[ON] Great at building software, terrible at selling it. What am I missing?

Two years ago I built and sold a custom inventory management system to a company. It worked, they still use it, and I thought I'd cracked something. I hadn't. I got lucky once and I've been unable to reproduce it since.

For context, I'm employed full-time as a software engineer here in Ontario. This isn't a survival post — I'm not scrambling for income. What I'm missing is the skill I never had to develop: finding the businesses that need this and getting them to say yes.

Building I can do. Scoping, delivering, supporting — all fine. Sales is the wall.

What I'd like to hear from this sub:

1. Owners — if your inventory is currently a pile of spreadsheets and habits, what would have to break before you'd pay someone to build you something custom?

2. Devs/consultants — how did you get from a one-off deal to a real pipeline? Did you partner with a salesperson, niche down hard, or something I haven't thought of?

3. Is bespoke software still worth chasing for a solo builder, or is the answer to productize something narrow and sell it repeatedly?

Happy to talk through the technical side if anyone's curious. Genuinely here for advice, not a pitch.