11/09/2026
The Biggest Sales Myth Ever Told: "Good Products Sell Themselves"
If good products sold themselves, there would be no such thing as a failed startup with brilliant technology, and no graveyard of innovative businesses that shut down within three years.
This myth is comforting because it removes responsibility from leadership. If the product is good enough, the thinking goes, sales will simply happen. It won't. History, and my own consulting experience, is full of superior products that failed to gain traction because nobody built a deliberate path to market.
Even category-defining innovations required aggressive, strategic selling to gain their first customers, build trust, and displace incumbent habits. Customers rarely change behaviour on their own, no matter how good the alternative is.
Innovation earns you the right to be considered. Selling earns you the sale.
Case Study:
A tech-enabled client had built a genuinely superior solution to a manual process their industry had used for decades. They assumed the efficiency gains would sell themselves. Eighteen months in, adoption was flat. We built a structured sales narrative addressing the real barrier- fear of change, not lack of interest- and trained their team to sell transition, not just technology. Adoption accelerated meaningfully once the selling started matching the strength of the product.
Kunle Oshobi | The Sales Alchemist
Development Economist | Management Consultant | Sales & Marketing Strategist