Squibb: sell by not wanting to sell

beginner5 min read · updated 2026-06-20

As taught by Simon Squibb · source

Squibb: sell by not wanting to sell

Simon Squibb is the founder who went from homeless at 15 to building the creative agency Fluid and selling it to PwC in 2015. He now backs 70+ startups and built a public following teaching people to start businesses. His sales philosophy is the opposite of what most people do: stop trying to close, and the close finds you.

The lesson, in my words

Most people pitch the second they get attention. They lead with the product, the price, the deck — and the prospect can smell the want. Wanting the sale is exactly what kills the sale, because want reads as pressure, and pressure makes people defensive.

Squibb's move is to drop the pitch entirely and become genuinely useful first. Establish what the person actually needs, build a real relationship, and only then — if it fits — present a solution. The order matters: need first, relationship second, offer last. If you skip to the offer, you're a stranger asking for money. If you earn the first two, you're a known quantity the buyer already trusts.

The tell that he means it: he describes nurturing target brands for roughly 9 years — sending something helpful on a regular cadence, "to be remembered," with no ask attached. He wasn't selling. He was depositing value into a relationship until the day a need surfaced and he was the obvious, trusted person to call.

He also pairs this with brutal honesty: name what you can't do, over-deliver instead of over-promising, and sell the outcome rather than the feature list. Honesty is disarming because the buyer stops bracing for the spin.

Why it works

• Pressure is a signal, and buyers read it. When you don't need the deal, you can walk — and that calm is more persuasive than any close.
• Trust compounds; pitches don't. A pitch is a single event the buyer forgets. Months of small, helpful touches become a relationship the buyer defends.
• Help surfaces the real need. You can't sell the right thing until you know what's actually broken. Helping first is also free discovery.
• Relationships outlast transactions. A client who became a friend buys again, refers, and forgives mistakes. A one-time close does none of that.

How to apply it

• Pick 10-20 dream accounts, not a list of 1,000. This is a relationship strategy, not a spray. Quality of attention is the whole point.
• Open with help, not an ask. First contact carries something useful — an insight, an intro, a fix to a problem they have — and zero request for their time or money.
• Diagnose the need before you mention what you sell. Ask questions. Listen. If there's no real need, say so and keep helping anyway.
• Set a no-ask cadence. Show up monthly with something valuable. Track it like a pipeline, but the metric is "value delivered," not "asks made."
• Be honest about your limits. Tell them what you're not good at. It makes everything else you say credible.
• Let them raise buying. When the need is real and the trust is built, the prospect often asks how to work with you. If they don't, you propose once, calmly, and you're fine either way.
• Over-deliver on the first win. The first transaction is an audition for the relationship. Beat the promise.

The trap to avoid

This is not "be nice and hope." Helping without ever being willing to make an offer is just a hobby. The discipline is patience plus a real offer at the right moment — you genuinely don't need this sale, but you are absolutely there to be hired when the need is real. Drop the wanting; keep the willingness.

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Lesson distilled from the public sales philosophy of Simon Squibb (simonsquibb.com). Written in our own words; not a verbatim reproduction of his material.