And we're back!

Hope everyone had a lovely new year and holiday break. We spent the new year in an amazing cabin with my closest friends and family. 4 days of laziness, board games, movies and food.

Anyhow...

Over the holiday break, I also happened to stumble on a quote from Naval Ravikant that kinda stuck with me.

I’m paraphrasing here, but it went something like this:

Huh... interesting.

My immediate reaction was to disagree.

But the more I sat with it, the more I understood.

What he's saying is that if your marketing is good, selling gets easier.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that’s been very true in my experience.

At Paperboy, we’ve spent years getting extremely clear on:

• who our ideal client is
• where they hang out
• what they care about
• what problems they already know they have
• how to speak to those problems

As a result, something interesting happens on a lot of our sales calls.

I've mentioned this in the past, but it often feels like the client is pitching me.

Not every time, of course —but often enough that it’s noticeable.

And that’s not something I ever experienced with my previous agencies.

So what's happening here?

I think it's because the "persuasion" already happened before the call.

Our marketing did the heavy lifting. And as a result, the sales call is mostly just alignment.

So that’s the marketing → sales side of Naval’s quote.

But the second half—the product part—is where I think this gets really interesting.

Because if you’ve built a genuinely good product or service, your customers will market it for you.

But here's the thing, when I say “good” I don’t just mean high-quality output.

In other words, how good your design or code or copy is.

That's once piece of it, sure. But i'd argue that it's the least important piece.

In my experience, what matters more than the quality of WHAT you do, is HOW you do it. Being good to work with matters more than being the absolute best at your craft.

And I think this is where a lot of creatives get it wrong.

We obsess over the work because we're craftsmen:

• pixel-perfect design
• clever copy
• elegant code
• flawless execution

All of that matters, yes.

But it’s not what most clients talk about when they refer you.

What they talk about is how easy you were to work with. How clear your communication was. Whether you made them feel calm or stressed.

Whether they trusted you

I’m convinced that 90% of clients care more about the experience than the craft, as long as the craft clears a reasonable bar.

That’s why most of our growth has come from word of mouth.

And that’s why we’ve never had to spend much on advertising our services.

When you combine:

• clear positioning (marketing)
• low-friction conversations (sales)
• and a service that’s genuinely pleasant to experience (product)

Something cool happens.

You stop chasing clients as much.

More and more often they come in pre-sold.

And referrals compound quietly in the background.

--

So if your sales calls feel hard right now, I’d encourage you to zoom out. The problem probably isn’t your pitch.

It’s not your closing technique.

It's not your personality.

It’s more likely one of these:

• your marketing isn’t doing enough pre-work
• your service isn’t clear or differentiated
• or clients don’t walk away thinking, “That was easy.”

Fix those, and selling might start to feel… well, optional.

Let me know what you think? Am I way off here or does this ring true?

Happy new year.

— Shane