Learn to sell
blairreeves.me
blairreeves.me
Also: if you're at a good company the engineers don't scorn the sales people (instead: "you guys bring in the money that pays our salaries") and the sales folks actually sell the product to people who will benefit from it.
And this definitely includes software engineers.
The “sales process” is just a series of questions. The close is the natural ending to a great presentation.
Sales is no picnic though. I know it looks like a bunch of high-fiving frat boys talking sports metaphors and rarely coming to work, but the reality is very, very tough. Different challenges to engineering, for sure, but very real challenges and in some ways more acute.
In sales you're directly responsible for the money the company brings in. You have a number over your head. You are _gone_ the second you miss it. If you don't make your number, other people can lose their jobs too.
There are no breaks, no rest, no pause for enjoying the satisfaction in a job well done. If you think sales people don't work evenings and weekends you are out of your mind - when else do you get time to write proposals and draft contracts? When do you travel? You can't take a client, who you might not even like, for dinner during the 9-5 day.
You are on call all the time; the second an on-site engineer says something stupid to a client you are called, you have to deal with it, smooth it over, fix the damage to the relationship.
And turning the master build red doesn't even come close to a fraction of a hint of the stress that comes when you're close to losing a vital client and you've got the owners of the company breathing down your neck. Relationships aren't like code: once broken, you can't git reset and try again. And it takes so little to torpedo a major client.
Depending on the industry, sales people aren't the ones to do these tasks. There's other people that do this for them (nor should they, most of the time, based on stories I've heard from my girlfriend, who is a proposal manager. She constantly has to fix and unbreak and un-ugly whatever they do send her).
In fact for the companies she works it sounds like sales people live pretty cushy lives. Although the commissions the salespeople get for winning a single client's business can be as much as half a million dollars (and their bosses would treat them like ambassadors with diplomatic immunity that could do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted as long as they got a win every once in awhile. Meanwhile she had a large role in winning the business as well but only got a slightly better than a writer's salary for it.
In smaller companies I don't doubt sales people might have to handle proposals and contracts, but it's not really their core competency.
It's kind of like an engineer that also does graphic design. They exist, but it's not really something most engineers should be doing.
(One particularly memorable job had me finding clients, pitching ideas, writing proposals, negotiating and closing the deal, drafting and negotiating contracts, and then managing the actual project itself for $1m+ fixed price bespoke software consulting engagements. I'd have sold organs to have someone like your girlfriend on the team.)
I'm fortunate to have done both engineering and sales in my career. I'd like to say it's given me sympathy for both sides; mostly I've always just wished I was doing the other role at any given time :)
It sounds like you live in California? If you're a decent software engineer in any major city in California, you are one of the luckiest people who has ever lived. You have your choice of employers paying you six figures to sit at a desk and push buttons 40 hours per week.
If you're overworked and underpaid to the point that what I just said sounds crazy, it sounds like you need a new job, immediately. There are better options out there, don't settle if you're miserable.
Some of the other points you mentioned sound like you might want to speak to a professional therapist. There's no shame in that (I've done it before and will again) and it can really help you work through some issues.
Good luck!
Not to discount the benefits of living in Silicon Valley. If you love the atmosphere and everything then it's probably the right place, and that's worth a certain amount of money. But just looking at the numbers in a spreadsheet it's objectively better to live in a small-to-medium sized city (or even rural area if you can find the work!) if you're looking at take-home pay, savings rate, retirement savings, etc unless you're in a very well-compensated role in one of a few very select corporations.
I lived in SF and NYC and eventually found my way to Nashville, partly for low taxes. However, I'll be moving back to NYC, because despite the ridiculous levels of taxation, I just can't help myself and I'm fortunate to be able to afford it. I'm always looking for ways to manage my tax burden though.
I was from the Bay, and moved to Reno. I really miss Asian food and Asian people.
Heck, I was even thinking of going to conversation clubs at UNR just so I could hear Chinese spoken again, and maybe eat some dumplings.
Even in the smallest town in middle on nowhere (say Montana) you can find a job. It might not be a perfect fit for your skills, but you can find one. There are thousands of small towns scattered across the US with some little company that makes something obscure but essential to society. Example: you probably never think about sewage pumps (not the treatment plant, just the pumps by the side of the road) - they are essential to society though and somebody needs to write the software that controls them. Why not you?
Of course moving implys a lot of changes. You can't go to a Broadway show (you live in California so you can't anyway - which is why I use this example), the community musical in the next town it pretty good though and the fact that they are not on the level of Broadway makes them fun in a different way. Or maybe you can find a different activity to fill your life with once you limit yourself to 9-5 plus the 15 minute walk each way to the other side of town to get home.
Of course there is nothing wrong with Montreal that the other poster mentioned. It is a nice city if you decide that a city life is for you. Of course it is in Canada which might be a negative for you, but you can still choose from any of several hundred cities scattered around the country. Nothing wrong with any of them either. All have specific advantages and disadvantages.
While most of what you say is true - that there really are jobs everywhere - Montana is actually tough. I really want to move to Montana and have seriously struggled finding something to fit my skills.
The alternative plan is to figure out a remote gig and then truly live wherever you want
We are in an industry that is growing exponentially in value, yet pay seems to continue to grow linearly. Meanwhile extremely talented engineers often work for manipulative non-coding managers. I see it all the time.
The best part is though, you can do anything you want to once you figure out that you make the decisions in your life and get over your fear of failure. Stop asking for permission. You also have to be very strict about committing to anything. Make 'no' your default answer. You have the talent, you set the rules. Have a meeting you hate? Stop going. Don't like waking up in the morning? Stop doing it. Want to work from home but your company doesn't allow it? Do it anyway.
Additionally, my advice if you are single and feel this way - quit your job, live on savings, try to make products or otherwise hack your income in a way that serves you in 2-5 years and beyond. It's a simple maximization function that any engineer can figure out - and once you do you'll be shocked at how little any company pays.
Seinfeld didn't have to keep making tv shows. Software should be the same way. Follow your passions and create a hit. If you don't know what your passion is, spend a year or two discovering them. Life is only short if you never actually live it.
It can sometimes feel like you're chasing your tail and there can be many, many days or weeks even of drought where you've got little in actual sales to show for all your work. That's pretty demoralizing and whilst engineering can be similar (think failed or canned projects) the highs and lows of engineering don't even compare.
They're both very tough gigs and both involve long hours, but as some of the posters below are suggesting you might be in a poor job situation yourself. Engineering roles don't have to be like the life you're describing.
Feel free to email me if you have more questions, know some companies that are looking ;)
Only if you let it. I can count on one hand the numbers of times I've worked on a weekend, and a small fraction of those were not worked into a flex/comp schedule. Maybe 2 in my entire life.
> Often you never have a partner so you're the most highly taxed people in the country especially in California
Most people get married, so "often" is just wrong. And my wife makes almost exactly what I make (has always been within 5% or so because she gets consistent raises and I job hop a lot). Our take-home went down after we got married. And California is #6[0] so there are 5 states with a total population of over 50 million people (2010 census)[1] with a higher average state+local tax burden. That's close to 1/6 of the country.
> While you often work triple time you're rarely if ever paid for overtime it's taken for granted that you're not ever compensated for 3/4 of the hours you work.
In what job are you "often" working 120 hours a week? Hyperbole aside, in what job (that isn't very well compensated) are you often working 70-80?
And software developers are by definition exempt from overtime. It's not some scam that we don't get paid OT. There are many, many, many software dev jobs that are 40.0 hours a week and not a minute more. There are many that aren't. It's a choice which one you have.
> extra taxation when you are unemployed
What is this referring to?
> the life of an engineer is like the life of the slaves who row the [oars] on the Viking ship
Not really.
In case it's not obvious I think the above post is a gross oversimplification and exaggeration of one person's extremely atypical shitty experience.
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/state-local-tax-burden-rankings-fy...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
No, _your_ life as an engineer is a life of sacrifice. I work four days a week, from 07:00 to 15:30, and then head home to my family.
Honestly there are plenty of software engineering jobs (in the Bay Area and out) that pay you six figures to work 9-5. Your experience isn't the norm. Go join a big company if you want comfortable. Then your equity will actually be worth something too, one less thing for you to complain about.
An engineer making $150k working 60 hour weeks is making $5/hr less than an engineer earning $100k working 36 hour weeks. The latter is literally earning more _for their time_ working half as much for 2/3 the salary.
The hourly rate of an engineer earning $250k for 60 hour weeks is the same as an engineer earning $150k for 36 hour weeks.
The difference of 14 hours a week is 30 1/3 days/year. Some folks are willing to trade an extra month of their time per year from the prime years of their life for money, but not me. It should be a choice, not an expectation.
Maybe your perspective is different because you're a founder, but I get the feeling I wouldn't want to work for your company.
> The life of an engineer is a life if sacrifice and 7 days a week work for five days pay.
This just isn't true. Maybe at certain startups, but it's your choice to work there. As a (qualified) software engineer, you're blessed with thousands of options, many extremely comfortable. Flexible hours, free food, great pay, no dress code.
When so many people are struggling just to make ends meet, I have very, very little sympathy for someone in shams' situation. Just get a new job.
There are plenty of very well compensated 40-hour-a-week software development jobs available.
I think you do have to acknowledge the point that engineers are sometimes thought of as commodities and the business often don't realize the effects of their requests on the engineering team. Management is always very quantitatively focused and its hard to justify a lot of the yak shaving that needs to be done . This leads to poorer quality code or engineers working extra hours so they don't end up swimming in shit every day.
Of course if you are in those situations, just leave, we're in high enough demand right now. Only in a recession should you worry about those qualms.
36 accounts for time spent eating lunch and taking breaks. It's a good target. It also handles common schedules some folks have of 4x9 and 3x12.
But you need to be okay living in a city nobody's ever heard of, working for a company nobody's ever heard of, and not changing the world. But honestly 99.9% of the people working 80 hour weeks in VC funded start-ups writing the next big CRUD app aren't going to change the world either, and they're paying $3500/mo to rent a 1-bedroom while people in these small cities are paying $1k/mo for a 2-bedroom mortgage a 10 minute commute from their office.
As an engineer, you start to understand why sales people overcommit, oversell, and overpromise. Why they can't produce a sale. It's not always their fault. But the good ones normally know what works and what doesn't. A good sales person:
* knows or takes time to learn the product to the point of a junior techie
* tries hard to work in tandem with the techies
* is NOT a frat boy / girl, but knows to talk to people of all walks of life, and in today's globalised world, of all backgrounds
* has the character to say "no" when it's better to walk away
* is at least in their late 30s or older
* a great listener trying to solve the customer's problem, not push a new shiny toy
* mature enough to lead a company.
While over-selling, "make-a-buck-now-lose-everything-later" idiots prevail, sales jobs are tough. It is hard for us engineers to grasp sometimes what is means to have your compensation ALWAYS be tied to some figures - so-called "performance", which is a combination of your ability to convince, the market, and the products you are selling. Imagine that, as an engineer, you'd get a deduction for every bug the customer discovers; feels different, doesn't it?
For a great fictional portrayal of a (pre-tech but enterprise) sales person's life, watch "The Big Kahuna".
Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped in to grab the commission. The play was to cold call the shit of company, weasel you way into a decision maker's schedule, and basically roll the dice they might buy your software because they needed to check a box - it barely mattered what the thing actually did and beyond a well rehearsed script no one understood even the basics of the technology/problem space. It was also very feast or famine - a few made absurd cash but most lived on a precarious edge where they felt they might be fired at any moment.
Understanding this is how the world actually works was a valuable education. I do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit and there is a renewed interest in approaching business problems with data and something that approximates a pseudo objective science-like process. But barely.
And with a suitably driven, intelligent, and business-savvy founder, it works [1]. The whole "software is eating the world" philosophy is based on the idea that it's better to go radically vertical and bring technology straight to the consumer rather than deal with the inefficiencies of enterprise sales.
[1] Kind of. The key here is "suitably driven, intelligent, and business savvy founder." Most technologists are not such - they not only don't know the domain, they don't care enough about it to learn. So there's been a bit of a pullback to traditional enterprise sales for SaaS businesses in the last couple years; many of the consumer markets that have not yet been revolutionized by big tech have pretty thorny barriers to entry that no technologist has yet found their way around.
Haha. I'm a technical salesperson that is the black sheep of my sales org. Things are worse now.
Besides that, how is life at Oracle?
Sales has improved a lot. A lot of the younger people coming in are much more moral than previous generations.
A lot of sales has moved to inside sales as opposed to field sales. Not quite as fun sometimes, but easier on people’s families and schedules, less abuse of expense accounts, going to strip clubs, etc. Also so much of what inside sales does is recorded, there is the possibility of much more accountability (e.g. harder to lie to customers).
Sales has improved a lot, but I think we’ve traded that for declines in the morals and increases in the absurdity of marketing. Everything from false claims / fake news to serious privacy concerns.
And then we argue over those table scraps while those who feast couldn't care less.
That goes both ways. The problems arise when sales start dictating how engineers do their work. The point is you need _both_, and they each need to respect the others work... unless you want to run a company like orcale and milk products into destruction, but then as we know - oracle doesn't invest in the future of their products.
> If they're not on the same page, they make each other look worse
This is right, engineers need to understand the problems that their end users have and of those problems those that severely affect sales should be considered carefully...
however what seems to happen more often is sales or management end up dictating the solution to a problem... but software solutions are software engineers jobs.
This happens to me so commonly but thankfully I do not work in a company with a rigid hierarchy, which means rather than being forced to blindly follow a request I go and find out the context that this request originated from, understand the problem and then propose a suitable solution - everyone is _always_ happier. But this requires autonomy and respect from all members, something that rigid hierarchies appear to sometimes oppress (but then I've only ever been a lucky observer of such institutions so maybe i'm wrong).
In my small experience I actually find the "role" to be the overriding factor in determining how an individual processes information, because their "problem" defines their perspective.
> how often do sales people and engineers problem solve together?
I'm breaking definitions here a bit because in the context I am drawing upon sales are not a generic salesman, but someone who has a deep understanding of the fairly niche and complex activity the customers are doing, actually they are scientists, but not coders, so I suppose that is quite unlike the ordinary salesman to be fair ... but In this context I find that first recognising our quite different perspectives and then trying to make each other understand our different perspective allows us to extract the relevant understanding from each other to converge on a reasonable solution (or not, sometimes once you both understand the problem better from both ends you realise it's actually something else entirely, or that attempting a solution would be a fools errand).
I find this extra step invaluable because I have more empathy with the real problem using their expert knowledge of the customer and activity, and they have empathy with the potential technical challenges at hand, and as a result are more willing to accept alternatives in the knowledge of the real technical cost. I can't say how applicable it would be to collaborating with a more generic sales department though.
It doesn't really matter who instigates that mixing of perspectives, but I find as a coder I have a tendency to zoom in and out of contexts more to better understand a problem... it's not much of a step to keep zooming out / panning until you can start digging into the perspectives of your peers.
My last company did that to close some multi-million dollar deals and only took a quarter to build.
Of course, it's my company and I'm both the salesperson and engineer, but sometimes you have to sell shit that doesn't exist yet.
Being able to sit down on a weekly basis to game plan the sales approach, go over calls, and hold them accountable has been immeasurable.
p.s. if anyone is interested - I'm in the process of launching a "Selling 101" online course for founders to cover the fundamentals of sales (finding leads, cold calling, performing demonstrations, closing deals, etc).
[6] http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2017/#introduction
Do you recommend doing trial by fire and getting a sales job?
I've realized that I am good at the technicals but terrible at selling why people should do what I say.
http://blog.close.io/b2b-cold-calling-tips
http://blog.close.io/5-cold-email-templates-that-will-genera...
http://blog.close.io/follow-up-emails
http://blog.close.io/how-to-give-product-demos-that-sell
http://blog.close.io/how-to-do-referral-sales
This net of articles (a bit of a rabbit hole!) is sprinkled with videos of Steli, so you can gauge the energy level and sales delivery too. I found this to be useful as well, something hard to pick up from a book.
It's an incredible help, especially in a profession that's stereotypically short on interpersonal skills. It's too easy for me to convince myself that those skills matter less. This book always reminds me how important it is to not always be blunt. Honest is great, blunt is not always helpful.
Already done. I am currently reading "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". How to Win Friends majorly influenced me already.
Do you believe the methods explained in How to Win Friends are sufficient? They have absolutely helped already but I am not sure if it is just a matter continuing to apply or if there is another that could help level me up more.
EDIT: Also on the reading list is Purple Cow by Seth Godin. I've heard good things about it and the first ~20 pages were pretty good.
I don’t have a “great” book to recommend there, but an example that pops to mind might be Say it in six[0]. This sort of book tends to be more formulaic, less universal, and every book advocates a completely different formula so you need to find the approach and style that works for you. That said, understanding that a pitch is a structured story and thinking about how to structure them is incredibly valuable.
Simon Sinek’s Ted talk[1] is also really fun and well worth watching (and worth deconstructing how he makes his pitch about how to make pitches), but it’s more about high level consumer brand design than the inside the company project pitching like I think you’re asking about.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1629833.Say_It_in_Six
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...
https://www.amazon.com/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/00705111...
There are many sales books that present scripts, in general I think they are useful to read for generating ideas, I would suggest never using a script that doesn't feel comfortable for you to say, I would suggest also thinking about fitting any script you use back into the larger theoretical framework from the above book
personally, I like the scripts presented in Stephen Schiffman's books, https://www.amazon.com/Stephan-Schiffman/e/B001H9PRO2/ref=sr...
mainly on the ground that none of them make me cringe to say (specifically the '250 sales questions' and the 'Cold Calling' books), what makes you cringe is likely to be a little different from what makes me cringe, so your mileage will probably vary
there are a lot of books in this general genre, check out https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Tracy/e/B001H6OMRI/ref=sr_ntt_s... and https://www.amazon.com/Zig-Ziglar/e/B000AP7VIY/ref=sr_ntt_sr...
I do think these books present lots of good material for brainstorming, but some percentage of both these books I couldn't say to someone without cringing (I would suggest listening to that voice in your head, if it'd make you cringe, it's likely to make whoever you're saying it to cringe as well)
-----
fwiw, these books tend to be exceptionally easy reads, so I suggest checking them out, taking what you find useful, and leaving what you don't
Though things like New Strategic Sales and Spin Selling are useful, they are not good beginner books - they are technical approaches to developing enterprise sales process, and primarily targeted at professionals in sales management. As a less than exact analogy, Sales EQ is much more like SICP, while Spin selling is like an O'Reilly language reference. I know non-programmers that have gotten a lot out of SICP as the only cs book they have read
Maybe observe how effective you are in convincing your colleagues of the merits of your ideas, or getting to be involved in projects youre interested in, etc. Observe when a conversation doesnt go as youd hoped, and think about why. Find a colleague you think does a good job of this and learn from her / him. Make it a goal to focus on listening as much as possible. Read books, then identify tactics youd like to try, and try them out at work in a comfortable setting
If you have time, you can create a side project and try selling that. Doesnt even have to be a real business or something youd want to pursue, just make something you think people could want, find the ppl who might want it, ask about their needs, and see if you can position your product to meet their needs
Because the types of sales jobs that hire people without sales experience are usually
- low touch, so less applicable to good sales jobs
- low pay
- long hours
- shitty
Instead I'd recommend moving towards sales slowly leveraging your dev experience. Find salesman in your org, and convince them you'd be helpful to have along to help them sell. This should be pretty easy, honestly most sales people want to say "And here's Susie, she's a really smart developer on our team and she'll be able to answer or find the answer to any of your technical questions."
If this doesn't work look for jobs marked "Sales Engineer". Or alternatively you could join a large consulting organization. By it's very nature consulting is half sales/half dev.
https://www.amazon.com/So-What-Communicate-Matters-Audience/...
Short and sweet.
Apart from learning skills and heuristics, one thing that was quite eye opening was the range of other students. I remember (this was decades ago) a couple of kids around 20 with a T shirt stand on the beach (avg sale <$20, average sale time a minute), someone who sold home security systems for ADT (consumer sale of a couple of hundred bucks, leads from a lead service and cold calls) and someone who sold chip manufacturing equipment (average order in 10s of millions, sales cycle over two years).
"Getting to NO" is a book about breaking habits.
Jordan has a lot youtube clips with his live seminars of upto 10 episodes - 90 minutes each.
Disclaimer: Not in sales, but have great sense of appreciation for rain-makers.
There are some great books on sales and why sales gets a bad rap is most sales people don’t seem to have read those books. I now have a critical eye for sales stuff like you can have for code and just see how bad most sales are done.
All of these are of the mindset of help your customer first and foremost, the sale is a secondary effect of the helping. And given my nature that has made sales a lot easier since I’m not an extroverted manipulator, I’m an introverted problem solver.
I personally sell online video training courses for developers so it's something I've been hyper focused on for the last 2 years. During that time about 20,000 people have signed up to at least 1 of my paid courses.
I think becoming slightly better at selling has also made me a much better programmer, because your mindset shifts entirely. It's not just about naming things too. It's easier to see the bigger picture on something. It helps scope the entire project.
That being said, I absolutely DISAGREE that everyone should get some hands-on sales experience. Just like how not everyone is suited for engineering, not everyone is suited for sales. The author comes from a product management role so I would guess s/he is more extroverted than most engineers. I have met many design engineers that are ridiculously introverted. However, that's the beautiful thing about engineering. It doesn't matter. If you can design something that solves the customers problem, then you are doing a good job. A good manager would make sure a good design engineer get's shielded from the political bs. Unfortunately, the engineering culture is turning into a culture where we promote those with charisma rather than a good designing skillset.
Right, because so many people buy Facebook products, or Twitter, or Google...
Many, if not most, software products don't sell anything. While there are tons of problems with getting 100% of your revenue from ads, the fact remains that many companies don't have anything to sell to their consumers.
Of course, you have to make a good, sticky product, and so there is marketing involved... just not the sort of 1930s handshake-and-a-smile that this article seems to be describing.
That said, my own experience is biased (I currently work for a non-profit!), and so the snarkiness of this reply probably isn't warranted. Surely for many places, sales experience is valuable... but I certainly wouldn't rank it higher over software development, at least not with the places I've worked at.
The primary, unchanging goal of any business anywhere is to stay in business. Sales bring in cash, and cash is king. Nothing else will keep you in business other than cash. All of those companies you mentioned were financed by burning through millions of dollars of somebody else's money. That is not the majority of companies. IMHO, the article makes a lot of sense. I'd rank software development either equal or below sales too. YMMV.
Facebook revenue: 28b in 2016
More than 30k of Google's 80k employees on LinkedIn have titles including either "Sales" or "Account" (Account Executive, Account Manager, etc.). For Facebook it's 9k out of 26k.
Facebook and google both sell user attention to advertisers. Exxon deploys vast engineering resources to extract and collect oil, but it would be weird to say that because they don't receive payment from their wells and refineries that they don't make sales
I am not familiar with the sales process for google and fb ads, but id imagine, at least in the early days, that there was some handshaking etc involved before people really understood the value of advertising on those platforms
I know how to sell myself and concepts pretty well inside the organization. Getting money from customers is a while different ball game
I can’t sell. I’ll never be able to sell. I think that makes me feel like a more honest person. I’m okay with that trade off.
Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale is a good model for thinking about sales.
I understand how important it is for my product, but I just don't enjoy it, and would rather pay someone else to do it for me.
Essentially, I would need a Jobs for my Woz, if I can ever aspire to be a Woz. :)
The book "High Probability Selling" by Jacques Werth offers some good solutions to approaching sales with the intent of quickly connecting your product to the customers who want or need it most.
Nope, not for consumer products. SF doesn't talk about sales because consumer products don't need sales at first.
UH!?
Sales(money) is the blood of Any business. (Here I include Anything i.e. charities).
What a sad sad statement.
Actionable guidance:
"cold calling, sending tons of emails, doing prospect/company research and developing cold leads into warm ones"
and get a job in sales ("role", "experience", "career").
My personal project is a Chinese learning page.
I tried sending hundreds of emails, researching all the Chinese language centres in Taiwan to find contact email addresses for the department, and sometimes even the direct email addresses for the tutors. I wrote a short email explaining what my program does, and how it's helping me learn.
Nobody replied.
I made a YouTube video as an example of what it can do. I posted on Facebook, where my 3900 friends (who I all met face to face) mostly ignored it (29 likes).
I submitted it as a Show HN. Nobody up-voted it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907618
Can anybody give more helpful instructions?
I'm using Pingtype to read the Bible and song lyrics all the time, and my Chinese is improving - after failing with 9 other methods before.
https://pingtype.github.io/docs/blog.html#failing
I really get discouraged by the lack of interest though, and the "trial by fire" of being ignored by the world is really depressing. For me there's no "uncertainty being on a quota compensation plan" - I would certainly be broke.
1.- Get a domain.com to look more professional otherwise if I see "GitHub.io" looks like a code repository Pick a better name for your product. Right now it doesn't mean anything (i.e. dropbox reminds people of storage, submittable.com also sounds like form management, hope you get the idea)
2.- Look at well designed websites (i.e Invision, xero.com, mint.com. stripe.com) and notice the difference.
3.- Copy. There's zero copy. Check mailchimp.com for great voice and tone.
4.- No Pricing info, policy, FAQ, etc.
5.- A short 1-2 minutes explainer Video (optional)
6.- Look at well done explainer videos
7.- The landing page doesn't necessarily have to be all flashy, check this one for a simple one: https://visualping.io
8.- Important: Get feedback from people, I've used this: https://userinput.io/
9.- Also, forget HN, PH, etc., go after offline people or try more creative ways to reach people directly.
2. It will load slower, and not work on all platforms.
3. You're supposed to copy-paste. There's lots of examples in the blog or other links from the headings.
5. and 6. Example video to inspire me?
7. That's useful, thank you. What if the landing page is a subpage? e.g. The blog.
9. My girlfriend already told me I talk too much about it in real life that it's making people not want to talk to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11469889
https://medium.com/@InVisionApp/10-ux-copywriting-tips-for-d...
https://medium.com/talking-microcopy-writing-ux/go-to-guide-...
This is a tool, not a cover letter for a business.
Seriously. Do you want orange buttons? Specific, actionable feedback, please!
It looks like an app from the 90's. There is zero design. If you want people to use it, you have to sell them on the idea of WHY and HOW they'll benefit. If you aren't willing to do that, then you've already lost.
"There's zero design" - you just said "You're ugly". What is ugly? Should I lose weight? Plastic surgery? Wear different clothes? Tell me what to fix and I can try! But insults get nowhere.
I also think it's very ironic to criticise my design decision on Hacker News. Is there any "copy" here? Design? It's functional. I like the style of HN. But it sure doesn't follow your "best practices" of design.
1. You need to be contacting individuals not generic addresses or gatekeepers ('people buy from people')
2. You need to be explaining the value to them or people like them that they can identify with in terms of shared problems (i.e. in the same line of work), not how it helped you. So for example, if you can get the first customer in any way (maybe a friend or freebie), you can make a case study to send to similar people.
3. You need to contact people with a mix of phone and personalised email 8-10 times until you get a meaningful conversation, which should be in person if possible. Everybody is firefighting and you will be astonished how many come back to you on the 6th time thanking you for persisting and reminding them. You will need to learn about objection handling as well (loads of articles here - http://blog.close.io/manage-any-sales-objection-successfully).
Sales is very hard work, but getting results is very rewarding.