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madamelic

Does anyone have any book suggestions for an engineer who wants to learn sales / convincing people?

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.

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Steli Efti published a bunch of practical articles online (free!) that I found really easy to understand:

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.

First, read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people.” Don’t let the cheesy title turn you off. The book is tremendous and a fun read and has been a literal best seller continuously since it was written more than 50 years ago.

I re-read (re-listen-to) this book every 3 or so months. Every time I do, I find myself thinking "why did it take me so long to go through this book again?"

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.

>First, read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people.”

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.

After starting with Dale Carnegie’s book I’d move to something more about the storytelling aspects so you can construct your pitches well in addition to interacting well.

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...

Spin Selling by Neil Rackham presents a useful theoretical framework for selling

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)

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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

I would highly recommend "Sales EQ" by Jeb Blount as a first sales book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XFBMZVC/. Does a very god job of outlining the psychology of selling, the psychology of buying, and what needs to go into a successful sales process (without laying out a prescriptive program). Conversational writing style, very rich in information. It will be very useful in improving "non-sales" selling aka presenting, convincing colleagues of things, etc

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

You can focus on improving your sales skills within your own job; all jobs require some degree of "sales skills", as it really boils down to communication.

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

I would recommend against doing a trial by fire sales job(unless its a move inside of a software organization you're already a part of).

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.

"You Can Negotiate Anything" by Herb Cohen. While not a sales book per se (like the title implies, it's about negotiating) it gets you into the "sales" mindset. The sales mindset is about figuring out what matters most to the other party, and how you can provide it to them at minimal cost to yourself. Put like that it sounds very abstract and obvious but the book has a number of amusing anecdotes to illustrate these ideas.

I was in sales for 10+ years, now am a dev. Best sales book I ever read was New Sales Simplified. Really breaks down the sales process.

Second this

Here is the best place to start. Not a book on sales. A book on how to craft a message that will be heard by your audience.

https://www.amazon.com/So-What-Communicate-Matters-Audience/...

Short and sweet.

The Dale Carnegie company runs a sales course (IIRC it's 8 weeks, one night per week) which I found enormously valuable.

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).

Sales is not "convincing" people. A sale is when the products, goods, or services you represent fill a need. Listening and asking open ended questions help the sales person determine that need.

And then lie about their ability to fill it.

Don't read the Dale Carnegie book, read "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham and the book "Getting to NO" <- best book on negotiation I've ever read.

Do you mean "Getting to YES" ?

"Getting to NO" is a book about breaking habits.

I totally borked the title. This is the book I was thinking of: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014DUR7L2

"Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win when the Stakes are High" by Jeff Thull. When selling enterprise software, you have to convince many decision makers, there is often no point person to sell to. You may not know some of them even exist until its too late. One needs a process to organize such sales undertaking. This book talks about it.

The Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort (the wolf of wall street).

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.

I really liked Pitch Anything. Good actionable advice in it but I also found a lot of the neuroeconomics discussed in the book very interesting. Helped me in other areas too.

Listen to the Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy. Best sales training I've material I've seen. There's a book too but skip that and get the CD set.

I'm launching an online course that tackles this issue soon, feel free to email me for more info!

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