[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to learn sales?
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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 : 572 points
Date : 2020-09-26 19:44 UTC (20 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.
| bladegash wrote:
| I think the skill sets needed are highly dependent on the type of
| sale. The approaches used for a cold sale and technical
| consultations with leads that are already qualified (demonstrated
| interest in a product/service) are very different.
|
| However, I would start by taking a look into concepts like
| building rapport, reflective listening, and active listening. You
| can even look to concepts like social engineering, e.g., priming,
| elicitation, etc. Most, if not all of these topics, are covered
| in various books on persuasion/influence.
|
| Be careful though, as you can cross the line towards manipulation
| really easily easily. That's not an inherently bad thing if the
| user wants/needs your product. However, it's an entirely
| different story if you are persuading someone to buy something
| they don't want/need. For example, a person who comes to buy a
| car would not be taken advantage of by selling them a car within
| their budget. It would be taking advantage of someone to persuade
| them to buy something that they didn't ask for, was more than
| they needed, and was more expensive than they could afford.
|
| Another example is the use of the principle of scarcity. While
| companies/people routinely pressure people into sales via
| statements like, "I can give this to you for 10% off, but your
| contract needs to be signed within 5 days due to our end of
| quarter goals" (yeah, I'm looking at you, Salesforce). The issue
| here, is that A) Chances are, they're lying and you could get the
| same deal on day 6, and/or B) pressuring a customer, in my
| opinion, is a bit too close to making a light threat intended to
| spur anxiety in a customer. Everyone has their own levels of
| moral flexibility, though.
|
| Anyways, I digress. Here are a couple of book recommendations:
| "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, "How to Win Friends and Influence
| People" by Dale Carnegie, and "Never Split the Difference" by
| Chris Voss.
| timoth3y wrote:
| I'm a developer who hated sales and was pushed into it because
| all the other members of the team were developers who hated it
| more than I did.
|
| Some great tactical recommendations have been made here, but the
| author who got me to re-think what sales was and to see it as
| honourable and helpful was Zig Ziggler.
|
| His books are old-school, but reading them will make you enjoy
| selling.
|
| I'd recommend "Secrets of Closing the Sale" to start, but all of
| his early work is good. His later books get a bit self-helpy.
| 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.
| hypnotist wrote:
| This process is very nicely defined in Predictable Revenue by
| Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler.
| schuperschmart wrote:
| Selling to someone is as simple as saying, "I can sell you this
| for this much, sound good?". Why they say "yes" is up to the
| product being sold, and the person being sold to. The better you
| understand that relationship, the more it makes sense.
|
| Try selling a 100$ bill to someone. You could say something like
| "Hey man, I can give you a really good deal on this 100$ bill,
| you interested?". "90$?" "I can give you an even better deal! 75$
| bucks and this 100$ is yours!" "Ok, sure."
|
| That's sales. The 100$ bill is be the product you're selling and
| all it takes is for the buyer to see it like that.
| 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.
| gatsby wrote:
| I just did a short thread on how we went from $0 -> $2m ARR with
| founder-led B2B sales.
|
| https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1309197276061945857
|
| There was a lot of interest, so I wrote a longer-form version
| that I'm sending out next week, and I'm happy to send to you if
| you email me.
|
| The biggest things are: learn by doing + learn via mentorship.
|
| Feel free to email any specific questions and I'll do my best to
| help answer.
| 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.
| rmason wrote:
| Most people's vision of a salesman is a smiling guy who talks a
| mile a minute, won't let you get a word edgewise and won't take
| no for an answer. There are even courses that teach you how to be
| that guy. Sorry the reference is dated but a Herb Tarlek from
| WKRP in Cincinnati type of guy.
|
| The best mental picture of a salesman is as a consultant. You're
| there to solve their problem, hopefully using your product. But
| if your product isn't their best solution send them to your
| competition. You do it by asking them questions, then stopping to
| listen to their answer which prompts more questions.
|
| If they don't have the problem, apologize for wasting their time
| and leave. I remember one of Gary Vaynerchuk's DailyVee videos
| where he flew to Chicago for a single hour long meeting. In less
| than ten minutes he realized he wasn't going to get the sale,
| said goodbye and headed back to the airport.
|
| The other thing to remember is to always be asking for the order.
| I can't tell you how many times ten minutes after getting there I
| threw away the rest of my questions and wrote up an order. It is
| entirely possible to talk yourself out of a sure sale, when I was
| starting I did it multiple times.
|
| I know a lot of introverts think they can't do sales but
| sometimes they make the best sales guys. That's because they have
| less of a problem talking all the time. Ross Perot was definitely
| more of an introvert yet he was once IBM's top salesperson in the
| country. He once made his entire yearly quota in a week!
| hexbinencoded wrote:
| You can't get real sales or business experience from a book. I
| would say start from the basics in terms of 1-on-1 sales. First,
| develop a tolerance to rejection; sell something people almost
| never want like chocolate bars or magazines door-to-door
| thousands of times. Then, learn to qualify and overcome
| objections. Without the interpersonal skills of selling, data is
| worthless and analysis is procrastination. If someone can't
| hustle, it doesn't matter how great their good or service is
| because no one will know about it.
|
| Another consideration is to find an equal cofounder who is a
| superb hustler. Hack + hustle = win.
| silexia wrote:
| I personally have sold over $20 million in online marketing and
| website development services and have a business with 180 full
| time employees. The parents advice in this post is absolutely
| correct. The only way to learn to sell is to do it.
|
| You have to sit with hundreds of prospects and learn to listen
| to what they are saying. To read their nonverbal cues. To
| respect what they are saying and customize your offerings to
| match. To leave your ego at the door.
|
| You need to prepare for tons of rejections and even more
| ghostings. You need to be ready for people to tell you every
| reason imaginable why you aren't good enough... Then you need
| to pick yourself up and explain to them clear and politely why
| you are their best option.
|
| Most importantly, never give up. Just trying over and over
| again until you are sick of hearing yourself talk is the only
| way to master sales.
| deepGem wrote:
| Having shadowed some great sales execs in my earlier career and
| having done some enterprise sales as a startup founder here are
| my pointers to get started and what perhaps matters the most.
| I'll address what matters most first:
|
| 1. The ability to take a NO without getting burnt out. Try to
| keep the emotion out of a sale as much as possible, even though
| it's your company and product. 2. The ability to have a sense of
| humour and make conversations enjoyable. No one wants to talk to
| a sales guy who is boring. 3. The ability to understand when have
| you earned the trust of your customer. Essentially your customer
| has to be comfortable talking to you and one of the best signals
| for earning positive trust is how much your customer makes casual
| funny comments or small talk. 4. Once you've earned your
| customer's trust - a sale is more or less guaranteed. Once you've
| learned how to earn trust - I mean once you've cracked that
| algorithm it's rinse and repeat.
|
| To get started: 1. Make random conversations with people of your
| customer's persona either at events, through cold calling or cold
| emailing and be very very sensitive to the pulse of people you
| talk to. Do they engage in conversation, are the conversations
| ending with one words rather than continuations. 2. Have a very
| precise pitch of what you are selling. Pitch the customer once
| they are relatively in their comfort zone. 3. You won't be able
| to sell to busy execs SVPs and above - no matter how good you
| think you are. So it's better to reach out to someone in the
| lower rungs of the ladder. 4. If you play golf or some sport
| where decision makers hangout it'll certainly help to make
| conversation. 5. Sales is typically a male dominated field
| unfortunately. So you have to be conversant in sports/politics of
| that region to make some headway.
|
| To summarise, sales is all about making conversations and earning
| someone's trust. It has very little to do with 'what' you are
| selling.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I have no idea how to develop those skill.
|
| I've been in some form of programming for 30 years. I know myself
| well enough to know I couldn't sell water in the Sahara desert. I
| just don't have it.
|
| I can recognize good sales people, though. They are much less
| "true/false" in thinking than a good programmer. I didn't realize
| it for quite a while, but it's a symbiotic relationship--
| programmers need sales, sales need programmers.
|
| Good luck.
| lasky wrote:
| Lean into and leverage your genuine curiosity about the worlds of
| the people whom you're building for, and keep coming back to it.
|
| Be willing to explore your curiosity for the problem(s) your
| product will be solving, and the natural/unnatural impact
| interacting with you and your software has on these groups of
| very real people, who cooperate under the conceptual guise of
| "Companies", who you will call "Customers".
|
| Be careful about the temptation to confuse the very empty
| sweet/salty snack-bite sized "this is how sales works" mantras
| put out by all the pundits on twitter. Most of them are 10%
| truth, 90% "look at me".
|
| Talk to real people who have spent meaningful time in their
| careers in Sales and Sales leadership in the space you're
| interested in.
| 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?
| rtx wrote:
| You can't till you over come this mental barrier. There is this
| great book called To sell is human. Try giving it a read.
| pboutros wrote:
| I never thought I'd do sales. For B2B, read: - The Challenger
| Sale - Value Based Fees - Pitch Anything
| shanebrunette wrote:
| Spin sales is probably the best book I have read on complex sales
| cycle. Terrible name though.
| 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!
| zkid18 wrote:
| Has jumped into that boat with the identical background a couple
| month ago.
|
| Here some resources I found useful to do first B2B sales and get
| a general understanding of the process.
|
| 1. Peter Levine course of sales for tech entrepreneurs
| https://a16z.com/2018/09/02/sales-startups-technical-founder...
|
| 2. Steve Blank's 4 steps to the epiphany
| https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/09...
|
| 3. Close.io SaaS Sales Book https://close.com/resources/saas-
| sales-book/
|
| 4. The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and
| Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119047072
|
| Also I advice you to fasten you educational feedback loop as mush
| as you can. The last boo can help you with metrics as well.
| 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.
| vladmk wrote:
| What I don't like about Sandler is I feel if their coaches are
| so good at sales then they really shouldn't work on Sandler.
| Essentially Sandler shouldn't be a sales company, but something
| else instead, if they're so good they should for instance be a
| car dealership.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Sales is a psychological game.
|
| Try selling a product, it doesn't have to be related to your
| current concern. If you're willing to put in the work, canvassing
| door to door might be the best way to learn. You can see your
| audience's reaction immediately. There are subtle details you'll
| miss when selling in other mediums. Nothing will help you
| understand consumers better than talking to them in person.
|
| After going door to door, writing sales copy and understanding
| your funnel will be much simpler. From there you can use your
| technical mind to optimize the process with multivariate testing
| etc.
| bigbossman wrote:
| Shifting from engineering to sales requires a shift in mindset,
| from scarcity to abundance. Engineering = scarcity: time-bounded
| sprints, finite teams, large backlogs of features and tickets,
| strict prioritization. Sales requires you to think in terms of
| abundance. There are always more leads, more channels, more
| tactics.
|
| Also, it's debatable whether being talkative helps sales.
| Listening is far more critical.
| t0mmyb0y wrote:
| Learn people.
| 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.
| mindhash wrote:
| Came to say exactly this. As a first time entrepreneur its
| important to learn how to spread ideas. Sales comes after.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Great summary on sales and marketing but neither is a monolith.
|
| Sales can best be distinguished by indirect sales and direct
| sales.
|
| Direct sales is where you go out and find clients.
|
| Indirect sales is where you go out and find partners to bring
| you clients.
|
| You don't buy Coca Cola from Coca Cola. You rarely by HP from
| HP.
|
| Companies tend to be more successful when they find ways to
| grow using "channels".
|
| This is a good summary of finding your path toward channel
| sales:
|
| https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/297479
|
| This is a good kit to start a channel sales program:
|
| https://chanimaluniversity.com/product/reseller-program-kit-...
| blueblisters wrote:
| Has anyone had success doing B2B SaaS sales using cloud
| marketplaces like AWS marketplace, GCP marketplace, Azure,
| etc.? I wonder if that qualifies as "channel sales".
| pilooch wrote:
| I did a bit with instances of an Open Source deep learning
| server of mine, for three years+ now. Made up to
| 1.5k/month, lower now but it's on my plate to revive it.
| It's provided side money to our service/ software business.
|
| Keep in mind there's a 30% cut from AWS, plus if you're in
| the EU, you need a tier like payoneer to channel your
| revenues back into the EU.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| I think any third party taking a margin off your sale to
| help facilitate the transaction constitutes a channel.
| nikitaga wrote:
| Stripe isn't a channel though. The third party in
| question needs to actually do some work to bring you
| traffic / leads, not just do the mechanics of processing
| the transaction.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a
| conversation, marketing is a broadcast.
|
| Close, but not quite.
|
| Marketing is the brand, the image, points of differentiation,
| etc. It's the message.
|
| Advertising is the broadcast. It's how the message is
| communicated. It's the medium.
|
| Marketing + advertising = prospects and leads.
|
| Sales is the last mile. It takes the results of marketing +
| advertising (i.e., leads and prospects) and guides those to
| closing.
|
| Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not
| talking.
|
| Sales is
| gk1 wrote:
| That definition is very--let's say--unique. In my 7+ years of
| marketing I have never met anyone or read anything that put
| advertising outside of marketing. It's even in the academic
| "4P" definition of marketing ("Promotion").
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Marketing is the message.
|
| Advertising is how that's communicated.
|
| Using a billboard or a TV advert is not marketing.
|
| Of course, marketing needs to be advertized. Else you'd
| just be sitting around a confernce table all day. Sooner of
| later the (marketing) message will need to be...advertised.
|
| And yes, the medium can be the message. But a magazine
| advertisement is not a brand style guide. Tradeshow swag is
| not a tag line.
|
| It not a question of placement - inside or out - it's
| simple proven definitions.
| gk1 wrote:
| You're welcome to dream up your own definitions, but then
| don't patronize others:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Note the opening five words:
|
| "Advertising is a marketing communication..."
|
| Your tone is unnecessary and off-target. The above quote
| from line one is exactly what I said.
|
| You don't just wake up, roll out of bed, and advertise.
| Well, you can but waste a ton of money. In any case, that
| message needs to be crafted. That's marketing.
| Advertising is how you disseminate that "plan."
|
| Logo - marketing, not advertising.
|
| Style guide - marketing, not advertising.
|
| Positioning of the brand - marketing, not advertising.
|
| And so on.
|
| Marketing is the plan. How you wish take and place your
| brand / product to market. Advertising is the
| communication of that to thd market. Advertising is what
| happens when the meeting ends and its time to engage the
| market.
|
| Marketing = what we have to say and who we wish to say it
| to.
|
| Advertising = Got it. Let's see what tools we have to
| best make that happen.
|
| No dreams. That is how it happens.
| skmurphy wrote:
| A conversation involves both listening and talking. Good
| sales people know that they have to "diagnose before they can
| prescribe" which means they must elicit symptoms and confirm
| need and fit with product capabilities. Really good sales
| people recommend other products when theirs is not a good
| fit. As the deal size goes up you do much more listening than
| talking.
|
| Many firms that don't advertise--or do very little
| advertising--and are still able to generate leads, that's why
| it's normally included in marketing as one of many channels.
|
| Effective marketing people also talk and listen to customers.
| windexh8er wrote:
| > Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not
| talking.
|
| I've been in pre-sales for about 8 years now. From the vendor
| and reseller side. Mostly on the technical side (SE) but I
| also know the process side of the account executive (AE) very
| well at this point.
|
| Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if
| you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and
| showcase to the customer how what you're representing will
| benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to
| displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of
| gains for said customer. If a customer is always telling me
| what they need from me then I'm not providing any value. And,
| honestly, it's very rare to find a customer who's ahead of a
| good sales team. We have full access to PMs, internal
| business units and access to far more insight to our bits and
| pieces than any reseller or customer. Don't get me wrong, I'm
| not saying customers can't be experts. But I'm here to know
| and bring things to the plate that they just can't.
|
| Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than
| listening to them outright. I've found paths for the customer
| that has helped them avoid making mistakes, saved them money
| or improved their operations through paths they hadn't
| considered or didn't know existed. Good sales teams work hard
| across the board through strong technical positioning as well
| as strategic deal creations.
|
| There are sales teams that rinse and repeat for every
| interaction and then there are sales teams that are looking
| to help their customers, trying to find where the wins are
| for the prospect. I've walked away from deals by telling a
| customer we weren't a fit for them. Sales gets a bad rap, but
| there are some of us out there that walk into every
| conversation not with the only intent of closing quota, but
| trying to make a positive impact.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything
| if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and
| showcase to the customer how what you're representing will
| benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to
| displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad
| of gains for said customer. IYes, you need to listen. But
| you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a
| destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer
| how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than
| the products you're trying to displace or something new
| that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said
| customer.
|
| But you don't know where the customer is trying to go...you
| don't know their pain...you don't know their priorities...
|
| Without listening.
| windexh8er wrote:
| I realize this. Which is exactly why I said that "Yes,
| you need to listen". The parent comment responded to
| implied that was the only way.
|
| If you don't listen you can't do what I stated above. And
| if you can't do what I stated above then you're not going
| to be able to help the customer and, ultimately, not be
| all that successful in sales.
|
| Case in point... I had a customer years ago about to
| spend roughly a million dollars on a remote site upgrade
| architecture we had been jointly working on for about 6
| months. In the background I was tracking a new product
| that would make their initiative cheaper and had both
| better ROI and performance specs due to refreshed
| hardware.
|
| I made sure to present this, get all the information in
| front of the customer, engage in discussions using our PM
| and derive a strategic deal that would save them money
| over the three year term for buying a new product early.
|
| They didn't do it. My counterpart appreciated the option
| even though it would have slipped their project by 2
| months. Him and I are still friends even though I've
| moved on since then, but the moral of the story is he
| still brings that up because, in hindsight, he said he
| should have trusted our proposal. They spent more, got
| less and had to upgrade earlier due to unforeseen
| circumstances. Part of it was bad luck, the other part
| was a cognizant decision he made against the sales team
| better judgement.
|
| I listened. I knew the customer very well, in fact. But I
| had knowledge and experience with the products that
| outstripped his for navigating this situation. That's how
| a good sales team operates.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I wasn't disagreeing. Simply trying to summarize.
| tootie wrote:
| Sales is also graded by level of "touch". For example, selling
| IT services contracts is very high touch. Signing a deal could
| involve weeks of written correspondence (RFI, RFP), in-person
| pitching, contract negotiation, etc. Low touch could be fully
| automated with simple, non-negotiable pricing. There are lots
| of levels in between.
| bluetwo wrote:
| Weeks. I wish.
|
| :-)
| meddlepal wrote:
| My first job ever I befriended one of the senior sales guys
| at an after work drinking event. We built software that
| integrated into and with a range of embedded devices of
| which many were medical. He was one of the guys that worked
| closely with our EMEA customers who were notoriously slow
| to sign.
|
| Three years later he drove in to the office lot with a
| brand new Porsche 911 which was a portion of his commission
| for closing the deal after something insane like 33 months.
|
| He was happy to have that deal done.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I'm two years into brokering a deal between a client and
| two blue-chip behemoths. It has been endless cycles of
| documentation, specification, certification, auditing,
| horse-trading, rescoping, consulting, wargaming,
| ratifying, and many of the faces have changed over the
| last two years.
|
| It'll be a big deal for all of them, but just getting
| everything in place for them to all agree and sign is
| just insane - my longest sales process before this was
| maybe 4 months, 400 hours - this has easily eaten tens of
| thousands of man hours so far.
|
| One thing I've observed is that the deal almost becomes
| secondary - by this point, there's an entire self-
| sustaining bureaucracy around the deal, many of the
| deliverables the deal specified are already in place and
| money has changed hands, hires have been made, everything
| has essentially happened as though the deal has gone
| ahead - yet I'm spending this afternoon rejigging
| information security roles and responsibilities to make
| the interfaces more on parity with the security team of
| one of the blue chips, because until the contract is
| signed, the deal isn't done, and all parties are just
| merrily swimming out into deeper waters together, growing
| technical and operational dependencies around each other
| with no legal agreement. At this point, the businesses
| are just getting on with stuff as though the deal is
| done, the counsels are screaming because nobody is
| interested in moving the boring paperwork forwards, and
| I'm charging by the hour. Buys a lot of popcorn.
|
| Sales is weird.
|
| Edit: just realised we might be talking about the same
| healthcare customers.
| 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.
| vladmk wrote:
| You should definitely hit me up. Google me my name is Vlad
| Mkrtumyan, we're learning the opposite skill sets. currently I'm
| on my 3rd bootstrapped startup and I wanna learn programming to
| make my CTOs life easier.
|
| I've sold everything from $500 a month CRMs (our 2nd venture) to
| 120k website projects, marketing campaigns, consulting, etc.
|
| I've generated over 500k of revenue in my life, not a top 1%
| salesperson, but decent and on track. Next I'm trying to learn
| how to manage a sales team.
|
| If you wanna get traction read: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. If
| you wanna learn sales the easiest thing I would say to do is just
| start. Practice, go find something you believe in and do it. Get
| good at learning common problems on what you're selling and
| showing people the Solutions as well as how to listen to them.
|
| Make no mistake it's definitely a skill like coding that anyone
| can learn if they tried it just takes a lot of patient and
| effort, but once you get past being emotional and caring so much
| on every detail it can be fun.
|
| In terms of what to track it all depends on what you're selling
| -but the basics would be: 1. Calls made 2. Where clients are in
| the pipeline 3. Revenue generated this month.
|
| In terms of books you can google those, I think you should simply
| pick 5 and dive in, those 5 will help you find the next 5.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| I haven't done sales, but look up Brian G. Burns on LinkedIn.
| Dude does a lot of short videos on sales (many of them generally
| applicable, though) with really good insights. How to communicate
| better, move towards action, etc.
| kevindeasis wrote:
| Pretty much a good place to get started so you have something
| actionable is:
|
| 1. find out who your users are, and go talk to them
|
| 2. your marketing usually will fuel your sales
|
| 3. you'll do a lot iteration with 1&2
|
| 4. figure out how long your sale cycle will be
|
| 5. Usually sales is a full time job, so delegating it to someone
| might be useful
|
| Advice in this thread is pretty good. im gonna need to write
| about it later here to remember:
| https://www.whatwhatgoose.com/product-management
| edoceo wrote:
| Lean Customer Development by C. Alvarez.
|
| Solution Selling by M. Bozworth
| pbreit wrote:
| Sell.
| sjg007 wrote:
| In sales you listen about your customer and solve their problems.
| It may or may not be with your product. But hopefully your
| product solves their needs.
| uxenthusiast wrote:
| There are a few movies that inspired me when I started learning
| sales: Glengary glen ross is one of them. The boiler room. Wolf
| of wall street. Not sales lessons per say but that'll get you
| into a state of mind and motivate you devour sales books.
| cynusx wrote:
| While there are very technical elements to sales (prospecting,
| funnel management, pipeline review, sales compensation design)
| that can be measured and tracked, they are relevant for managing
| salespeople but not for the sale itself.
|
| A sale happening or not depends almost exclusively on whether you
| can get your counterparty to trust and like you.
|
| The first thing you should focus on is improving your emotional
| intelligence as this is pretty much the only skill that matters
| for a successful sale.
|
| Although tons of people believe that you are either born with it
| or not, I think that EI is highly trainable (unlike IQ) and
| progress in learning it is scientifically measurable. (except if
| mental conditions are present like autism or psychopathy)
|
| You probably want to start with doing the EQ-i test to find out
| where your gaps are. Specifically the metric on personal
| relationships is highly relevant to improve as soon as possible.
|
| Then you can read great negotiation books like never split the
| difference and books on sales like the challenger sale.
|
| The theory is not really useful until you've mastered the basic
| EQ to understand how to execute them.
| patricklovesoj wrote:
| You don't need to be good at selling.
|
| If you are first starting out then what you really need to do is
| find/build a product that your customers want. You can't sell a
| product that no one wants. If you are a master seller and if you
| somehow manage to sell something no one wants then it won't
| scale.
|
| Try to have calls with potential customers who are interested in
| your product. If your product is solving a problem then it should
| be easy to have calls and the customer will ask to buy it. If
| not, try to understand what they need and iterate.
|
| Maybe this is just your way of procrastinating. I procrastinate
| from building a company because I tell myself I'm not a software
| engineer, but I could find a way to do it if I really really
| wanted to.
|
| If you still feel like you want advice on selling, happy to offer
| it since I've been doing for my entire career at startups.
| 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...
| jot wrote:
| This book is great.
|
| Bob's background is in engineering and it feels far more
| accessible to me than other sales books as a result. I've been
| trying to get my head around this stuff for over a decade. The
| ideas in this book have made me feel comfortable about selling
| for the first time.
| [deleted]
| georgeolaru wrote:
| I just finished this book and I think it's the most down-to-
| earth approach towards selling. It even suggests an alternative
| title for "salespeople" that wants to help others make
| _progress_ , which would be "concierge."
|
| Looking forward to digging deeper into the Jobs-To-Be-Done
| theory with Clayton Christensen's book on "Competing Against
| Luck"
| 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...
| tims33 wrote:
| To start, you should purge everything you think "sales" is. Good
| sales teams are process and data oriented, talk to customers
| about solving real problems, and have great long-term
| relationships with customers. I think your comments about being
| talkative and being emotional are really just about the phases of
| sales you'd worth most about which are the introductory meetings
| and final pricing stages. You can hire plenty of people that can
| coach you through that.
|
| Whatever culture you are building for you company should be
| adaptable to your sales org as well, so I'd say you start there.
| Work the opportunities yourself, start tracking them in a
| spreadsheet, do write-ups for the company about the wins and
| loses, and use your founder hustle to get started. It won't be as
| daunting as you think.
| mguerville wrote:
| It's hard to shift your mindset to emotions but by and large
| that's what sells, not features. So as others have said it's all
| about listening and then finding the pain they have at an
| emotional level and seeing of your product can solve it. A
| productivity tool doesn't sell on ROI calculated by hours saved,
| but on "freedom" and "self actualisation by doing more meaningful
| work and less tedious work"
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > A productivity tool doesn't sell on ROI calculated by hours
| saved
|
| But isn't that exactly how mega-successful (but awful) products
| like Blackboard and WebEx get sold? Or any product where the
| purchaser is not the user but actually from the procurement
| department?
| mguerville wrote:
| Yes the whole procurement process is designed to recenter the
| equation on the economic benefit. That's why you need a
| champion on the side of the company you're selling to, who
| will help you overcome the hurdle because they are really
| invested in your product
| gumby wrote:
| Many years ago I took the Dale Carnegie Sales Course. It and the
| Xerox course were the ones everyone talked about back then (90s).
| It was practical and I used the material each week (I was also a
| company founder, but by the time I did that we were doing a
| couple of million a month).
|
| The students included a couple of guys with a T-shirt stand on
| the beach, a woman who sold ADT security systems and a couple of
| people, who sold semiconductor manufacturing equipment. I didn't
| just learn a good model and get practice with it but the fact
| that much of what we learned applied to all the sales cycles
| (from 3 minutes to 3 years) was itself quite enlightening. I
| still use today what I learned back then.
|
| Also, later: I "carried a bag" meaning I had a mortgage in Palo
| Alto, a wife whose visa didn't allow her to work, and lived on
| commission. Really taught me to sell!
|
| Like riding a bike, you can get tips from books and video but you
| just have to get out there and sell.
|
| (I have never become comfortable with cold calling, though I can
| do it)
| nuker wrote:
| > How do I get started?
|
| Try to convince some kid to give you a dollar for saving other
| kids from whatever. From zombies?
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Ask HN: How to learn sales?
|
| Try, a lot. Saying thin without a slightest note of sarcasm
| alecco wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6490385-the-5-great-rule...
|
| "Selling, to be a great art, must involve a genuine interest in
| the other person's needs. Otherwise it is only a subtle,
| civilized way of pointing a gun and forcing one into a temporary
| surrender." -- Percy H. Whiting
| josefrichter wrote:
| Always.Be.Closing!
| josefrichter wrote:
| Why the downvotes for an innocent joke?
| 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.
| gigantecmedia wrote:
| Founding Sales is a great choice! covers almost everything that
| you need in your entrepreneurial journey.
|
| Referral from our investor--pete is a great entrepreneur, very
| funny also
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Three simple rules to get you started:
|
| - Sales is a numbers game that requires touching 'x' per day to
| achieve 'y' results, ideally by phone and not email. For a busy
| founder plan on 20 outbound calls per day. Email, marketing,
| automation, in-person... all great, but nothing beats a quick
| phone conversation. There are workarounds for that phone call
| outside the scope of this brief reply.
|
| - The first few sentences of your sales pitch make or break.
| Research your clients pre-engagement to understand how your
| product can really help -- in their vernacular. The
| qualification/Q&A usually suggested is fine, but it assumes your
| prospects have the time and inclination to follow your sales
| workflow.
|
| - Prospects who tell you they are interested AND who do what they
| say they will do are worth continued effort. Break contact (move
| to nurture) prospects who say one thing and do another & expend
| more time on outbound calls.
|
| The only metric that matters, aside from # of outbound calls per
| day, is actual sales. I do look at proposals, engagement, website
| stats, etc., but for reasons outside the scope of this reply I've
| come to learn after 20 years that near real-time factors outside
| your control drive many buying decisions in ways too difficult to
| reliably measure.
| brainless wrote:
| I am a software engineer who is learning sales. The one, perhaps
| most important thing I can share is this:
|
| Practice Sales. Do not just read about it.
|
| It is just like software engineering, if you only read and do not
| type, you will not be able to connect the dots. The brain has a
| way to learn and it is through doing. Remember, there are way
| more people you can sell to (assuming even a few are willing to
| buy) than you think. Even if the first 500 people have super low
| conversation rates, do not worry. There are perhaps 50K more
| people for a niche idea.
|
| It does not matter what strategies you apply - but be persistent,
| and measure the results. Keep making small experiments and see
| for yourself. Put them in a Spreadsheet if you have to.
| Everything from timing of a message or email to the description
| of the person (on Twitter) you are reaching out to matters. And
| do not feel SHY or awkward to sell. Engineers really suffer from
| this. Do not push, be when you know your solution can really
| help, then ask them to try it out.
|
| Cheers!
| narenkeshav wrote:
| I am exactly in your shoes. Doing marketing as I write this.
| wooders wrote:
| Highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Triangle-Selling-Sales-
| Fundamentals-G... - as an engineer and first-time founder(Glisten
| AI - YC W20) it gave me a great framework to approach sales calls
| with.
| Philzz wrote:
| Check out the blog Sales Tips for Startups,
| www.salestipsforstartups.com
| 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...
| aj7 wrote:
| Take a professional 4-5 day sales course offered in a conference
| room at a local hotel. Xerox used to have a terrific one; perhaps
| it still exists. Here is a summary. 1. The key to selling is
| listening. Your goal is to listen for buyer requirements and then
| to support them actively with specific products features that
| meet THEIR needs. (Certain features of your product that your
| company is proud of, but your prospect is not interested in
| should never be dwelt upon. Don't sell features not needed; it
| shows you're not listening.) 2. Few products are sold if the
| customer has nagging objections. It is the job of the salesman to
| elucidate those objections, which may be guarded or hidden, and
| to handle them, showing they are either actually unimportant in
| real operation, or that the product handles the objections in
| operation. 3. Elucidation of objections is done by open probes:
| questions that do not have a yes or know answer. 4. Every
| salesperson must at some point explicitly ASK FOR THE ORDER. Not
| ASKING FOR THE ORDER is bullshitting with the customer, not
| selling. 5. There are various ways to ask for the order in a non
| aggressive, non-confrontational manner. This is called a TRIAL
| CLOSE. Natural or experienced salespeople are fluid and good at
| this; rookies need training hence the sales course. 6. At some
| point, the prospect may give a buying signal. Behavior is very
| important at this point. The customer must be subtly or not so
| subtly be supported in his putative decision. Some concrete
| auxiliary act, such as writing up the order, discussing
| installation or delivery terms, opening a customer account, even
| initiating a credit verification, is often done to CLOSE the
| sale. 7. A good salesperson NEVER SELLS A PRODUCT TWICE. Once the
| buyer indicates he will order, all product discussion must be
| kept to an absolute minimum, and engaged only if new objections,
| perhaps from others in the organization, surface. Sales are lost
| when a salesperson incorrectly gushes on about his product, only
| to himself open up new questions and objections inadvertently. It
| use to be that salespeople did a lot of qualification: finding
| out precisely who has the authority to buy. This is still very
| important. But you may have to sell one or a number of technical
| people, with the decision made by a committee. Every situation is
| different. 7. Every race, gender, creed, body mass index,
| personality, and social style can be successful in sales. Sales
| is a professional activity, not a personality. You can forget all
| the snickering and stereotypes about "salesmen" right now. 8.
| Finally there is the urban legend of the highly successful,
| wealthy salesman, who, in each call would initially be so nervous
| he would drive around the block 3 times before having the
| temerity to park and enter the reception area. For 25 years. Keep
| that in mind and happy selling.
| gk1 wrote:
| Pro-tip: HN does not recognize ordered lists. You need two line
| breaks between list items, just as with regular paragraphs.
| 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.
| aryamaan wrote:
| What does finance do? Related to accounting and keeping books?
| lebuffon wrote:
| Those are the parts of it. In a perfect world finance is a
| strategic partner. Tracks and manages the use of money. Sets
| projections for future revenues. Manages tax minimization.
| Optimize the cost of loans. Negotiate with bankers. Creates
| business cases for sales on big projects.
| TheColorYellow wrote:
| How'd you climb the ladder to exec?
|
| I'm noticing a situation where stepping away from hard
| technical skills (i.e. Coding) creates a more ambiguous
| professional career path. It's completely thrown off what would
| be my previous reference points for career progression.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Zig Ziglar audio books.
| Philzz wrote:
| Check out the blog, Sales Tips for Startups,
| www.salestipsforstartups.com
| onetimeffound wrote:
| Learned sales by doing and w/ help of a friend as a first time
| founder. B2B. Happy to pass it forward to B2B first time
| founders. Book a 20 min mtg w/ me if you like.
| https://meetings.hubspot.com/boris40.
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| Steli, the founder of Close.io has some really good suggestions
| on how to get better at Sales in this podcast episode.
| (https://smashnotes.com/p/the-startup-chat-with-steli-and-hit...)
| It's definitely not a complete guide, but a good place to start,
| especially for a startup founder.
| 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.
| john4532452 wrote:
| The original mail thread says "winmove" is available but not
| enabled by default https://lwn.net/ml/emacs-
| devel/20200906133719.cu6yaldvenxubc...
|
| How to enable "winmove" ?
| innomatics wrote:
| The biggest difference between sales and engineering is the
| concept of closing.
|
| Engineering or research work is never completed. We are always
| improving and perfecting the machine.
|
| Closing needs to be thought of binary. This doesn't necessarily
| mean via contract. Good sales people will close the sale well
| before anything need to be signed. An expert sales person
| understands the customer's psychology and leaves them thinking of
| no other option than to purchase from you.
|
| In technical sales it pays to be knowledgeable and understand the
| customer's objectives. But even smart buyers and not immune to
| subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, closing techniques. If you
| don't employ aggressive closing strategies at the right
| opportunities, your competition will beat you to it.
|
| I worked in tech sales for couple of years and did just OK. My
| style was a little too far on the consultative side and I
| realised I lacked the killer instinct to close hard often enough.
| Possibly not all industries are as competitive as the one I was
| in (PCR equipment/reagents). But I decided my personality was
| just better suited to tinkering so I became a coder instead.
| vladmk wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean by "good sales people will
| close before anything is signed" any good sales person will
| tell you that before you have money in the bank the client can
| still not pay they can even sign something and back out.
| unoti wrote:
| A great resource to get you thinking along the right lines: the
| book _Spin Selling_ [1]. This book is about doing selling
| involving long sales cycles, where it could take you a good
| amount of time to close the deal. This is often the case with
| enterprise software.
|
| An example of a great concept from this book that has shaped the
| way I approach things: You've heard of the concept of __closing
| __, where you ask the customer to buy the product. Spin selling
| extends that concept in the realm of a longer sales cycle that
| involves many steps such as demos, consulting sessions and so on.
| Every interaction you have with the customer has some desired
| outcome that eventually leads to the final sale. For example,
| your initial contacts with the prospect, the goal of those
| initial interactions is to get the demo scheduled. Or perhaps it
| 's to introduce you to someone closer to the decision maker. In
| each interaction, you keep a goal in mind and close towards that
| goal.
|
| Three other books that were amazing and formative for me are
| below. These aren't about sales in particular but about making
| your own business in general, which includes sales in various
| degrees: 2. Good to Great 3. Crossing the Chasm 4. The E Myth
|
| Also an honorable mention goes to this book, which is more about
| marketing than sales: _Winning Through Intimidation_. The book
| isn 't actually about intimidating people, but it's about
| branding, image, and approach. Despite the evil sounding title,
| it's an amazing resource.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Spin-Selling-Neil-
| Rackham/dp/05660768... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-
| Some-Companies-Others/dp/0... [3]
| https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstr...
| [4] https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-
| About... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Winning-through-Intimidation-
| Victor-B...
| m0zg wrote:
| TBH, having witnessed the work of some great salesmen as a VPE of
| a successful startup, I think with training you could do a
| _passable_ job of it, but you're unlikely to be amazing at it. So
| do what you can in the interim, but spend an unreasonable amount
| of effort trying to find that magical sales guy/gal who can sell
| ice to people inhabiting the polar stations. Such salespeople
| exist, and they're worth their weight in rhodium.
|
| There are two schools of thought, one says "work on your
| weaknesses", another says "play to your strengths". As I get
| older and gain more experience, I'm firmly in the second camp.
| Learn enough sales to have a good bullshit detector, though.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Everyone needs to sell at some point though, even if to just
| get though the interview process to land a dev job.
| 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.
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Someone posted a link on Hacker News with an interesting
| collection of resources collected around this subject:
| https://github.com/goabstract/Marketing-for-Engineers#-twitt...
|
| I'm still working through it, tbh. It's helped a bit, but YMMV,
| as the saying goes.
|
| Not because of the info, as it's as prescritive as such a guide
| could possibly be.
|
| It's just because of the nature of selling stuff.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Selling is 60% about knowing all the details of a product and 40%
| about how it's going to address the customer's needs. And not
| taking it personal when you don't make a sale, of course.
|
| There's very little wiggle room in convincing someone who doesn't
| need a product that they actually do need it, unless the product
| is exceptionally good and solves at least _some_ of the customer
| 's problems.
|
| I've found over the years that courses and gurus that promise you
| the ability to sell anything to anyone are mostly bullshit. Find
| people who know a lot about the product within an industry and
| learn from them. Pay them for their time if necessary.
| 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.
| effnorwood wrote:
| Sell something
| known wrote:
| How Donald Kendall, legendary salesman as PepsiCo's boss, sparked
| the cola wars https://archive.vn/Sa8rQ
| lsllc wrote:
| Sales isn't hard. You just go do it, then you iterate and adapt.
| With an engineering background, you'll be a better sales person
| in a week than your average sales person probably in their
| career.
|
| Why? Because you will observe what works and what doesn't; you'll
| listen to what the customer says and understand what they're
| looking for; you know your product and will have great answers.
| You'll quickly hone your message and most importantly, you'll
| constantly adapt what you say to the next customer learning from
| the last. Basically, your sales pitch is going to improve
| exponentially.
|
| Believe me, I've experienced this. As an engineer with no sales
| training, I agreed to help a friend sell his product at a week-
| long major "show". Turns out sales is just another system, a
| system with rules, which makes it an engineering problem to be
| solved.
|
| Good luck!
| apapli wrote:
| Read the "challenger sale" book. I'm 20 years in tech sales and
| it's easily the best way to get started.
|
| Also - sales is 1:1 conversations. Marketing is 1:many. That's
| the easiest way to figure out the difference between the two.
| scruffyherder wrote:
| Jordan Belford. Don't waste your time on non customers, and don't
| lie. Help your customers, even if it means referring them to a
| competitor.
|
| Cultivate a following, and they will follow.
|
| And don't lie, when they ask you to sell you a pen, ask if you
| are in the market for a pen, and what company you represent and
| what pens you have to offer. Never lie about the pen being in
| space, everyone knows scummy sales people lie.
| 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!
| dgelks wrote:
| Similar background to yourself as an engineer, not in sales but
| as a co-founder often find the sales process a big part of my
| job.
|
| We've implemented Strategic Selling see
| https://www.amazon.com.au/New-Strategic-Selling-Successful-C...
| which provides a great structure for us and a unified language
| inside our organisation.
|
| Maybe not as useful if you're just trying to get started but does
| provide a structure to understand the sales process and why a
| sale closes or doesn't close.
| biggestdummy wrote:
| Hire someone. Or, if you don't have money, bring on a co-founder.
|
| All the books and suggestions could make you better. But if
| you've never sold, there's probably a 10% chance that you'll
| _ever_ be good at it. And if you had an interest, you probably
| would have done some SA/SE work earlier in your career - given
| that you haven't, your chances are probably lower.
|
| Finding a good salesperson is also no easy task. Best advice is
| to recruit someone who has sold you something. You have the
| relationship already, and you know that they are able to build
| trust and win business.
| 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!
| codegeek wrote:
| "guy named Mitch Morando and got from $36k to $1M in ARR in
| less than a year"
|
| I am very curious as a bootstrapped founder myself. Would you
| be willing to tell us more on some of the high level things
| Mitch Morando helped with ? What bottlenecks did he solve that
| you didn't/couldn't know ?
| franl wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how did you land on the concept for your
| business?
| sskates wrote:
| The short version is we saw a big gap in the product
| analytics market when we were building a consumer app. We
| were going to work on building a company no matter what and
| it was the best opportunity we found. B2B was much easier
| than consumer for us. All you have to do is build what your
| customers ask and then they'll pay you money!
|
| I just did a podcast on it if you're curious: https://theboos
| tvcpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ep98-the-e...
| franl wrote:
| Awesome, will check out the podcast, thanks! Congrats on
| the success btw! Just picked up Mitch's book on Amazon, as
| I'm always keen to add to the sales toolbox.
| moneywoes wrote:
| What did you learn from Mitch that you could not do yourself?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Isn't sales mostly learning how to wine and dine people?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| That's waitering.
| someelephant wrote:
| Exercise regularly. Gym is not necessary but hour long walks
| daily will raise Testosterone levels considerably, add to overall
| calmness and dull your emotions.
| yyyuutt wrote:
| Whenever I hear someone saying the market is huge I think of this
| classic Thiel talk. Sounds like its definitely something you
| should watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k
| ccvannorman wrote:
| surprised it isn't mentioned:
|
| Partnerships!!
|
| Key strategic partners for distribution, sales, brand,
| advertising. They are the highest ROI on your time by a long
| shot.
|
| Big partners will negotiate for a Large cut. This is a cost you
| can absorb early on because the scale effects of partners set you
| up for success in 6, 12 months.
|
| Email me if you'd like to know more :-] charlie@vannorman.ai
| bassrattle wrote:
| I'm a Director of Sales and the first sales blog I recommend to
| everyone is gong.io ... they ran thousand and thousands of sales
| calls through AI and have quite a lot of data-backed observations
| that will help you win
| tootie wrote:
| I can teach everything you need to know about sales for just
| $399.99.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Lesson one: end that price in a .95
| TheSmiddy wrote:
| Or respect your customers and make it a round $400
| andi999 wrote:
| What pricetag do we talk here? Its also different ppl having the
| power to order. Generalising broadly, here it is:
|
| - up to 1000$, engineer can directly orde - up to 10k manager
| needs to get involved - 100k manager manager needs to get
| involved - above 100k CEO, and if government than official
| request for tender needs to be issued
|
| Depending on what tier you are different approaches and different
| time frames need to be considered.
|
| For me everything above 100k needs around 2 years from the moment
| the customer (who will later use it) says: 'this is great, we
| need that' to the purchase order beeing on the table.
| 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.
| peignoir wrote:
| Hi there, my 15 years of experience was : developer / Sysadmin /
| tech consulting / management consulting / sales for a consulting
| firm / entrepreneur (many startups and non profits)
|
| Sales for a startups depends of course of the product b2b vs b2c
| is one dimension and venture backed or bootstrap is another.
|
| For b2c I would recommend lean startup (the product should
| ideally sell itself / marketing is key)
|
| For b2b you need a list of contact and you need to reach out it's
| a volume game to conversion like in b2c the difference is "you
| are the add" you should equally test different message and tweak
| them and the product for conversion (assuming the product is
| good)
|
| Venture capitalists / angels also need a sales pitch. The pitch
| is closer to a story telling each of them is expecting something
| different and the beat way to get in is via warm intro (works
| also for b2b)
|
| Nothing mind blowing here as on how to train for it I would
| suggest to join a software company and do sales (b2b or b2c) it's
| easier to start with a known sales pitch and a known product /
| market than having to work on figuring it out on the way.
|
| I will end with a funny comment yet important I think it was from
| union square venture who said to be careful to invest in a
| startup with a great sales person as it might send a false
| positive on growth (startups especially b2c should grow via
| marketing not direct sales as for b2b if the founder is an
| amazing sales person it might be hard to scale that)
|
| Hope that helps
| 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!"
| 100-xyz wrote:
| Heads up. The foundingsales website took my username and
| password but did not give me access to the material. Instead
| its putting me through a "Buy the Book" or "Register to Read"
| cycle.
| longnguyen wrote:
| I had to allow third-party cookies for those 2 sites
| kazanjy wrote:
| That's odd. There's a couple dozen people on the site right
| now.
|
| What browser are you using? Sounds like maybe a Memberspace
| issue with a config you have?
|
| Check to see which of these chapters you can access:
| https://www.foundingsales.com/table-of-contents
| kazanjy wrote:
| I just tested this with a new account and it's working fine
| from mobile Chrome. It returns you to the home page on
| registration so perhaps access one of the chapters? Like
| this one to start: https://www.foundingsales.com/1-mindset-
| changes
| cantcopy wrote:
| I have the same isssue. I think it may be a Safari issue.
| Works fine for me on chrome not Safari.
| kazanjy wrote:
| That's super annoying. Are you able to access this
| hyperlink while logged in in safari?
| https://www.foundingsales.com/10-early-sales-management
|
| It might also be that the redirect after registration
| goes back to the home page, and the chapter buttons are
| below the fold if one doesn't scroll down. Probably would
| be better to redirect to table of contents after
| registration. I'll see if that can be configured through
| Memberspace.
| kazanjy wrote:
| Looks like it's an issue Safari being configured to block
| third party cookies. Memberspace, the registration
| software we use, cookies you to validate registration.
| You just have to allow third party cookies:
| https://help.memberspace.com/article/115-how-to-fix-log-
| in-i...
| bigbossman wrote:
| Was about to post Pete's book too. Go read it!
| 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.
| wdaher wrote:
| +1 to Founding Sales -- it's great, and Pete is great as well
| baxtr wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| _> you interview as many prospects and customers as possible_
|
| Did you do that before or after completing your product /
| service?
| scapecast wrote:
| both.
|
| this is 4 years ago, the market we were going after were the
| cloud warehouses like Redshift, BigQuery and Snowflake.
|
| In the beginning, we just had an idea for a specific product
| / service. but we knew that the customer would be the lonely
| data engineer in charge of building the analytics stack.
|
| I started with cold outreach via my network and linkedin. I
| would use pretty broad language around data warehouse usage,
| to cast a wide net with terms like "usage, performance,
| metadata, etc.", and cover all potential use cases. Engineers
| are always short on time, so you need to be affirmative,
| authoritative and present a clear ask that shows what you
| want and how the engineer will get value out of spending 30
| min with you.
|
| Of course I pulled the founder card, and that does help. I
| made it clear that we don't have a product, but working on
| building one. Turns out that most people are helpful, and
| want you to win!
|
| The first signal that you're onto something is when they
| reply to your message, and are intrigued.
|
| we built our first product around that feedback. Companies
| like Postmates, WeWork and Udemy bought version 0.5!
|
| I made a point out of keeping in touch with every customer,
| and do a quarterly check-in. What's changed? What are your
| plans? For this coming week, month, quarter and year. Where
| do you want to be in 2 years? What problems are you trying to
| solve for your company? What are the expectations for you and
| your team? What tools are you using to solve that problem?
| What tools have you looked at and decided to not use them,
| and why? Etc., etc.
|
| I rolled around in THEIR situation, trying to walk in their
| shoes. We'd talk for sometimes 90 minutes, often in person
| here in SF, over lunch. We'd often not cover our product
| until the final 5 minutes.
|
| Of course, that's a huge chunk of time out of your calendar.
| Huge opportunity cost, in particular for a founder.
|
| So here's actually something I'd do different. We hired our
| first sales reps after our first 10 customers. That was a
| mistake. Our product was very technical, it's not like
| selling email software. So you need a technical rep. Our
| first rep was a class act, but let me tell you, it was a goat
| rodeo for him.
|
| Rather, I should have hired a customer success person, and
| have them do the quarterly check-ins. That way I could have
| kept selling. Then let the customer success rep also write
| (technical) blog post, customer stories / case studies, and
| documentation. You're building out (credible) marketing
| materials that build the top of your funnel.
| charliemil4 wrote:
| Is this how you substitute experience in an industry? As in the
| "we built this because we needed it, and it turns out a billion
| other people did, too" story?
|
| It sounds like everyone 'improves' their offering based on
| feedback - but some folks seem to 'just know' what they are
| going through, and that somehow resonates with others.
|
| I've always wondered if there's a difference between approaches
| or if it's all just window dressing.
| amit9gupta wrote:
| The audible book: The Psychology of Selling - The Art of Closing
| Sales, by Brian Tracy, is very good in helping overcome the fear
| that some of us might have before the sales call/meeting,
| handling the rejections, and moulding your approach/attitude
| towards selling. There are many more great tips in this book.
| Recommend the audible, not the print.
| 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.
| kinghtown wrote:
| Hey, I worked in sales for years. So did my mother. I started B2B
| sales when I was 16.
|
| Don't "learn" sales. A lot of reading material and courses could
| actually negatively effect you by causing you to overthink
| things. At best, you will come across as calculating and at worst
| you'll lose deals due to getting lost in the weeds.
|
| Here's two things:
|
| Whenever you deal with someone, try to conceptualize yourself as
| a consultant and not a salesperson. Great sales people are more
| like matchmakers, people have some kind of problem and you have
| some kind of solution. People are pretty sensitive to in
| situations where they could be persuaded. Conversations should
| have the feelIng like you are trying to convince a friend to
| watch a really cool movie rather than high pressure, ultra
| confident wolf of Wall Street closing.
|
| Two, if you really want to learn the actual craft of it then put
| yourself in more situations where you can talk to a salesperson
| and put them through their paces. Start taking calls from
| telemarketers and instead of hanging up tell them you would
| rather they send you an email. Go to a car dealership and tell
| them the car you want is too expensive. This is a decent way to
| get experience.
| jppope wrote:
| I would argue against this comment... it is very useful to
| actually learn the culture and the techniques. Not that the
| general advice here is in poor taste, just saying that simple
| concepts won't help you fully understand something that is
| inherently complex.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Learning the technicalities of a domain or sell cycle is not
| that complicated if you already in this domain and indeed you
| can either learn it by reading a bit or from others in the
| field. But the art of selling itself is indeed more about
| putting yourself into it and doing it. It is a bit like the
| difference between someone who reads pick up lines and apply
| them to someone who just go out and try to pick up women. At
| the end of the day putting yourself out there will teach you
| more and will give you the confidence and natural
| capabilities.
| kinghtown wrote:
| And I would disagree with your comment on similar grounds.
| There is undoubtedly a lot of nuance and experience in sales,
| technical requirements depending on the industry, but forgive
| me, I'm not going to outline everything in a comment.
|
| I am arguing that a book won't cut it and may do more harm
| than good. Advice from great salespeople must be taken with a
| grain of salt. Because the core of sales, making deals, is
| more feeling than logic.
|
| I've seen people sell extremely well with zero experience as
| well as seasoned pros who are inherently terrible at the job.
| Salespeople overthink the strategy and lose sight of what
| really makes money: making that motherfucker say yes. If you
| want to do that then you need to really embrace your role
| properly and forget about being a shark or a shooter or
| whatever. You are helping someone or some organization either
| make more money, save money, or do their job easier than
| before. Everything else is bullshit strategy for guys who
| don't actually believe in what they are selling.
|
| Edit: that reply could be misconstrued as aggressive but I'm
| set in my ways, which I know work best.
|
| If OP doesn't want to mentor under a sales manager in a
| business and learn the job that way, then as a practical
| suggestion:
|
| Skip the self help books. Zig Ziggler and how to make friends
| and influence people, etc etc. Skip all that.
|
| Get a College textbook on being an Entrepreneur. Something
| that will help you with the nuts and bolts backend stuff.
| dika46 wrote:
| agree. previously more than 10 years work on software
| engineering, and this year pointed as Sales & Marketing.
|
| B2B to be precise. I am positioning my self as a consultant
| rather than salesperson. building trust and develop close
| cooperation with potential users/clients. not a easy way for
| geek like me, but trying is better than do nothing.
| kinghtown wrote:
| Keep that mindset. Hardest part of B2B is getting people on
| the phone and dealing with secretaries. Everything else is a
| cakewalk, literally, if you can come across as casually
| confident and helpful.
|
| I've had so many different approaches over the years but I
| find that being lovable and genuine works best (but you still
| have to close those deals, it's not all roses.)
| andi999 wrote:
| About wolf og wall street: if you look at some john belfort
| material online in reality (or what he chose to put online) he
| does what you suggest. (Of course not in phone cold call
| selling)
| pettycashstash2 wrote:
| This is such an excellent question and the responses are
| invaluable. Thank you for posting it.
| kazanjy wrote:
| Hey there, my friend Waseem tipped me off to your question.
|
| Your situation is why I wrote Founding Sales:
| https://www.foundingsales.com/
|
| The full text is available online on that Squarespace site.
|
| I wrote it after selling my last company - it chronicles what I
| learned going from a PMM / PM at VMware to a business generalist
| founder, who then had to learn how to sell, and then manage sales
| people.
|
| Also, this deck will be useful to you:
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pcSy-zV-776abGmZ8WJ7...
|
| Hope that helps!
| gnicholas wrote:
| Came here to suggest this. It has good tactical advice, but
| also good big-picture strategies. And it will give you
| vocabulary to talk about experiences you may have had but were
| not able to fully understand/contextualize.
| auggierose wrote:
| Sounds very interesting, but if I cannot buy a PDF of it, I am
| not going to bother.
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