Comment by allyourhorses | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allyourhorses | Hacker News Reader

Selling is a horrible misnomer, the process is entirely about understanding that you have something the other party might want, and communicating this effectively. You could take a shit hot salesperson and give them a garbage product, and force them to work an idiotic market segment and they'll sell nothing. On the other hand, you could take a person (like me!) with almost no interpersonal skills whatsoever with a solution to a very specific issue faced by people they're already in contact with, and they'll sell like champions.

So the whole framing of product and market, and communication media is way more interesting (IMHO) than 'selling' as an explicit skill. (And yes, I do "sell", but I'm not "good at selling", because my skillset is tied to a tiny handful of niches where I have this framing figured out)

edit: there's another bit that annoyed me about this post, and it's the idea of explicit 'selling' before having a solution to sell. It's something akin to putting the cart before the horse. Any selling opportunities I've discovered have always been in the pursuit of solving some other problem. I suppose basically if you have a genuinely good solution to any problem, selling is barely a skill worth worrying about. This is as true in interviews as in product marketing

It's worth noting this can vary a lot depending on target market and deal size.

I've had the fortune of being in a tech role where I got to join plenty of sales calls. And I've observed that when selling large deal to large companies, selling is both a skill and a process and the difference between a good salesperson and a mediocre one is literally millions of dollars a year.

If you're looking to close large deals with good clients who you aren't currently in contact with (but who really, truly have a need for what you offer), it's worth looking at selling as a discrete set of skills including prospecting, nurturing leads, getting meetings, and closing deals. Closing can be an adventure even after a prospect said they want to buy. Shepherding a deal through an enterprise onboarding and procurement process is no walk in the park.

A lot of people see this kind of formal selling process as distasteful. I used to feel that way, too. But when I observed it in action it didn't seem like enterprise decision makers viewed the process negatively. They expected to be sold to and were generally receptive to it because the product met a need.

So as I mentioned, it's highly dependent on what you sell and who you're selling it to, but I think a wholesale dismissal of selling as a useful skill would be a mistake.

> It's worth noting this can vary a lot depending on target market and deal size.

I'd go so far as to say that once you hit a certain deal size, it's impossible to compete without treating sales as its own specialized field just like you would management in a large organization. The number of independent variables and people involved grows superlinearly with the amount of money involved and managing that process is its own skill, one that's extremely valuable because it can only learned in a trial by fire. As they grow bigger, they get even more specialized - a friend of mine who was the rockstar salesman at a big CRO that made 8-9 figure deals to run clinical trials for pharma had a lot of trouble moving into commercial jet sales, for example, which might see 10-11 figure deals delivered over a decade.

> the process is entirely about understanding that you have something the other party might want, and communicating this effectively.

More to the point, it's also about listening to what your sales prospect is actually looking for and helping explain to them how what you're selling fits their needs or wants, so that they'll make a decision to commit to the solution you're offering.

If you have no sales prospects, then you have a marketing problem, not a sales problem. Marketing is about explaining why your solution is desirable to as many people in the first place, ideally people who the arcane-black-magic-practicioners tell you are totally going to become sales prospects, if only they knew you existed. But leave aside reaching your audience - if you can't explain why you're hot stuff to somebody who is naturally inclined to want what you're selling, then you have a confidence problem, not a marketing problem.

Marketing moves all deals forward. Sales moves specific ones forward.

Agreed. If your product just works, “sales” is a piece of cake. If it doesn’t and you find yourself hiring a fancy expensive charismatic sales team just to convince people to buy your product then that’s borderline fraud imo.

Perhaps in some segments. BigCo b2b not so much IMHO :/

I've had trouble getting big companies to buy startup product because a) nobody wants to be the first big name and b) they're worried you'll be out of business in 2 years and integration effort will have been for nothing.

Of course these are self-fulfilling prophesies unless you can get the "engine" running.

Also if your product overlaps with features or products of a large vendor who already has a relationship with your customer (this is common) you have to fight the incumbent - and they have home team advantage even if their product sucks.

With every market there's a timing element and a large part of it revolves around exactly those kinds of marketing considerations. The right product at the wrong time won't get traction because they're taking a space already occupied by some incumbent - but offering when there's hype and interest around your category and a lot of first-time customer potential gets you in the door unchallenged, hence why there are distinct "generational waves" of startups that find a growth segment and sink their teeth in it at the right moment.

While this answer points out there can be various factors involved in the success of a sale, it completely underestimates the skills of selling and persuasion which many books have been written about and certain character types have a natural affinity for.

I have years of experience in high-end retail sales and a subsequent decade of experience in high-dollar niche sales. In all of my jobs my entire life I've worked 100% commission.

Here's the thing both your and the parent's comment are missing: sales isn't about persuasion or communication, it's about listening.

My comment had no need to drill down into the various factors involved in the process, so it was no more "missing" than any other of them; the point was clearly to counter the idea it's not an actual talent or skill; you would have picked that up if you'd "listened" :).

Nah. My point is that most people off the street assume salesmanship is about touting your product effectively. Anyone can talk a big game.

Making people feel heard, and then specifically responding to their pain is the real answer. Yours and many other comments on this page make the same mistake, which is based on a widely-prevalent flawed assumption that is almost universal among the general population.

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