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Comment by mreiland | Hacker News Reader

> He then asked this question “How is a typical call with a prospect looks like?” ...

I still don't understand what the guy asked, my best guess is he messed up the verb and it was supposed to read "how DOES a typical call with a prospect go?", or similar.

It all makes me conclude that someone who is not a native English speaker was paid to write that article and it's bullshit filler flung out on various sites like HN in a cheap attempt to garner attention.

If you're going to pay someone to write an article for you, fucking pay for a native speaker. I mean seriously, that little bit of money saved is not worth the risk.

edit: not to mention, most of the advice is pretty generic, the sorts of things anyone can get by picking up a book on salesmanship.

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This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Spewing bile is not ok, but especially not to insult someone who simply happened not to be a native speaker. Fortunately, users flagged it, which I hope communicated to the OP that it doesn't represent the community.

HN has users from many countries. They all do their best to communicate in English and we owe them respect for that. It's helpful to remember that the non-native speakers on HN command more languages than most of the rest of us do.

It's also not ok to rudely accuse someone of having "paid" for an article. If you think an article is spam you are welcome to flag it. If you find substantive criticism more appropriate, you are welcome to contribute some. But you can't use Hacker News as a dumping ground for resentments.

I don't understand you, my analysis was correct.

1. It was written by a non-native speaker, and 2. It was thrown up on HN in an incomplete state to garner attention (the OP said as much).

This is not an informal HN post, this was specifically crafted as marketing and it NEEDS to be done in a professional manner.

As far as I'm concerned, if the OP starts getting their posts proofread as a result of my "rude" post, then I've done the OP more good than anyone else here.

Your analysis was far from correct. You accused the author of not having written the article.

More importantly, your comment was rude and uncivil. And I'm afraid you've done this before. We ban accounts for posting uncivil comments, so please stop doing that. If unsure, simply err on the side of respect—it isn't hard.

what specifically was incorrect with respect to my analysis?

I wrote it on my spare time and based on my experience. Nobody proofread it and it's a takeaway for next time. I posted it on HN since I like HN, that's all.

Don't worry about some asshole picking apart stuff. Your writing is clear enough that if someone has a hard time parsing it - that's their loss. I've been in Saas for over 10 years helping sales and marketing teams convert and close at higher rates. The article hits home for several tech founders who understand customers but don't understand prospects. The post captures some learnings that many other people never ask or dig into - but make all the difference. Thanks for sharing, I've shared it with several people who will not think this is obvious - and they won't need to "pickup a standard book" to learn some snippets.

Question: how much better does the salesperson perform compared to your previous attempts? How long will you give him to prove himself?

SaasTr is a great sales resource if you're looking.

I don't have clear numbers on conversion rates before and after, prospects were from different segments and we kept changing our pricing and offer during that time to find the right fit so it's hard to measure. Before we brought him in we said we'll give him 3 months but it was clear we have a lot to learn and benefit after 3 weeks.

I used to be more of a grammar nazi but in my old age I came to view with suspicion emails or texts that are written "too perfect." It signals a person who has too much time on their hands or allocates their time poorly, and is insecure about letting a few mistakes through.

I easily understood that sentence first time I read it and so did 'mreiland'. Don't mind these silly comments.

HN users have already said it, but if it helps at all, we (I'm a moderator here) sure hope you won't let a nasty comment like that bother you. Plenty of non-native English speakers write excellent articles and comments for HN. What matters is the content.

Don't worry, the text was perfectly understandable. Great read!

Your English is good, but not good enough. If you're going to continue writing these articles in English, find a native speaker to proofread for you.

If you start getting your stuff proofread, my "asshole" comment will have done you more good than any of the touchy feely bullshit you've seen elsewhere in this thread.

The author is Israeli; my Hebrew is worse than my Arabic is worse than my Farsi, which is pretty bad, but the grammatical mistakes seem pretty typical of the impedance mismatches between Hebrew and English.

Interesting aside: I'm a native Hebrew speaker, and practically a native English speaker. I tend to notice grammatical mistakes in English.

In this case, I didn't notice anything. It's probably because I was speed-reading, but I can't help but feel that it also has something to do with the fact that I've gotten used to the way Hebrew speakers tend to mangle English.

Slightly offtopic, but in English it's called Persian, not Farsi. You probably wouldn't say "my Deutsch is worse than my Francais".

Really? I worked for an Iranian-American for 2 years, and my aunt 30 years in the state department stationed in various locations in the middle east—both refer colloquially to Farsi. I don't think it's in the same category as French and German.

According to this it is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language#Etymology

Right at the top of that section: "Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for political reasons, in English and French, Farsi has become the name of the Persian language as it is spoken in Iran." And a little farther down: "In English, this language has historically been known as 'Persian', though 'Farsi' has also gained some currency."

So I don't think it's as clear as you suggest. I certainly recognize the name "Farsi", though I would not have known "Dari" (the name of the Afghan dialect).

are you trying to break the record for how many assumptions you can fit into a single post?

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