I saw a video recently that made a simple distinction:
Draper knew the consumers. Peggy knew the clients.
That line stuck with me.
Over the years, I've lost projects to agencies that were better at selling to the client. They knew how to run the meeting, package the proposal, and say exactly what the decision-makers wanted to hear.
Fair enough. They won the pitch.
But selling to the client is not the same as building for the user.
The client approves the budget. The user has to live with the product.
I've watched this play out more than once. A polished deck wins the room. Six months later, the people who actually use the system are still working around it — exporting to spreadsheets, pinging someone on WhatsApp, inventing a process the software never accounted for.
A great sales team can make an average product sound exceptional. A great presentation can hide weak thinking. A confident pitch can win a contract before anyone has seriously asked whether the final product will be useful.
That is the uncomfortable reality: the company with the best product does not always have the best sales team. And the company with the best sales team certainly does not always have the best product.
Sales matters. But I never want SleekDigital to become better at selling the work than doing the work.
I can live with not having the best sales team in the industry.
I cannot live with knowing we are not providing the best product or service we are capable of.
Sales wins the project once.
The product has to justify that decision every day after.
