Tim Ferriss on Y Combinator and the Art of Pitch: 'Always Be Closing' | Hacker News Reader

Tim Ferriss on Y Combinator and the Art of Pitch: 'Always Be Closing'

fourhourworkweek.com

88 pointsarmansu28 comments

I was selling storage (Sun, not EMC) back in 2000. Sales guy made a fortune back then not because they were especially good, but because they were selling servers and storage into the hottest tech market the world had ever known. The hardest part of my job for a couple of years was just finding enough Sun gear to fulfill customer requests. I know more than a few guys that made ridiculous money for a couple of years. None of them have made it back to the income level. Most haven't even come close. I never had a client blow up so big that it got me into the "1%" but 1998-2002 were definitely very good years for my family.

EMC reps making $500K a year was much more of a market bubble than it was a indicator of sales ability and working hard. I think one reason so many tech salespeople job hop every 18 months is that they are looking for the next home run. I was guilty of it myself for a while.

It is beyond me why anyone would open with an example from the year 2000, the most artificial, inflated, unreal market in 3 generations. Salesmen were mere order-takers: They could spout whatever bullshit they fancied and still deliver increasing YOY sales.

Fluff meter is off-scale.

I don't know, I wouldn't use Glengarry Glen Ross as an example of something you'd aspire to. The play/movie is a criticism of the sleazy "sales animal" culture where the product doesn't matter, closing sales is equated to virility, and the players are so desperate for a sale they'd lie, steal and ruin other people's lives for it.

Bingo. This is about as amusing as Reagan using Bruce Springstein's "Born in the USA" in his 1984 presidential bid.

Do some people just not understand how to interpret literary, musical, and other artistic works? Or are they being deliberately ironic?

Isn't 'Always Be Closing' from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross? (though more emphasized in the film adaptation than the script)

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/glengarry.html

Is the video at the top of the article.

I do not, as a principle, click on Tim Ferris links, or that wine guy, or various other self-promoters. A hardline, yes, but it's a choice I have been happy with.

Fair enough, but in that case why comment on the articles if you haven't looked at them?

Because the headline, as phrased, makes "ABC" seem to be an statement by Ferris.

Nevertheles, I can assure you there is higher entropy in my shot in the dark response than the linked article, and I haven't clicked on the linked article :-) Call it a hunch, wisdom, or arrogance :-P

That is nothing to boast about, given that high entropy data is just noise.

:-)

As mentioned in another comment, the OP is a bunch of excerpts from the book: "The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups", written by Randall Strossen.

Tim Ferris does a small intro.

The Y Combinator book is by Randall Stross, not Strossen. Strossen is a writer of a bunch of fitness and weight training books.

I agree 100% about avoiding the self-promotion nonsense, but I would make the following exception for "that wine guy" (Gary Vaynerchuk): his wine videos are terrific! I learned a ton about wine and the wine industry from http://tv.winelibrary.com/ (and later, http://dailygrape.com/) when he was still actively producing videos, and I was extremely disappointed when he stopped doing this to focus on being a "social media expert".

It is in that movie, but I think it is a general sales term that they borrowed. I don't believe it was invented for the film.

Slightly off-topic, but if anyone wants to read an interesting blog about sales and sales techniques, I would recommend Sales Source by Geoffrey James in Inc Magazine:

http://www.inc.com/author/geoffrey-james

I actually liked this blog post by Ferriss. I almsot didn't click on it because I don't like his schtick...but this was pretty decent.

Back when I worked in consulting for a successful, trendy dot-com era consulting company, they had a motto that we were all "working in marketing" and all of us, even the engineers, were always "selling". It was more philosophical attitude than anything, but made the engineers think a little bit when they were on site implementing tech.

I haven't read through all of it, but it seems to be excerpt from Randall Strossen's book, only the intro is by Tim Ferriss. Maybe the title should reflect that?

I went to look at a flat and it turned out that the agent had booked someone else at the same time to view the flat and then tried to turn it into an unpleasant contest for who could be the first to bring him a deposit, even going as far as saying that we could have a fight about it, even though neither of us had shown any issue with the other.

We were both just standing there open mouthed and staring at him, wondering if he was for real. I decided there and then that it didn't matter how nice the flat was, there was no way I was going to have financial dealings with someone who was that much of an arsehole and told the other guy that as far as I was concerned he could have the flat if he wanted it.

I eventually went with a place that was equally nice, where the agent told me that the only people he had had round so far weren't all that interested, so I could probably take a few days to decide.

So if you are going to always be closing, don't be a dick about it.

I don't think there was anything in there at all about being a dick?

Did you watch the movie clip at the beginning of the article dealing with how to sell real estate?

The aggression of the character played by Baldwin towards his staff is exactly the kind of culture that seems to produce people like the agent I had to deal with.

Seems like the agent wasn't effectively closing, instead he was setting up a distracting, artificial "contest" between two prospective clients.

If he truly was "always closing", he would have given you his attention and sold each of you individually - and hard - on the merits of the place. (And maybe, parenthetically, mentioned how much interest there was in it among other prospective renters...)

This is standard practice in NYC and SF. If you're going to look at an apartment, you bring your checkbook and are prepared to leave a deposit on the spot if you want the place.

This is awesome, I'm going to get the book. Key takeout: "be sales animals".

I noticed my comment was down voted, but I wasn't being sarcastic & thought it was a pretty innocuous comment. Being relatively new here I'm genuinely intrigued, was it what I said or how I said it? Feedback appreciated :)

No no no no quit it no just stop no no no no no please just no

Quit what?

This guy sounds like my high school prom date...

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