Facing the dread of selling

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on what I am feeling about trying to get sales for the thing I've just built. For reference, it's a B2B SaaS called Rather Text. It's a website that lets businesses text people. Outside of that, the context for the product doesn't really matter to this topic.

TL;DR - I love the product we've built, but I dread having to "sell" it anyone (the product subscription, not the whole business).

I am really into what my co-founder and I have built from a product perspective. We chose the route of building a more polished product before putting it out there in front of many people (still missing plenty of potential features). I know that's a wildly debatable topic, but that's what we chose to do.

My point in sharing this is that I am not remotely ashamed to show off this new product to potential customers. So far, we have had positive comments when doing those demos, which feels great. We managed to get our first few customers based on local connections.

Now to the topic at hand, selling. We have been in a build phase for months. I had a ton of fun doing that part. Now, though, we are in a customer acquisition phase. I have been kind of dreading this inevitable part the whole time. I believe there are many reasons, but the one that was the catalyst for this post is that it just feels so incredibly unnatural to me.

I take pride in being a humble person, in general. I don't have a problem not being in the spotlight and get a lot of excitement out of team-wins for my day job.

I am not naive enough to think that my product would magically sell itself (though still reserved some hope it could happen), so I am investing some amount of time and effort into SEO via blog articles on our site. So far, that has resulted in zero traffic. I know SEO tails are long and we haven't even written that much content, but I also have no idea if those efforts will even work at all. It's discouraging but whatever, the name of the game I guess.

I've made some cold calls as well, forcing through the awfulness that whole scenario is. Even with expectations set at the floor, that experience was depressing. Not only did zero leads come from it (of course), but I just felt dirty. I was clearly bothering those folks on the other end.

Since SEO hasn't kicked in yet, cold calling feels terrible, and we aren't running ads or anything, of course it's time to go get customers with some other direct effort. This is where the rub is. I don't want to "sell" anyone anything, as in I don't want to get in front of random people and convince them why we are awesome. It feels super self-indulgent and egotistical. It's everything that I aspire NOT to be as a person in this world.

I also have this strong resistance to even just mentioning my product on the internet (even now in this post). Again, it feels like I am just angling for sales. Like it feels inauthentic even if it's authentic. I have thought to myself how to self-promote in healthy ways, maybe on Reddit or something, but then I hear that your posts get deleted because that's not cool to do.

I follow a lot of other Indie Hackers and entrepreneurs on the internet. I try to learn as much as I can from them, but it also seems like most of their products are built for other technical people. I am sure it's just my bubble, but it makes for some hard translations in terms of how I can apply their advice.

If you have made it this far, you may be thinking....well you probably should not be in business if you don't like to sell. Yeah, maybe? I still think there has to be a healthy way to do this that I just haven't figured out yet. Luckily, I do have a co-founder that is much more business savvy and is working through this as well.

I think I just had my own private therapy session with myself, even if not many read this. I'll take that as a positive!

Overall, I love this product and the associated business. I am still optimistic about the future. I don't think selling will ever be comfortable, but I know that going in. I also know that if I don't work through this, our business won't actually work.

Anyone out there have experience or comments to share about going against your personal grain and natural disdain for selling?