Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

If your sales culture is driven by transactions, then any relationship the salesperson cultivates will evaporate immediately after the customer signs on the dotted line. You don’t have a relationship with an ATM machine—you just walk up to it and take your money. And once a customer feels like an ATM, clawing them back is almost impossible. You have to bend over backward, twisting yourself into knots trying desperately to convince them to trust you again. Customer success or support will apologize and apologize and backpedal, cursing the sales team under their breath the whole time. You’ll probably still lose that customer. That’s why relationship sales cultures aren’t naive or simplistic. They’re necessary. And they’re proven. It’s the sales culture we set at Nest. It’s the culture I’ve pushed dozens of startups to adopt. It works better. Every single time. You get happier customers. You get a happier culture. You get teamwork and focus and progress toward your goal. Ideally you set up your business this way from the start. Everyone gets paid in salary, stock, and performance bonuses—sales, customer success, support, marketing, engineering, everyone. That’s not to say they get paid the same amount, but the compensation model is the same—everyone is aligned.