Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

peterburkimsher

tl;dr - Most of the article tries to justify why it's important to Learn to sell.

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.

https://pingtype.github.io

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.

Hi Peter, this might sound harsh, but first of all

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.

1., 4., and 8. - it's free. There is no pricing, no income to pay for a domain or paid feedback.

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.

By copy, I think he meant the writing of the page, copywriting. Please pursue the below links, you may find them helpful. I also recommend redesigning the site to be little more visually appealing.

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-...

I know what copy is. Google Translate doesn't have any copy either, and they serve 200 million people daily.

This is a tool, not a cover letter for a business.

man you're destined for failure. you ask for advice and someone actually takes time to give you very good advice and you not only once but twice behave defensively. I'm in the same position as you and I'm going to implement literally every single thing sogen recommended because I don't care about being wrong I care about succeeding.

10.- validate first (ie Buffer, Zapier)

7.- sogen, I am one of the founders of visualping and super-proud of the mention :)

Great service man, so simple to get started :D

Speaking only of the Facebook point, I'd bet quite a bit of money no more than 100-200 of your friends have any idea you posted that or ever saw it. It's been 5 years or more since you could be guaranteed your friends would see something you posted on FB.

I'm not the target market and I don't have any idea how to use your tool. The UI reminds me of old grayscale Mac OS. Salespeople are (usually, I'm stereotyping) 'dressed to impress'. Maybe you should put a tie on your project.

What colour should the tie be, and where?

Seriously. Do you want orange buttons? Specific, actionable feedback, please!

Do you want him to write the code for you too?

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.

I've written about my experience in the blog. Why and how will you benefit? You won't, because you're not trying to learn Chinese.

"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.

re the cold call/mail outreach -

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.

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