‘Build It And They Will Come', Is A Lie

You have to be better at pitching what you do than doing what you do

- Justin Cohen

Have you ever been convinced that you had the best offering? Yet, you lost the deal to a competitor offering less value at a higher price? That happened to me a lot. I struggled for years to close deals.

I remember the day I finally got my wake-up call. I’d just lost a five-figure deal to someone offering less value at a higher price! Working my frustration out at the gym, it hit me: if I was convinced my offering was the best and I didn’t get the deal then clearly offering great value is not enough! It’s not enough to have the best product, you’ve got to have the best pitch.

Remember Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams? Costner plays this small-time farmer, but his real love is baseball. He wants to convert his farm into a baseball pitch, but as anyone with an entrepreneurial dream, he’s nervous. What if he puts in all that time and money and it flops? That’s entrepreneurship: high reward, high risk. While he’s struggling with this dilemma, these words come to him kind of like the voice of God from the heavens: “Build it and they will come.” These words inspire him to take the risk. He builds the pitch, and boy do they come, in droves! Happy Hollywood ending, cue music. Just one thing: in reality, ‘Build it and they will come’ is a lie. It’s a beautiful lie, but it is a lie.