Founders need to get radically better at sales | Hacker News Reader

Founders need to get radically better at sales

buzzways.at

171 pointsstanleyhtml32 comments

As an electrical engineer with 15+ years in global enterprise software sales, a track record of 100MIO$+ sales in the past ten years and 2 failed software startups as an experience i can share following:

- A company only has excistence with paying customers.

- The global economy excists because of supply and DEMAND. So start preaching the benefits of your products or services, because there is a very high likelyhood there is potential client in the 70 Trillion dollar economy.

- Sales has evolved to being the trusted advisor and filling the blind spots for your clients with facts, value and business cases.

- Don't sell a drill, sell the hole. Clients are not looking for the specs of the drill, but the size of a hole.

- Before you start building your MVP, sell the value proposition. If you are not able to sell and validate your value proposition, you will struggle selling your MVP.

- Selling can't always be expressed in metrics. It's like sex. You have to do it, to get better in it. So stop talking about how to do it, just do it...

- You think you can't do sales? Have you ever applied for a job, sold yourself to your current girlfriend, husband or wife, challenge a friend with fact or a value creation discussion? You have done sales...

- The conversion rate of off-line sales is higher then on-line sales (for B2B complex sales cycles). So start engaging with your clients face 2 face.

- There is an absolute relation between your activities and your (revenue) results.

P.s. If you are in 1MIO$+(global) B2B (SaaS) enterprise software sales: Complex sales for global matrix organisations with multi-level stakeholders can't be achieved trough reading a book.

> can't be achieved through reading a book.

Note to others: Some people learn better when they first acquaint themselves with some theory, then take that mental framework into practical situations and use it to orient themselves and pick out the important features of a situation. Know thyself and if thats you, avoid disorientation by being getting good book (or class) recommendations and discussing them. Just make sure it is a tool and don't let it be something you use to retreat from the discomfort of practicing a very new skill. You can't learn the skill only from a book.

> Don't sell a drill, sell the hole. Clients are not looking for the specs of the drill, but the size of a hole.

This is an example of a true piece of advice which is a very pithy way of stating what is in fact some reasonably meaty theory.

“Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmxGqsuKmY

A book won't help you making the actual sale. It can provide you some guidelines (SPIN, Miller Heimann, Sales 2.0, DISC, Challenger Sale and many more) and confidence to actually start, but eventually the complexity of the actual sale can be mapped to the weather. However if you have identified the clients budget, mapped their stakeholders, communicate with the decision makers and you have created the need and urgency for your solution, you can increase the likelyhood of coming to a sale. Even tough things will happen outside of your control.....

what does mio mean in this context? i googled and it says it means millions in some financial markets but what is the io for?

It’s just an abbreviation for million, supposedly from Germany.

This thinking is quite freeform. The following opinion is not one I hold strongly.

Selling myself to a girlfriend feels very different though. First, I need to define my target market. I like women who are quite like myself. I value intelligence and wisdom above everything else. So I screen for that heavily. One of the things I do is I look in their eyes, do they look intense and conscious? If so, it might be that they are my type, so I go up and talk to them and am my playful geeky self. If they like that and respond back in kind then I continue for asking their number and go on a date to drill down further on intelligence and wisdom. I mostly care about their learning ability after that.

Hmm, I suppose it isn't very different. Though, to be fair it sounds like a cross-over between sales and hiring good people.

I feel the difference in sales is that my girlfriend needs to add value to my life. Sales doesn't necessarily need to add direct value in life as long as it can add financial value through other ways.

I think you're quite right.

Hey you're in Amsterdam (or so I hope)! Want to grab a coffee? I created a new email for HN people to email me at, see my bio.

>>> - Before you start building your MVP, sell the value proposition. If you are not able to sell and validate your value proposition, you will struggle selling your MVP.

This is sad and true. Sad because you can't just code stuff and hope it will sell.

Fortunately, it is yet possible :

> ...there is a very high likelyhood there is potential client

:-)

Unfortunately, any book that mentions closing the sale "my pen or yours", or objection handling isn't going get you where you want to be. You might get a sale but you will then have to work really hard to turn them into word of mouth advocates. It also results in your reluctance in wanting to sell.

I would recommend learning sales the hard way and you will need to put at least 12 months into it.

Learn about: - Becoming more open minded to see things from others point of view, dropping your own beliefs. - How to ask really good questions to find out what they want. - Be able to communicate clearly to many different types of people, marketing, CFO and the impatient CEO.

The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance[0] by Edward K. Strong might be considered something of a a classic when it comes to 'how to sell'. A bit of an oldie, but I think if you're interested in this 'genre', I would recommend to give it a go.

[0] https://archive.org/details/psychologyofsell00strorich/page/...

From reading the article, I'm sold on the idea that I need to be better at selling. Is there any material you'd suggest to help founders get better at sales?

Go buy some courses/coaching programs. It’s way less about one specific action turning you into a great salesperson. You don’t turn into a marathon runner overnight.

Ive spent $7k on coaching and sales this year (just what I could afford from my small startup) and it’s RADICALLY improved my production.

Just start trying shit (udemy, go to local sales events, spend more). If you actually learn how to sell you’ll be able to close biz for rest of your life. Then learn real lead gen and you’re set.

Speed is so valuable in this. The momentum you get from deals dropping more than makes up for the cost. And getting around other high performers

Any recommendations? Which udemy course is it?

I have bought probably 15 courses. Go get a few. Invest 4-5 hours in each. Put your phone down and focus

This won’t actually make you good. But it’ll start the curiousity.

Then, go buy a coaching program. I’ve gotten a lot. The more the better.

Can start with one that’s small. I’d suggest spending 2k on all of this education in total.

I think he/she was looking for specific courses, but your response doesn't give specifics (which I'd love to see as well) and just points to buying courses or programs. Can you enumerate the things you've purchased and maybe even rank them by their value to you?

https://salesprocess.io/home is good. I'm a customer and it has helped me grow my B2B marketing practice and my clients' businesses.

What about "How to Sell by Tyler Bosmeny"[0]. It's from YC online Startup school.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZi4kTJG-LE

Suggest the book "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff

http://www.enterprisesales.nyc/

Really thanks for sharing this. It's quite a comprehensive list of incredible resources.

I went through this experience, learned enough to hard (very hard) way that I start the Sales for Nerds podcast[1] so that other technical founders would have an easier time. ;-) Don't worry, there's only one episode where it's just me, mostly it's other folks sharing their stories and strategies. It's basically all the stuff I wish I'd had earlier...

[1] https://www.salesfornerds.io

Anyone know of any sales programs that put you through the rigor of actually selling something as opposed to sitting through a seminar?

That's why I teamed up with a cofounder with 30 years of sales experience. He's got a great vision for the product but no way to build it, I built it out in 8 weeks, he enables me to focus on the technical parts while he focuses on sales. Now we have our first test customer and MVP in place but if either he or I were doing this alone neither the MVP or first customer relationships would be in place, instead it would already be a failure.

I agree, but I think it just depends on your priorities and goals. If you're only aiming for a "lifestyle business" or some passive income to pay your living expenses, then I think sales can an optional activity, at least after you've some traction and paying customers. If you don't enjoy doing sales (I hate it), then there's plenty of other ways to get more customers. Don't get me wrong, I love talking to customers that are genuinely interested in using my product. I just hate sending spam emails to random people who usually have no need for my product.

I enjoy having a SaaS business where people can sign up and start paying for it without any sales calls or even support requests. I actually haven't had any success with cold sales, but I've been able to get plenty of paying customers through search, blog posts, ads, etc.

I could probably grow faster if I sent a lot more cold sales emails or even hired a small sales team. But I just don't really want to do that. I'm actually enjoying the slower pace and taking my time to do things properly and work on things that I enjoy.

Definitely check this book out - by far best advice on sales for founders I've ever seen: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZHCSm5yUAGhdpDH9VFTPS271...

Are you interested in a device, that allows you to take notes, seamlessly anywhere, it's small enough to fit in your pocket and with a battery the last for years. Do you want to buy this pen ? Seriously though, sales is about understanding the problem and offering a solution, as a developer, not only are you good at this already, you also know how to implement said solution.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181023144643/https://buzzways.... Archive link since the site is down

Even engineers working for a company need to get much better at sales of their ideas. It is not the best idea that wins, is the best idea that was sold

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18263508

Humanity needs to get radically better at funding startups without all the salesmanship

I swear to god, there needs to be a much, much better system to just incentivize people building useful-to-humanity inventions. So far we've tried: survival (got us fire and farming), traditional societies (got us guns and religion), and capitalism (ouch)

I don't think what you describing is a startup. Most definitions point to pre-sustainability while a company searches for a path to sustainability (meaning it's reliant on itself, not outside funding). Just because it has code in it doesn't mean it's a startup necessarily.

That said, even what you're describing requires sales. Sales is just persuasion with agreement resulting in a transaction.

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