Go Into Sales | Hacker News Reader

Go Into Sales

bhargreaves.com

89 pointsthesyndicate38 comments

This sounds exactly right to me, and indeed a lot of my engineering friends who decided they wanted to start companies have sought out sales roles as practice.

An obvious way to transition from engineering to sales is via the "sales engineering" role at enterprise software companies, which, for complicated products, is the tech guy who tag-teams with the account manager and does the product pitching. SE pays about 80% of what high-end dev pays (and nothing resembling what sales account management can pay) and comes with virtually no execution risk.

The downside of SE is that it's a tar pit --- you'll never transition from SE to sales in the same company --- and after doing it for a few months you'll quickly learn an important but disheartening lesson: that a rock-solid technical pitch and a rapport with your target market is only 10% of the sales execution mix, and the other 90% is black magic --- a good chunk of which involves being shameless and irritating.

Then again, being shameless and irritating may be part of What It Takes to make a startup break through.

Do you mean shameless and irritating to yourself in the sense that you felt forced to resort to techniques that laid aside technical merit and honest discussion with your target? Or are you refering to devious methods to appear shameless and irritating to your market, that result in lots of sales?

I mean making lots of repeated phone calls, and I mean rule #1 of selling: ask for the sale. Pro sales people are always trying to transition from their current state to the end state; they do it by brute force at every state in the machine, and often construct entire new subgraphs of the sales state machine so there are multiple transitions towards closing at every state. Pro sales people are also really good at qualifying opportunities and don't waste a lot of energy on weak prospects.

All of these behaviors are extremely aggravating (even moreso if you're a bystander watching it happen):

* They're always bugging people

* They're always asking for progress towards closing

* They evince no actual caring for the customer's problems (that's the SE's job!)

* They won't give the time of day to someone they've deemed unlikely to help them close a deal

Think of them like Hollywood agents, like Ari Gold from Entourage, and you're not too far off. Except Ari actually cares about Vinnie Chase.

Slightly OT, but from the point of view of a founder who's already dived in and is hoping to employ sales people some day, what kind of people should I look for? Is enterprise sales experience of any use to a startup whose market may not be big enterprises?

It all depends on your business. Enterprise salespeople are used to long sales cycle, high-contact, high dollar sales. If that doesn't fit your business model, then you want to find people who've done something similar to your model.

Here I can't help you much other than to tell you that every tech founder has this exact problem, and most of them get rolled by the first couple sales people they hire. I can take some stabs at what doesn't work:

* Hiring people who have posted amazing stats inside other sales orgs but who have never done sole-starter early product sales

* Hiring people at moderate to high base pay to move an unproven product --- there are plenty of people who flit from role to role in gigs like this, never moving anything

* Hiring people for their rolodexes --- every A.M. can talk about a rolodex, and it almost never actually matters on the ground with your product

* Hiring "strategic" salespeople who don't want to cold call or do traditional sales but would rather spend their time on psuedo bizdev which, not coincidentally, can't easily be measured for varcomp or retention purposes

What I have actually seen work: learning how to sell, yourself, before bringing on a salesperson.

If you look around you'll probably find a couple dozen decent posts that address this question.

At the risk of veering into off-topic territory, I'd like to thank you for all the insight you afford this community. I've spent the last year building a software shop from the ground up. I've personally spent hours reading through your post history and have benefited from nearly every post. Your insights on sales, management, and general day-to-day business operations have directly benefited me on the order of tens of thousands of dollars.

So, on behalf of myself (and I'd imagine a hefty chunk of this site): thank you for your time. You should write a book- I'd buy three.

You're scaring me a bit. I may not have that much more experience than you do! =)

Thanks Thomas. Those sound like good solid points worth remembering. I will definitely have to learn to sell before I can afford to bring someone on.

> a rock-solid technical pitch and a rapport with your target market is only 10% of the sales execution mix

Very true.

I remember some of my SE colleagues working long and hard for a great demo, which was then thrown away by the salesperson when he printed the customer's main competitor's logo (and name) on the proposal given out at the start of the demo. It wasn't Ford vs GM, but it was in the same ballpark.

I just switched from a more technical position to this type of role for this exact reason. Your 10% comment is only partially true, though. I think it depends on both the product, industry, as well as the client; some sales are inherently more driven by technical expertise & experience.

I disagree; I've been involved in products whose sales involve the sizes of TCAMs on a Cat6K and the particulars of BGP regex filters, and while it was vital to have someone who could address those questions involved in the sale, and while the decision on the sale was being made by people who know what those things mean, it was pure sales execution that turned the engagement from a science project to a "nice to have" to a "must have" to a purchase order.

I don't think we're necessarily disagreeing. I'm not saying technical details are going to make a sale (almost ever), but if one of the members of the sales team (note that I'm classifying the "sales engineer" as a salesman) can grant credibility & real world experience to the lofty promises that the typical salesman makes, it adds a level of differentiation that can—in some instances—make or break a sale.

Also, to clarify, it also really depends on the nature of the industry, the product, and even what we're considering technical details.

You seem to be getting close to saying that the product actually being sold hardly matters, which I find hyperbolic.

This is the kind of thing that used to be said about Microsoft, that they were good at selling in spite of having bad products. But the truth was that Microsoft knew very well what their customers needed and wanted, and for the most part did a better job building something that met those wants and needs than their competitors.

A very simple sales model is that your prospect has to understand what your offering does, believe that you can deliver, and then find a reason to act. Technical expertise and experience can contribute significantly to the first two steps (although the ability to clarify benefits is critical) but "sales" is normally more important for understanding how to get a prospect to act/purchase.

Disagree about the tarpit comment - where I work about half the sales team came directly from the SE department- including the guy who has been top salesman in the company for 4 out of 5 years.

SE (or presales as many places call it) is a great job as you can move into almost any direction you want very easily. You are essentially the ultimate all rounder - you must have extensive product knowledge, great communications skills, good sales awareness, marketing skills, work with the development team and services too - so you can then go into any of these directions actually very easily. I worked in presales for about 6 years and personally moved into product management which I love. If I wanted to I could move into development but I don't had those skills - but if I found a developer with a presales background I would snap them up immediately - would be a killer skill set combo; or a perfect startup founder.

So yes, I completely agree that SE or presales is the perfect job to do to get exposure to nearly all functional areas of business. And that is ideal for 'founder training' or simply if you don't know where you want to end up so want to learn what each part of the business is like.

Probably about half the SE's I've known personally very explicitly wanted to move into sales, and not one of them (in maybe about 10 different companies) actually managed to make that move. The career path --- inside one company --- for SE's appears to be either VP/Sales Engineering or to Product Management (and thus into marketing).

I'm either wrong or your company is a (welcome) anomaly. I'm happy to be wrong.

It would be a real shame if where I work is an anomaly. SE to sales is a great move in that it makes for a great sale person, and as I say our top sales guy came from that transition (the one year he wasn't top, the guy who was was also previously from SE). This is mainly because they have extensive product knowledge. That is a rare thing in sales and immediately buys you a huge dose of credibility. Clients will then be more likely to believe the more salesy aspect of the process too (where people are more naturally sceptical).

Don't get me wrong, not every good SE will be good at sales - as you say there is a magic element to being great at sales - generally it is the non technical people who make this move. The more technical ones like me go down the product route.

Couldn't disagree more about the idea that product knowledge makes a good salesperson. Ari Gold can't act, and a top salesperson might barely know how to use the product. From what I've seen, effective salespeople:

* Are persistant and laser-focused on getting deals to close.

* Can turn off every part of their brain that would prevent or delay them from asking for the sale.

* Have a nose for the org chart and for figuring out who needs to be sold to how.

* Can accurately gauge where they are in the sales process for any prospect, engagement, or eval --- this rarely has anything to do with technology and usually has everything to do with budgeting, MBO's, and getting bakeoffs started.

* Take meetings and make visits relentlessly.

* Appear confident, like the guy-in-the-rated-R-movie.

Most of this isn't helped by product knowledge, and some of it is actively hindered by in-depth knowledge (for instance, by creating doubts about whether now's the right time to ask to close a deal with someone considering or evaluating).

I always sound like I know exactly what I'm talking about, and often I don't, so don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong; I'll learn from it. My sense of it is that it's very hard for a tech person to be a good salesperson. Not impossible, but not statistically favored.

Completely agree with all of the above. And completely agree that a tech person is not the ideal person to go into sales. But a lot of presales people are not tech people - they are product people. And these people can make the transition to sales well.

What I'd add to your list above is passion. The best sales team are those that really believe in what they are selling. Of course, great sales people can sell anything even when it's rubbish - but for that you need a superstar sales person. For mere mortals passion is key - and that often comes from those who knew the product inside out- ie SE.

What I haven't mentioned is those that made the SE transition to sales very much left SE behind. They could do their own demos but they don't. They need to transition to all the stuff you have above. But if you can retain the product passion - and the marketing/benefits/product knowledge background, you have a good advantage.

"I always sound like I know exactly what I'm talking about, and often I don't, so don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong;"

Ah, gosh. Now I need to retroactively reconsider all your posts that I took at face value. Well done :/

My current company has me in a cube with a room full of salespeople. I find just listening to them talk on the phone to be great experience (the company installs solar panels). Things I have noticed:

- very knowledgeable about the product

- work to apply that knowledge to the individual's problems

- establish a friendly rapport, be courteous and respectful. One of the most common phrases I hear them start a call with is "Is this a good time to talk?"

- it's a lot of work to be prepared, keep up to date with the customers, and the sales "environment" (in our case things like government regulations and grants, media, other stuff.

If you're in a room full of people making phone calls, be aware that you're might be hearing "inside salespeople" --- ie, highly-compensated telemarketers --- and that inside salespeople are usually used to queue up engagements for account managers who actually do the real selling.

It's a small company - they do both. Its a small room so I know what they do fairly intimately.

More often than not it's for these very reasons that telemarketers adopt 'shotgun sales' tactics.

What you described is essentially the key to being a successful sales person. It all comes down to knowing your product, knowing your target customer, understanding how your product will benefit your customer and communicating that fact logically.

It sounds like you work with some good people.

This article is spot on.

Startups do two things: they build product and they sell it (get people to use it).

A lot of non-technical aspiring entrepreneurs miss this point. They think that you build a product and you do "business stuff". They fail to realize that "business stuff" invariably boils down to one thing: sales (at least in the early days of the company).

I think the two most desired skills in a tech startup is the ability to program and the ability to sell.

I'm glad I learned sales experience in college. Like most programmers, I have a tendency to be introverted and avoid people to just do my work.

However, in college I forced myself to take two very outward jobs: Resident Adviser and Personal Trainer. RA's help incoming freshman become acclimated with college life, and I found it a very rewarding job (plus I got a practically free apartment).

I've always been interested in fitness, so I became a personal trainer at the local Bally Total Fitness. Because I was knowledgeable about my product (me) and could pitch well, I became the #1 personal trainer in sales in Dallas in a month. I was pretty proud of that accomplishment, and it taught me a tremendous amount about sales and interacting with people.

Since sales pays so well, won't those "golden handcuffs" make it that much harder to quit your job to do a startup?

It might. However, large companies have an uncanny ability to screw their sales force. If you do really well they will reward you with a higher quota, and they'll divide your territory in half. I've seen it happen way too many times. Plus tech sales tends to be unstable. One year you make $200K selling something that is in demand, the next year it's out of style and you get canned for missing quota. In 1998-2001 I was selling Sun servers. It was a pretty damn nice way to make a living. In 2002 you couldn't give a Sun server away. So the odds of somebody staying content in tech sales is fairly low. The desire or need to change usually hits ever few years.

I couldn't agree more. And don't think your personality isn't a fit. Several of my less outgoing (and in one case, downright awkward) roommates from college entered sales and came out more engaging and gregarious than I could have ever imagined them.

That's because introversion vs extraversion is a rather poor way to judge a person's sales skills. I've met extraverts who couldn't sell water in a desert and introverts who could sell ice to an Eskimo. Believe me, there are people out there who just aren't good at sales. Sure they can learn, but chances are their time is better spent learning to code and figuring out how to recognize a good salesperson to partner with.

I have always been confused by the sales engineer (presales) versus sales people, can someone enlighten me on what exactly are their roles - more specifically why the distinction ?

Here is what I know, at a place where I used to work selling expensive IPTV solutions (which was a limited market of big carriers - so I don't expect the sales people to be doing cold calls all day long), sales was apparently the place to be in terms of salary. The presales people were the more technical guys/gals who would get the customer requirements, help in the RFP, make presentations. And the sales people...well I dunno..I never understood why the presales people couldn't also be the full-fledged sales people closing the deals...I don't see the value-add...are the "sales" people there just to have smooth talkers who can close deals while pre-sales get the technical concerns out of the way ??

I've been considering this myself for a while. What's the best way for a nerd with no sales knowledge (well, i can sell things off a webpage just fine, at least if they are cheaper than the competition, but that's a rather different thing.) to get into sales?

should I leverage my existing skills and get a sales or pre-sales Engineer job selling some overpriced "enterprise storage" or network kit? or should I show up at a used car dealership and ask for a job?

I bet I could at least get past the interview; I'm tall and white and can fake confidence fairly well for a nerd. I don't know how long I'd last on the used car lot, though.

Excellent advice. Going into sales will make you understand why everybody is not buying Toyota cars.

A more useful article would be titled, "Make sure you are really good at public speaking."

I'm not convinced working a sales job is necessary for most people to sell a product to investors, and I'm entirely convinced a sales job won't help you sell a product online through a web interface.

Sales skills are different than public speaking skills.

I'm deathly afraid of speaking in front of people, but I'd like to think I'm a pretty good salesperson.

Meanwhile, I've discovered that I really enjoy speaking to an audience -- love the sound of my own voice, I guess -- but I hate selling, even when I believe in the product, and even when it's my product!

>I'm entirely convinced a sales job won't help you sell a product online through a web interface.

Personally, I agree. However, I believe that a sales job /will/ help you sell your company to investors, and it may help you better negotiate with other sales people. (I'm not sure about the second one, but it seems like seeing it from the other side might help.)

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