[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to learn sales?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: How to learn sales?
First time entrepreneur here. I am creating a product that will
solve address a large potential. The more I think about it and read
about startup, I am finding that a key to early and often success
is Sales. I am been engineer by choice and engineering manager by
profession. I have never done sales. I understand you learn by
doing similar to driving. I am a bit talkative but sometime I have
hard time not getting bogged down by emotions. How do I get
started? Can you share books, videos, tutorials, prior recorded
sales call references? Where can I learn about metrics to track?
Any ideas?
Author : northpoleescape
Score : 104 points
Date : 2020-09-26 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
| venkasub wrote:
| - Sales and Marketing go together, but the paths diverge once you
| know the importance of each function. It is good to get a broad
| idea of both. You can do some courses on coursera/MooCs, and try
| to get hands-on with running some marketing campaigns. - "The
| Challenger Sale" is a fairly easy and good book to read in
| general. - Have a look at SaaStr channel, there are some nuggets
| there https://www.youtube.com/c/Saastr/videos
|
| All the best. Try out a lot with short feedback loops so that you
| can course correct suitably. Always respect the customer and
| their needs.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Something important to know is the difference between an actual
| sale (i.e. closing) and a sales process. If you want to be a good
| sales person, you focus on the sale, but if you are building a
| company, you need to figure out a sales process (which usually
| includes marketing on one end and onboarding on the other, not
| just sales).
|
| It doesn't matter how good of a sales person you are if you are
| not getting any leads. Conversely, you can be a bad sales person,
| even with a bad product, but with enough leads, eventually they
| will buy - you can see this with crappy restaurants at airports
| for example.
|
| Successful startups are very aware of this and they setup
| processes to generate enough leads so their sales people can
| close them, to generate their target revenue. Also, the sales
| person's responsibility is to close the people that "come through
| the door", but it shouldn't be their responsibility to bring
| those people in.
| mdifrgechd wrote:
| This is important and is largely what I wanted to add. At my
| company we have sales, who do the traditional listening to
| understand customer needs and working with them to build a deal
| that addresses those needs. But then we also have demand
| generation / sales development, focused on cold calling,
| getting leads, other marketing, etc, to get people through the
| door and you say. The OP needs to consider which of these
| (could be both) they want to build up their skills in. Reading
| about how to do sales will not help if you dont know how to get
| in front of people in the first place.
| mavelikara wrote:
| The Sales Acceleration Formula by Hubspot Sales leader Mark
| Roberge is a good book for this. He was an engineer by
| training.
| ponker wrote:
| The best way is to take one of those day gigs selling anything
| under the sun: magazine subscriptions, American Airlines credit
| cards, Joe Biden fundraising, etc. Getting over the fear of the
| "no" is critical, and getting the occasional "yes" is also
| important, and these sales gigs teach you both.
| lordnacho wrote:
| As a new salesman, your main issue is getting over rejection. If
| you don't learn how to do this properly, you'll end up not
| explaining your product properly, hesitating to present to
| marginal prospects, and changing your product too readily from
| criticism.
|
| So just go about doing the usual sales thing of describing your
| product, finding prospects, and talking to them. A lot. I think
| density of rejection is actually key to thickening your skin.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I helped run a small startup a long time ago. I helped shape some
| sales strategies and went on client pitches. Our main approach
| was to find the "pain point" of an executive in the company (we
| were B2B) and break through to them that way. To find the pain
| point you have to ask questions, which helps engage with the
| person you are selling to. Sometimes you shape your questions to
| get the client to think about potential pain points that your
| product solves.
|
| We kept crafting our message over time, using email and cold
| calls, and used a lot of copywriting books to find messaging and
| pitches. I think the best one was The Copywriter's Handbook.
| Straight and to the point book. It's more about advertising, but
| messaging is key for sales, too. A headline is basically your
| elevator pitch. I think we also used the book Spin Selling.
| hanoz wrote:
| As someone who wouldn't in a million years buy anything from
| anyone who was trying to sell me something, how do I learn sales?
| pboutros wrote:
| I never thought I'd do sales. For B2B, read: - The Challenger
| Sale - Value Based Fees - Pitch Anything
| bamurphymac1 wrote:
| Lots of good, more specific recommendations, so here's some broad
| and cliched advice:
|
| You have two ears, one mouth. Focus on what your potential
| customer needs, their problems, pain and goals, and how your
| product can help. It will help you get out of your own head.
|
| Don't take rejection personally. If you can't sell the product
| then you can at least sell yourself as someone trustworthy,
| friendly and helpful.
|
| Remember that people are not purely rational, and often have
| hidden motives, biases, and incentives. You may win or lose a
| sale on factors totally out of your control, or because of
| reasons that are not at all clear on the surface.
|
| Charm is a real thing. I can think of a few times I've bought
| something solely because the salesman was doing SUCH A GOOD JOB
| of making me feel special, cared for and considered. Even
| consciously recognizing what was happening didn't change that I
| wanted the experience to run through to its natural conclusion
| and to complete the ritual.
|
| Something interesting I found reading Caro's LBJ biographies is
| how much of a Jobs-like Reality Distortion Field the man had.
| People who worked with him describe how he'd wind himself up
| mentally and emotionally while working on an issue. He'd hit some
| inflection point where he truly believed whatever he was selling,
| even if he'd been very opposed to it only shortly before. Once he
| was there, the emotion and energy would overwhelm resistance and
| he'd get his way.
|
| I'm not saying either of those men are to be idolized, but they
| do reveal something about the power of exposing your emotional
| side during a sale. I mention this because you said they can bog
| you down. Consider how you might turn that to your advantage.
| helph67 wrote:
| #1 Remember who will be paying your wage; your clients. #2
| Remember the Pareto Principle (80/20) rule.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
|
| You will find that #2 applies to MANY aspects of life. Good luck!
| holografix wrote:
| Source: I've been in biz development and pre-sales for almost 10
| years.
|
| I like the Sandler sales methodology as a simple and cooperative
| process.
|
| Cooperative in the sense that you're continuously moving closer
| to a signed deal _with_ the prospect's commitment and
| understanding.
|
| It helps you not to waste time with "tire kickers". By focusing
| on a "pain" to solve. If someone wants you the spend your time
| with them educating them at length about your problem and don't
| have a clear problem they're trying to fix then stop immediately
| and get them to engage with marketing.
| verdverm wrote:
| Crossing the Chasm, The Little Red Book of Sales, To Sell Is
| Human, and The Challenger Sale are great intros to sales,
| especially for those coming from a technical background.
|
| I like HubSpot for tracking / metrics. They have an always free
| tier too.
| nunez wrote:
| A big part of sales is handling rejection. There are books that
| help you detect buying signals and shape conversations in your
| direction, but dealing with rejection is a big, big part of
| sales.
|
| If you want to start selling on your own, I would have a goal to
| talk to at least _x_ people per day about your product. Ask
| questions more than you talk at them. A LOT of people will think
| that you're crazy, but some will entertain your ask and might
| even give you useful information.
|
| If you want some help, you should hire (or ask) a salesperson and
| go out on cold calls/pitches with them. Observe more than you
| speak.
|
| As far as books go, "The Little Red Book of Selling" is a classic
| along with "Spin Selling."
|
| Last thing I'll add here: if conversation with people that you
| don't know is difficult for you, that is the first thing I'd
| focus on. People need to trust you to buy from you; that trust is
| built through rapport. 2020 is a terrible year for this since the
| best way to practice conversations is through meeting people
| outside, but when things stabilize, I'd go to Meetups,
| conferences, and the like and try to meet x people per day, just
| like the goal above.
|
| Source: Me selling myself when pick-up artistry was a thing, then
| using those same skills when I built my (failed) startup.
| Eventually landed me jobs in consulting.
| DeanWormer wrote:
| I've posted this a few times, but my favorite book is just an
| ebook from Fog Creek (makers of FogBugz, Trello, Stack Overflow,
| and more)
| http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/20324/203241714.pdf
|
| It's 24 pages, so it's a quick read, and it's from the
| perspective of an engineer who has to do sales for the first
| time. A lot of the ideas are taken from Frank McNair's book "How
| You Make the Sale" https://www.amazon.com/How-You-Make-Sale-
| Salesperson/dp/B01G...
|
| The other option is to get a job as a Sales Engineer, Customer
| Engineer, Solution Architect, etc. These are all pre-sales
| engineering roles where you aren't responsible for closing sales,
| but are exposed to the process. I know you're already an
| engineering manager, but Solution Architect is a very
| entrepreneurial role. IMO, it's a tough skill and tough process
| to learn by reading, so getting a job with real life experience
| could be worthwhile.
| skmurphy wrote:
| You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a
| conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Marketing gets the phone
| to ring, sales takes the call and closes the deal.
|
| For B2B sales resembles project management: the goal is not to
| convince everyone to buy your product or service but to diagnose
| their needs and only engage with firms that will benefit.
|
| For larger deals you "sell with your ears" as much as you talk.
|
| I find Neil Rackham's "Spin Selling" very useful. Peter Cohan's
| "Great Demo" embeds a lot of discovery advice and suggests that a
| good demo is really a conversation driven by mutual curiosity
| about customer needs and software capabilities.
|
| For B2B customer development interviews (those early market
| discovery conversations) I have a short book you may find
| helpful. See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2020/01/30/40-tips-
| for-b2b-cus... (there is also a link at the bottom for a PDF
| version).
|
| Two final books I would suggest, while not exactly sales books,
| are "The Innovator's DNA" by Clayton Christensen and "The Right
| It (Pretotype It)" by Alberto Savoia. They cover a number of
| techniques for finding the right problem to solve and determining
| if your solution is a good fit for customer needs. I mention them
| because it's not uncommon for a startup to have a product problem
| that manifests as a sales problem.
| philshem wrote:
| I'm not in sales at all, but learning SPIN works great to make
| a case for something in a structured way. It's like a funnel to
| bring people into agreement with my viewpoint.
| edoceo wrote:
| Lean Customer Development by C. Alvarez.
|
| Solution Selling by M. Bozworth
| pbreit wrote:
| Sell.
| djkz wrote:
| Bob Moesta's new book has some good pointers on it, it's
| currently on sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Demand-Side-
| Sales-101-Customers-Progr...
| dgudkov wrote:
| The answer depends on what you sell. If you sell an enterprise
| product to big corps then the patio11's guide [1] would be a good
| starting point.
|
| Otherwise, selling is simple - just solve the customer's problem
| as if it was your problem.
|
| What's really hard is marketing. And you will need marketing
| because marketing generates leads and without a stream of leads
| you can't do sales.
|
| [1]
| https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...
| josefrichter wrote:
| Always.Be.Closing!
| robot wrote:
| What are the key benefits of your product to your customer? Who
| exactly is the customer? You need to work these two out first for
| sales.
|
| Most early stage startups don't have a product as beneficial to
| anyone as they think. So really need to work out the value and
| make it stand out, increase the value. They say 10x better
| because of this. Chances are an early stage product's value is
| mildly beneficial. Mildly beneficial = No sales.
|
| Work out the audience. Go to a slightly less-than-ideal customer
| = Too much effort to sell or no sales.
|
| OK So once you are at this point you are already equipped to
| sell. A nice product whose key benefits are clear, and we know
| exactly how the buyer will use it and benefit from it. I will bet
| dollars that you are not there yet.
|
| Now all you need to do is help and enable the customer (e.g.
| integrate your product, make them see the magic by configuring it
| for them, or give them samples). You must not be salesy, but act
| as if you are an assistant that works to make the product's value
| realized for the user. At this point before spending the
| resources (time) double check this is a serious buyer with
| budget.
|
| At this point as the user has seen the magic, you can ask for
| payment. Sales #1 complete.
|
| Do 50 such sales and then you can care about metrics, efficiency
| etc.
| spullara wrote:
| First thing to do is to realize that sales is a much more metrics
| driven endeavor than engineering.
|
| https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/close-more-deals-with-meddic...
| pryelluw wrote:
| Way of the Wolfe by Jordan Belfort. Bar none best pure sales book
| out there. It really did make a big improvement on my sames
| abilities. And yes, the guy is scummy, but damn his book works.
| narenkeshav wrote:
| I am exactly in your shoes. Doing marketing as I write this.
| derekng330 wrote:
| My mentor recommends The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It's Not
| About the Money It's About Being the Best You Can Be
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Real-Estate-Agent-About/d...
| lebuffon wrote:
| I moved from the cubicle as a coder with a 30 person company to
| senior executive in a Fortune 500. Here is what I have found.
|
| You are correct that after the product is ready the rest is ALL
| sales (closing deals) and marketing (getting the word out).
|
| Sales people are a unique breed of human. You can tell them to F
| off and they will show up the next day with coffee, just the way
| you like it. :)
|
| My recommendation is do the job yourself to bootstrap the
| company, get some revenue coming in but then transition to find
| an experienced person who can be your "head of sales". Then you
| can focus on product and general management. (Unless you want to
| become a sales professional). A good bonus structure for bringing
| in new deals is essential. Sales people are motivated by the hunt
| and payout for success.
|
| There are some good inexpensive cloud CRM tools so that you can
| stay on top of your sales people, who they are visiting and what
| they are saying. Weekly meeting with checkups against their sales
| commitments and their "pipeline" of sales reviewed and pruned by
| you, is also essential but then let them run.
|
| Small business is like a three legged stool made of Product,
| Sales (which is external relationship management) and Finance.
| Almost no founder has all three strengths. Make a team that
| compliments you and make lots of money.
| ankeshk wrote:
| How I raised myself from failure to success in selling - Frank
| Bettger. It's a classic.
|
| I think sales can be broken down into:
|
| 1. Foundation of being perceived as an authority
|
| 2. Lead generation
|
| 3. Persuasion and conversion
|
| 4. Re-sale
|
| Breaking it down makes it easy to become better at the sales
| process.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Be interested in solving real problems by providing real
| solutions. Make your pitch, answer questions. Then stop talking
| or else you'll talk your customer right out of the sale. Above
| all, be human and be open with others. They aren't buying your
| product or service, they're buying YOU.
|
| Book: To sell is human. Daniel Pink
| pranavpiyush wrote:
| Here's how. Hit the street and try to sell something to passers
| by. Hot day - maybe coupons for ice cream. Rainy day - maybe some
| umbrellas at a major bus stop or transit station. Keep leveling
| up from there. Find a problem and sell folks the solution.
|
| All the book recommendations in the thread are solid.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| This is honestly THE BEST, all-in-one resource I found for the
| exact same question I had -
| https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...
|
| Secondly, follow Close.com blog, there is tons of great sales
| insight, and download their Startup Sales Resource Bundle -
| https://close.io/resources/startup-sales-resource-bundle
|
| Thirdly, watch Steli Efti's keynote about startup selling
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55z5yl_naco&feature=emb_titl...
|
| You're all set ;)
| trailrunner46 wrote:
| The best thing I ever learned in sales is people must be
| comfortable to be successful. Find something relatable and that
| will often lead to comfort which will lead to a productive
| conversation/chance at a sale.
| hn3333 wrote:
| I think the book "Spin Selling" may be worth your time.
| clay_the_ripper wrote:
| A lot of good recommendations here.
|
| I think that selling, especially the selling you're talking about
| has a lot to do with mindset. I am also an entrepreneur and I
| have found for my own sales process that mindset and a bias
| toward action have produced more results and a more comfortable,
| natural selling style that fits me personally rather than trying
| to sound like someone else or use someone else's techniques.
|
| For this I highly recommend "sell or be sold" by grant cardone.
| Ignore the macho bravado, and take the mindset of sales that he
| has. Really helped me a lot in selling myself and selling my
| company rather than selling a product (although it la good for
| that too). I also recommend "if you're not first you're last" and
| "the 10x rule" also by grant cardone. Good luck!
| sskates wrote:
| As an engineer turned founder, your instinct to jump in and start
| doing it is correct. It's hard to learn from books. I never did,
| neither did the successful engineers turned sales people that I
| know. The key is learning to read each situation so you can apply
| the right approach. You also seem self aware which will help you
| learn faster.
|
| My biggest advice is get a coach/mentor/consultant who you talk
| with once per week to get feedback. This is how professional
| sales people learn in practice (eg from a sales manager). This
| will accelerate you learning by a factor of 10 versus doing it
| yourself. They will help you read each situation and push you to
| focus on the right places. Otherwise it's easy to flounder on the
| wrong ones.
|
| RE metrics- closed business is the only one that matters! Do
| whatever gets you that as fast as possible.
|
| I wasted a year when I first founded Amplitude trying to brute
| force it myself and closed a grand total of two contracts for
| $36k. After that I ended up working with a guy named Mitch
| Morando and got from $36k to $1M in ARR in less than a year. He
| cost me $5k a month and increased our market cap by $20M, it was
| well worth the investment. I'm happy to make an intro if you'd
| like.
|
| Good luck on the journey ahead and I'm excited for you!
| franl wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how did you land on the concept for your
| business?
| nooron wrote:
| It shills a little hard for Salesforce IIRC but "Predictable
| Revenue" was very helpful for me.
|
| "Never Split the Difference" is good even if it leans a little
| hard on a single rhetorical device, and it offers really easy to
| practice stuff in an ontology that makes sense to engineering
| brain for every day life.
|
| "Barbarians at the Gate" is borderline academic but unbeatable
| for understanding how all deals, no matter how big, are shaped by
| personalities and emotions. Huge huge time investment but worth
| it if you have serious entrepreneurial ambition.
| tomasreimers wrote:
| Oh boy - I didn't realize a question could be so topical. Another
| first-time founder here (engineer turned founder) that is
| currently in the middle of learning how to do the b2b sales
| process (which I'm assuming is what you're doing, if you're
| interested in b2c, I'm not sure how much of this translates).
| Needless to say that: (1) I'm most certainly NOT an expert (just
| someone figuring this out as well); (2) I'm super-duper
| interested in the responses here.
|
| First things first, I think before selling, my understanding of
| sales was largely grounded as an "art", and by far the largest
| turning point in my understanding has been that sales has a
| pretty large "science" component to it as well, by which I mean
| tried and true repeatable steps that can be applied consistently.
|
| As a founder, before sales, you need feedback. Assuming you don't
| have product-market fit (which you almost certainly don't know,
| because you don't have users), it is MOST important that you talk
| to customers to get a handle on what they need. The two books I
| found most valuable here are: - The Mom Test - Talking to Humans
|
| (The Lean Startup has a good section on this as well; if, like
| me, you haven't reread it since starting a company - I would
| highly recommend doing so, you grok so much more than when you
| first read it without any experience to ground it to.)
|
| Once you have some intuition around your market and that your
| product is actually tackling the right problem. I would read
| Founding Sales (https://www.foundingsales.com/). I was
| recommended this book by a founder-friend who told me "Literally
| stop whatever you or your team is doing and take the next two
| days to read this book" and I'm glad I did that. The book has
| given me a solid anchoring, vocabulary, and makes a compelling
| case that founder-sales are fundamentally different than regular
| sales: regular sales are what happens AFTER you have a repeatable
| process, founding sales requires much more of a product mind to
| rapidly integrate feedback and live-iterate on the product.
|
| From there, you'll realize you have two skills you really need to
| learn: marketing and sales. Broadly: marketing is about getting
| leads, sales is about closing them.
|
| __Marketing __: There are a whole bunch of books and articles I
| 've been recommended on marketing (Traction being one of top
| recommended ones). However, after having done a lot of this I'm
| not convinced that this is a good use of time as a founder. So
| much of what I've heard / seen is that your first few customers
| WILL be warm intros from within your network. So a better use of
| your time may be a LinkedIn subscription and to go through the
| network of: your VCs, any former companies you've worked at, any
| school you graduated and shamelessly ask for intros. A good
| article that popped up on HN recently was:
| https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales. (Also, for the
| theory of marketing, I personally found Crossing the Chasm a
| solid book to contextualize what phase of selling I was in and
| how it might change over time.)
|
| __Sales __: Is hard. The best advice I 've received is: remember
| it's about them. Not about you. When someone is gracious enough
| to take a phone call with you, do not immediately pitch them.
| That makes it about you. Instead, ask them about their process
| and the pain point you address. This helps both: you discern if
| it's a real painpoint, them realize that they have / the
| magnitude of that pain. Two frameworks that have helped me are: -
| BANT: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/bant - MEDDIC:
| https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/close-more-deals-with-meddic...
|
| Also, something that's been really helpful here are mentors.
| Finding other founders who have successfully navigated from seed
| -> series A usually have good advice on how they did early sales
| (also, some sales people that have been at early companies have
| been particularly helpful, especially when they first acknowledge
| founder sales is a similar but different animal than they may be
| used to).
|
| Other than that, there's only so much you can read, just go ahead
| and try it! I believe that a lot of this probably takes practice
| above all else, and you're not going to sell your product without
| talking to anyone!
|
| Best of luck! I'm happy to talk to you about your product - and
| thank you for posting a question that's been on my and my
| cofounder's minds for weeks now. And, as I said at the top, I am
| not an expert--just another person trying my best to figure it
| out. I've already found a bunch of the other responses useful :)
| scapecast wrote:
| First time founder here who came from sales at a big consulting
| firm, and then and then had to develop the whole marketing and
| sales stack for our startup.
|
| Most of the books recommended in this thread assume that you're
| working for a established firm, with product / market fit, etc.
|
| Clearly that's not the case for a start-up.
|
| Read up on what Pete Kanzanjy publishes
| https://www.foundingsales.com/ - it covers the the "founder-led
| sales" phase.
|
| How I did it:
|
| - you interview as many prospects and customers as possible
|
| - you understand what keeps them up at night, what specific pain
| points they have, the language they use to describe their
| situation
|
| - you shape your messaging to solve those specific pain points,
| using their own language
|
| - wrap your messaging into a story - the worst you can do is
| "problem / solution". people don't buy that way. people buy
| change, and you use the story to communicate that change.
|
| I wrote a totally too long Medium post on the whole topic:
|
| https://medium.com/@larskamp/the-5-cs-an-operating-framework...
|
| as somebody else pointed out on this thread - be read to deal
| with objection! You'll likely collect 9 "No's" for each "yes!"
| ghaff wrote:
| When you get to larger firms, there's a lot of support of sales
| (marketing but also engineering) that involves creating
| awareness, building the funnel (leads etc.), supporting sales
| reps in various ways, building products that customers actually
| want, etc. But none of those things actually involve directly
| asking for a PO, working on customer relationships, and so
| forth.
| franze wrote:
| In the 00 years I started my first company with a product called
| "Search Engine Optimized Distribution of Pressreleases and
| -communication over Blog and Web 2.0 Networks".
|
| Today we would call it Corportae Blogging.
|
| I created a product, a blog CMS (very poor on the M) and wanted
| to convince companies of SEO and blogging. Non of it where
| anywhere on their radar.
|
| And 0 sales experience from my side.
|
| I fail and realized I needed sales experience. So I applied and
| became a key account and a slazy company which sold crappy
| websites to estate agents.
|
| Worst job ever. Learned a lot.
|
| If you want to really learn sales, start selling. Just change
| your job for a while.
| zahrc wrote:
| You can learn about the theory of sales, I'll leave the others to
| post it. Long time sales specialist here: Sales is situational
| and hard to generalise. There is an important social aspect to
| sales. You need to know your customer and be able to read their
| reactions. All individual customers are, well, individuals. They
| react differently, have different expectations and bring
| different experience and behaviour to the table. You need to
| adjust during conversation and be prepared for the worst case
| scenarios.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-09-26 23:00 UTC)