Fatal Sales Mistakes | Hacker News Reader

Fatal Sales Mistakes

blog.close.io

73 pointsphilfreo9 comments

Lots of great speakers today at Sales Hacker Conference (http://saleshackerconference.com)

Close.io is taking notes on all the talks... here's the table of contents:

http://blog.close.io/post/64309551885/sales-hacker-conferenc...

An import concept shared by Aaron: "Sell ideas, not stuff!" I think this is profound. Most often companies forget about selling the vision and get caught up in the details.

I recently read a book called The Challenger Sale with this idea.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Sale-Customer-Conversat...

It expands on this idea, and says that one successful sales process actually leads with ideas on how to make your business run better, then follows it up with all the information necessary to implement that change. If you do it right, the end of the sales process will be the customer asking you for suggestions on how to do what you suggested, and the only answer is your product.

It strikes me as a wonderfully powerful idea. I definitely recommend the book.

http://predictablerevenue.com/blog/a-sell-ideas-not-stuff-ma...

One of the most interesting comments during the Q and A was Aaron recommended people don't be blinded by resumes (paraphrasing) "Just because people work at google, they might have 10k people there, doesn't mean they all [google employees\ are qualified or a good fit to join an early stage start up"

Agree! Also love the "Hire Builders not Growers". Lots of founders make the mistake to hire sales people in the very early stages of their startup that have no experience in doing sales for a 4 person startup team (and came from a tech company they joined as employee #400)

I can't imagine you'd come across many folks with the experience you described looking for a sales role at 4 person startup. If a salesperson was employee #4 at a startup, and that startup was successful, I would imagine he or she would pursue a Senior Sales / VP of Sales role at a more established startup vs. a lateral move.

You're right, but what you're looking for is someone who joined a start up early and grew the sales team successfully and now wants to go back go an early stage start up. Some people like building and working with early stage companies

False, none of the sales mistakes discussed have been known to cause death.

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