Struggling to turn your vision into a profitable business? Learn how impact-driven founders can leverage their research to create a sales system that fuels sustainable growth.

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Welcome to Impact Sales Radio! In this episode, we tackle one of the biggest challenges impact startups face: bridging the gap between vision and sales.

• Why impact founders struggle with sales
• How your research superpower can become your sales strength
• The Vision-System-Value method: A framework to go from ideas to revenue

📩 Get the free guide and start transforming your research into a repeatable sales process! 👉

• Finding the right co-founder vs. learning to sell yourself
• Market validation: Why surveys won’t get you real insights
• How to use generative interviews to uncover your best customer fit
• Why you should never outsource sales in the early stages

Join the conversation! Follow me on Instagram and subscribe to the podcast for more episodes on building sustainable sales in impact startups.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to turn your impact startup into a revenue-generating force!

when you're looking for a co founder to do your business development.

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Remember that you can already do a

lot of that business development,

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even if you're not a business

person, do not outsource your sales

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Welcome to Impact Sales Radio.

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I am Julie.

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Join me in exploring how impact startups.

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turn long-term visions

into bootstrapped revenue.

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Let's be real for a second.

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You are a visionary Impact founder.

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You have researched everything

there is to know about the

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system you're looking to change.

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You aim to build a profitable business

as well as an impactful business.

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But that feels far off right now.

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When you don't know your value proposition

yet, you're supposed to get out of

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that research mode and into sales mode.

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This is what every impact

founder struggles with.

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That's what we'll explore

together in Impact Sales Radio.

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What if I told you, you can turn your

research superpower into a sales strength?

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So that you can get sales that

are repeatable or building

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towards your strategy.

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That's called convertible research.

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It's a method I designed

specifically for impact startups.

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Drop your email in the first link in

the show notes, and you'll see the big

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picture of what you need to do right now.

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Warning: no silver

bullets will be provided.

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Thanks for joining us here, and

follow me down the rabbit hole.

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Let's go.

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Julie: welcome to this

episode of Impact Sales Radio.

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I'm Julie, and let's get to it.

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In this episode, we'll go from vision

to an actual sales system in order

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to uncover a value proposition.

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I want to discuss the case of

a social well being startup.

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I won't mention the name unless

they show up in the sponsorship

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reel in a couple of seconds.

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No, I'm joking.

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I won't mention the name to protect

the person's anonymity, also to

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take a bit of creative liberty.

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So if you're listening, Ellis I'm not

specifically talking about your business.

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I'm using it as a source of

inspiration, to draw analogies

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to other startups as well.

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As an impact founder, you are

starting from a specific vision, right?

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I wonder how long this has

been maturing in your head.

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Chances are it's been a while.

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Most founders I speak to are between a

year and a half and a couple of years.

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Some have done 10 years of fundamental

research on the topic, but what joins all

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of you together, dear impact founders,

is that you're Having a hard time going

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from that very deep domain expertise

and that vision that is so clear in

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your head and so inspiring and unique

to turning that into a concrete idea

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that people can actually pay you for.

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That gap is quite large and I

haven't come across any methods

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that help you bridge that gap.

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So I've developed it.

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there's a very important starting point.

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I already mentioned it.

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Your vision, your vision is the most

important starting point and is the

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thing you should never want to lose

because it's the fuel for everything.

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It's the fertile ground it's

the thing that You want to

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get closer to as you progress.

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A vision is a big idea, right?

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It's a perspective.

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It's a point of view.

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It's a statement like I look outside

and I see a world where in my case,

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shiny innovations are allotted and

growth is expected to be a shareholder

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growth, less than a stakeholder growth.

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That to me is a world that I see

it's not a world that I really.

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wanna see, but I see investments going to

cyber trucks rather than solving social

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inequality and I'm just baffled by it.

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I believe that entrepreneurship is

actually a vector for social innovation,

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for social complex challenges to

be solved through new businesses.

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And I wonder what your vision is, if

you have to fill in the blanks and say

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"I look outside and I see a world that"

can you dot dot dot can you fill in that

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statement, you don't have to overthink

it just what comes through now " I

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look outside and I see a world that..."

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if you Then move to, "I

believe in", to a more positive

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statement, a hopeful statement.

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What is that belief?

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You can be very concrete.

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You can be very vague.

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There is no wrong answer.

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There's only yours.

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That's one of the keys in

entrepreneurship, right?

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There's no wrong answer.

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There's only yours.

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So don't try to perfect it.

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But take a moment to think about it.

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"I look outside and I see

a world", dot, dot, dot.

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And then "I believe in..."

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now, if you think you don't have a

starting point, and this is something

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I hear a lot, with this, for example,

with this startup that I mentioned,

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it's like, where do I start when

everything feels equally important?

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Where do I start?

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You start with your vision.

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That's the most important thing.

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And everything else should always

strengthen that vision, not dilute it.

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When you feel stuck with your

idea, it's probably because you

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haven't made that vision land

yet into something more concrete.

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Some startups at this point are

hiring branding agencies, marketing

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agencies, or development partners.

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While all of those have a place for

some startups, usually those are not the

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right Investments to make at that point.

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That assumes that you are completely

correct about your solution.

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So it already leaves no room for error.

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And I've seen countless of founders

that have invested 30 K 60 K whatever

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they had on wasteful activities.

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While I see founders who don't have

the luxury of disposable income being

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much more resourceful, much more frugal

maximizing output with minimal funding,

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no family and friends really available,

let alone fools, so they actually start to

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build something scrappy and crappy, right?

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They're first going to make sure that

they have the customer funding lined up.

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How do you approach that?

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If you have a network, you can start

to sell some things that you assume

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are valuable because they already know

you but that quickly enough dries up.

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In the end, You've done those

projects, you've learned from it

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in some extent, but it's not really

something you can repeat or scale.

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So let's explore that for a second?

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The second part of my method is "System".

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You've tackled your Vision,

the second part is your system.

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The system you operate in and

the system you operate by.

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you might feel as an impact founder

at this stage where you're trying

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to create a solution and make it

stick, that you need someone to help

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structure ideas, execute on them.

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You might be looking for a co founder,

but how do you know what co founder you

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need if the solution isn't clear yet,?

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Unless you have someone who's

willing to figure that out together

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and is not to be put in a box of

a specific kind of developer that

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will work towards that technology.

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You have to be able to

work tech agnostically.

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So how can you do that?

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Same goes for a business profile.

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If they're stuck in a certain

industry, they're going to want

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to hold tight to that industry.

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So if you're finding a co founder, look

for someone who's curious and really

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looking to learn about that industry

together, about the system together.

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Now the main question is "how do I

find someone who really understands

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my vision and can help me?"

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Without necessarily taking over,.

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What level of execution can I afford

as a startup with limited resources?

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And do I need a co founder or just

someone with specific expertise?

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Those are all valid questions at this

point, but the answer oftentimes is

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not to be found into a traditional

business coach or a bureaucratic

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business coach, like someone who with

all due respect, have never been in a

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situation of entrepreneurship before.

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Never been close to a startup

even and start to give advice."

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You should do this.

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You should do that."

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No, whatever form of collaboration

you choose for, you need to be

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able to focus on what you do best.

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What I think you do best is

understanding your system and trying

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to solve problems within that system.

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I see that there might be a step

that you can take yourself before

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you actually define what type of co

founder, what type of team you need.

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For me, that step is the system.

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You are curious about

how to change the system.

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You are great at researching and

analyzing, you've only come this far to

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create your vision by being curious about

that, by researching how it could be.

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So it's only natural for

you to have that strength.

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What if you use that strength in order

to build the essentials of your business

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that you can actually build the rest on?

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So that you don't have to balance those

budget constraints as much, but can

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maybe afford high quality expertise.

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Now the first step you might be planning

on now, and I would congratulate

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you on it, is market research.

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This is the case of the person I talked

to today is, who didn't see the importance

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of understanding the target market.

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They want to refine their offering,

so note that there is an assumed

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solution already, but they struggle to

determine what the best approach is.

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So they're looking at, okay, I

think that I need to launch a

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survey and I need to get that survey

to as many people as possible.

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Now that's a great step, but if you

don't know what your problem is that

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you're solving yet, then a survey isn't

going to get you that information.

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The next action to take

now might not be a survey.

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It might not be that.

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A survey might not give

you the depth of insight.

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we learned that from design thinking, and

that's a method that uses anthropology,

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techniques, and other methods to

empathize with the target and try to

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understand what drives value for them.

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What problems they see, what their

context is, really understand that.

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And nowadays, we put too

much emphasis on tying design

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thinking to problem validation.

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But actually, there's a step before

that is often glanced over as

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something we're not going to do.

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That's empathy interviews.

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As a founder, you have no time for design

thinking, let alone empathy interviews.

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You do have a priority of sales.

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You do have a priority

of recurring revenue.

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So how might we marry those?

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That's the question I pose.

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So if you wonder, is there a real market

for my idea or am I just like trying

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to project my passion onto others?

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Then you might want to see if

you're asking the right questions

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to uncover what companies, what the

people in those companies truly need.

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The question then is a survey going to

get you there, get meaningful insights?

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And my stance on that is very clear.

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It's no.

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A survey is an evaluative experiment,

as we would call it in the business

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design language, and this sounds very

preposterous, but it's super simple.

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You have about 26 different

types of experiments.

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last time I made an experimentation course

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An interview is a form of an

experiment, a survey as well.

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An evaluative thing is where you

basically ask a yes or no question,

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or the scope of your research is to

evaluate whether something is good or bad.

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Opposite to that is a

generative type of experiment.

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A generative type of experiment is

where you try to generate insights,

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ideas, problems, challenges,

empathy that you didn't have before.

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This is where your sales

conversations come in.

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A discovery call should be the first

step of your sales conversation.

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In this call, you get to

ask them what is the system?

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How does it work?

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Now a next step in that if

you're okay, let's do it.

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Let's do generative interviews.

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Cool.

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Cool.

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Cool Let's do it in a way that's

will actually drive my sales.

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Then who are you gonna interview?

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This particular client I spoke to was

hesitating between three target audiences,

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but actually it was only two because

one of them she could rule out with

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just the click of a button basically.

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As soon as I asked her who do you

think this problem Without defining

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what the problem is that she's solving.

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But who do you think has the

most challenges when it comes

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to psychosocial wellbeing?

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Who do you think has the most to gain?

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It was clear that it wasn't startups,

startup founders, like before you're

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a scale up, the biggest problem

is actual business survival, but

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also mental wellbeing survival.

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There's a huge problem there.

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Founder well being is a

massively underrated thing.

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Hustle culture has been

detrimental to that as well.

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I applaud founders who are able to work

less and do actual better, better things.

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But

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in her space, in her perspective,

something in her vision Was linked

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to making a well being policy, which

starts with one employee and it's

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mandatory then and implementing that in

order to be able to attract talent and

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since scale ups need to attract talent

quicker and faster and bigger and Have

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a war on talent going on, raging along.

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It was clear that the scale ups were

the ones that were going to have that.

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The SMEs are the third target group,

but I haven't told her this yet.

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So Alice, if you're listening,

the SMEs are being served already.

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They have the budget to hire

the companies that do the custom

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well-being implementations.

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The group that's being

underserved are the scale ups.

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And this is another thing you're

looking for in the system.

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where is there a lever I can

pull to increase the impact?

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Scale ups are notorious for being

willing to rethink the way things work.

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They get the question from the

people that they hire that are

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usually a bit younger as well.

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They get the question of what do you

do for, what's your wellbeing policy?

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So they're faced with these challenges

much more yet they don't have the

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budget to hire a big expensive

consulting firm, even a boutique

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specialized consulting firm.

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So this part of the market, this

scale up part of the market is

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clearly the market that we are most

curious about, that we assume will

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have a lot to say on the subject.

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Of course, we assume that there

is awareness around well being,

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but she's already validated

that through conversations.

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So one of the things that I notice

when I go to this Vision System Value

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method is that we need to do an internal

round of validation with the founders

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before we actually go to the markets.

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And we can save so much time with that.

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Contrary to what design thinking

and lean startup are trying to

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have us believe "we need to find

all the answers in the market".

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But actually when we're doing impact

startup, we are driven by our desire

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and our purpose and our deep expertise.

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So actually, we hold a lot of the

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creative restrictions in which

we want to operate, we own those.

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So it's a validation of what are our

creative limitations that we want to set.

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And that will make our

solution much more creative.

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It will mean that, unlike others

working on prevention, we will

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work, for example, on hiring.

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Unlike others working on SMEs,

corporates, that's where the money is,

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we work on the ones that are broke,

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and we try to really serve them well, but

maybe we ask them a small subscription.

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And maybe we just go for scale, right?

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We'll see.

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Solution will show itself in due time.

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So that will help solve the question

of what does my ideal customer look

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like and what do they care about most.

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how do you bridge that gap though,

between vision and execution?

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What are small concrete steps that would

actually contribute to that vision and

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to turning that into systemic value?

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The first step is always sales.

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It's always looking back at how

you do it today, how you've done

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it in the past and how you could

do it in a different way tomorrow.

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It's always sales.

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Then we look at the vision,

the system, and the value.

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We've already covered that, but there's

a really big importance in taking small

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concrete steps on the right things than

trying to solve everything at once.

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in summary, when you're looking for a co

founder to do your business development.

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Remember that you can already do a

lot of that business development,

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even if you're not a business person,

even if you're not a person who

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can make that concrete idea land.

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As a founder, do not

outsource your sales.

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You can outsource the tasks, but

not the interpretation of the needs.

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That is something at an early stage

you want to keep close to the chest.

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At a scale up stage, you can expand,

externalize that towards a product owner.

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You can delegate that to a product

owner or a product manager even

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after a while when you have

different products and services.

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But the interpretation of your vision

towards linking that towards the actual

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problem you observe with the people

that you empathize with, linking those

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together into a value proposition is not

something you want to outsource because

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you'll, first of all, you'll have a

"not invented here", type of syndrome.

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And second of all, I met Katrien

yesterday who, after a year and a half,

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came back to me saying okay, so I guess

we won't focus on the legal obligation

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value proposition, which is exactly

what I told her a year and a half ago.

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But obviously, it's not my role to tell

anyone what I'm not an oracle, I might

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as well have been wrong, I probably

said 10 things that were completely

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off the mark, so no one that's gonna

tell you something, you're not gonna

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have internalize that you're not

going to believe that necessarily.

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Maybe you won't even give it importance.

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They probably also won't because

who are they to tell you, who am

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I to tell her that regulatory is

not a good trigger to work on.

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That's a common belief, but there's plenty

of startups that could prove that wrong.

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Also, It's not about being right or wrong.

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It's about learning about your

market the quickest you can.

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Who else is going to be able to

do that in the most direct line

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than you, so think about it.

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When is the last time you learned

something about your markets?

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When is the last time you intentionally

designed your operating system

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to learn about your markets?

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How could you change your sales process?

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How could you change your networking

interactions in order to learn

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more about your target market.

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Sometimes the most important

thing is not having the answers.

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It's knowing the right questions to ask.

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With that, I wish you fun in exploring

how you will get to your systemic impacts.

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Bye.