Every Designer Needs to Learn Sales

6 Tips to actually commercialize your work

— Do you want to buy this from me?

— NO, Go Away!

We’ve all heard this; The harsh rejection every designer faces when trying to promote or sell our work. But how do we avoid this dialogue?

Many people hear “sales” and think about a car salesperson, capitalizing on asymmetric information and duping someone out of their money.

But the truth is sales is part of every creative work and negotiation is a skill we all need to develop regardless of our occupation.

As designers, we never learn this in school: How to actually commercialize our work?

Instead, designers and artists end up entering the market with nothing but creativity. While that’s incredibly valuable and evidently irreplaceable, it can’t turn into a source of income unless we learn to monetize it.

What ends up happening is we start to have contempt for the business side of the process. It’s hard enough to monetize any product, adding contempt to the process makes sales virtually impossible.

As a designer who struggled with this myself, I gathered my experience and research on the sales process and hope it can help fellow designers.

So without further ado— Here’s some tips to master the art of sales:

Embrace the commercial side of art — Don’t be skeptical of advertising. Your work will not lose its artistic value if you try to make money off of it. If you simply are making art for the sake of making it or just see it as a hobby then more power to you. But if you are reading this, you’re probably trying to sell your work. Even if you have an incredibly designed product, you still need to spread the word. Take sales & marketing seriously!

Be Authentic — When trying to promote your work, I recommend imagining yourself as a product consultant rather than a salesperson. Put your focus on the benefits of your product and how it will solve your customer’s problem.

Remember, you’re not trying to sell to everyone. You’re trying to find your highest need customers and authentically solve their problem.

Benefits > Features — When introducing your work don’t talk about the product but rather the story behind it; Why you built it, What gave you the inspiration, How it will solve your costumer’s problem.

Facts tell, stories sell.

Demonstrations aren’t about the product. Rather, they’re about what the product does for you.

Have Options — Set yourself up so you have some mobility. Do your research and accurately predict your market value. Find other options before you go in for negotiation with a customer or a company. Because if you can’t say “No”, you’re not negotiating.

“If you don’t do what I want, something you don’t like will happen.”

If you’re selling a product, you must have alternative companies or markets to go to. If you’re negotiating a service or for a job, you need to have other options at hand so if they refuse to meet your needs, you can walk away. You have to negotiate from a position of strength.

If you can’t tell someone to go to hell, you can’t negotiate with them. — Jordan Peterson

Be Humble — You are not entitled to anything more than what your customer is willing to pay for long term. Don’t let your ego overestimate your worth and get in the way of you selling your product or service at a “reasonable” price.

Sell directly to customer not companies — This may be a personal input but based on my experience, selling to companies ends up being a much more complicated process. You have much more control over the sales process when you are selling directly to consumers. Huge corporations are difficult to predict; Decisions are made unbelievably slow at big companies. You need to get through several layers of managers in order to get to the top which could take years and even if you make it, chances are they reshuffle their management and the person you spent months convincing moves to another branch and you have to start over!

Another observation is the personal connection and fulfillment selling directly to a customer brings along. I saw the direct impact my product had on the customer’s life and it made the difficult journey of production sales worthwhile.

Consider partnering — It’s difficult to handle all different sides of a business at once. Partnering with someone who is the opposite of you can be incredibly helpful because they'll handle the things you are not naturally drawn to.

Some personalities are naturally better at sales (e.g. extroverts). If you are high in Openness (which is highly likely if you are a creative) you may find it hard to focus or get the task done because you constantly have new ideas. In that case partnering with someone high in Conscientious can be useful as they will get the paperwork done and organize your tasks to actually get things done.

You can read more about different personality traits in this article:

In conclusion —

Like any other skill, sales can also be learnt.

Designing a sales process is analogous to designing a product:

Test, Refine, Test again.

Expect to make mistakes. Learn from those mistakes and make your process better. Happy selling!