Yearly for the previous seven years I’ve given college students in my Duke entrepreneurship class the identical inconceivable problem. I hand every of them a Jolly Rancher — a 5 cent piece of exhausting sweet — and I ask them to promote it for $100 in an hour. Not surprisingly, no person has ever been capable of promote it. Nevertheless, I simply completed giving my most up-to-date class the identical problem, and 5 individuals succeeded.

So what occurred? How did 5 20-year-old entrepreneurship college students instantly handle to do the inconceivable and promote a chunk of sweet for 2000x its worth when tons of of scholars who’d come earlier than them couldn’t? Are GenZ-ers simply that significantly better at gross sales?

Actually not!

The rationale my college students lastly offered the candies was as a result of I modified one thing about how I structured the problem, and that one small change made promoting the candies a lot simpler. Should you discover a technique to make the identical change in your startup’s gross sales course of, it’ll be simply as priceless for enhancing your outcomes.

I’ve at all times identified that promoting a Jolly Rancher for $100 in an hour is feasible. It’s not even notably exhausting. It simply requires understanding the nuances of buyer acquisition higher than the common 20-year-old entrepreneurship pupil.

Most younger entrepreneurs assume successfully promoting one thing consists of explaining the advantages of proudly owning a product after which convincing individuals to purchase it. Because of this, inexperienced entrepreneurs method gross sales as if it’s a strategy of browbeating potential prospects into submission. You chase them down till they’ll hearken to you. As soon as they’re listening, you give your finest pitch that explains each potential advantage of what you’re promoting. After which, when the pitch is over, you retain pestering individuals till they lastly agree handy over their hard-earned cash. “Don’t take ‘no’ for a solution,” is the recommendation individuals at all times give.

To be truthful, the tactic of gross sales I’ve simply described can work underneath the best circumstances. However that doesn’t…