredient in the INCI guarantees this.

I would have never even begin this project because A.) I wouldn’t think there are enough climbers in the world to sell to and B.) Normal skincare products still work on climbers.

So kudos to you if you make this successful.

If you can’t sell, find/hire someone who can.

You can’t possibly reach level of someone who spent all life in sales in short period, why bother?

Do everything yourself is not scalable

This is really dangerous advice. Mind if I give you a counterpoint?? We can accomplish anything and everything we choose. It’s painful most of the time, but we can. If OP wants to sell, they’ll be amazing at it. Good heavens, buyers are just as human as sellers.

Edit - Sorry, I forgot to add that the dangerous part of giving up is that it’s just as hard for non-sales people to hire sales leaders as it is for non-technical people to hire technical leaders. OP has to have enough confidence to keep learning, even if it’s just enough learning to make a great hire.

It’s not about giving up its just common sense, people.

Imagine Steve Jobs writing code or Wozniak doing sales, as an extreme example of my obvious point.

Your point is neither obvious nor valid - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started the company together. This individual seems to be a sole founder. You have completely missed the point of all of this....

That's why VCs don't like solo founders and that's exactly my point — find more people, event cofounders for critical roles.

Otherwise you'll endup jack of all trades but with no good sales, no good product etc.

Since focus and energy of a single man, even genious, is very limited.

And again, you have looped back to where it’s incredibly useful for OP to learn how to sell. Thanks.

Got to agree with @arsitofun. Time is your most valuable asset - if you're not energized by "selling" or "learning how to sell", then hire someone who is.

This is very dangerous advice. In particular at the price point the OP is selling they need marketing not sales and need to know the difference before hiring. They need to do at least enough of this themselves to be able to hire well when and if they decide that's the right course of action.

Read the book: The mom test

1) First, do you need sales or marketing. Often people mix these 2 things so best to check in on that. Marketing is looking after the brand and the more broad areas of selling a product like pricing, websites, ads, sponsorship, social. Sales is more promotional events and going to trade shows to get product into shops. Hope this isn't pedantic (and you may well know this already) but if asking for advice from industry people sales vs marketing advice request will get potentially different approaches and answers.

2) I think you need to work on your messaging and tightening. There seem to be 4 messages being presented when I look at the site: less chalk, good grip, repair skin, environmentally friendly. It seems quite spread out and you could tighten the focus to 2: less chalk and good grip, the others are addon ons after the fact. But what it really seems to miss for me is what we call 'RTB' (reason to believe).

A solid messaging format for selling is:

- Make a claim - Give reason(s) to believe that claim - CTA (Call to action) - e.g. buy it here.

I feel you're missing the the RTB. The claim is there but why should I use less chalk? Maybe a climber knows this but do they really care? Maybe this is my ignorance of a common issue but this information seems missing. And 'good friction' what does this mean? I want better friction and tell me why it is. What makes this skin repair better than any other cream?

I would look to add RTB + add it in nice easy to digest text snippets + videos for the people that want more. Find some test like showing 2 wooden blocks stay together better as too tilt them with cream vs chalk type thing... sure you can do better.

Also Id drop the environmental stuff to the lower/footer. Its important but fundamentally its a checkbox for most people and they want to focus more on the immediate benefit to them, and you want to concentrate, not dilute that key message.

And I suspect better grip is going to be the strongest message if true and you had to boil it down to one.

3) I saw 3 distributors listed - I would work on that as a key focus. Years of marketing has taught me Id prefer great distribution with and average product than average distribution of a great product. This goes against common sense, especially for technical people but its a reality of product.

4) One of the first things I did was look at Fb for reviews and comments but didn't see anything. Definitely need to get community engagement for feedback on the product, to build trust and organic traffic

5) Are you A/B testing? That's the best way to learn if you have traffic to play with on much of above.

Anyway, looks like you have solid foundations in place, good luck getting it to take off!

Content!!!

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