Getting to No: The Key to Startup Selling

An alternative approach is to properly qualify prospects up front once you get them on the phone. This helps you identify a non-customer early in the conversation so that you can end it if there is no fit, or aggressively pursue if there is.

Also, a good sales call needs to have some structure. For example, a good portion of the qualifying questions should focus on customer pain.

Does the prospect have the pain you solve?

Does the prospect already solve/address the pain? If so, how? With whom? What is good about the current solution? What's wrong with it?

Does the prospect have budget to solve the pain? How much? How is budget allocated and when? What is the budget process?

Who makes decisions about this pain? Who decides which solution to use? Who approves the budget, and who can influence a purchase decision?

And so on.

With regard to endlessly calling people...if it works then stick with it. I've been amazed over the years at what works for different sales people. There are definitely practices that work for one person's personality that would be horrific with a different sales person.

However, I think the OP's advice is to remember your ABCs of selling (Always Be C/Selling).

The guy who the movie the Wolf of Wall Street is based on was on Piers Morgan a few weeks back and he said his approach to sales was basically the same thing. You ask someone if they're interested in buying X right now, if they say "no", you ask "OK when will you be looking to buy X" and just move on to someone who wants to buy "X" now. It all sounds so obvious, but like the OP states, to us engineers, it can feel a bit slimy, pushy etc. Not how we want to be sold things if the roles were reversed.

I've definitely found the transition to salesperson from developer one of the hardest things about running a company.

I'm a little iffy on the whole "super persistence" thing, but there's a reason the old saw "persistence overcomes resistance" comes up. That said, the part I like about this is the advice about "get to no", regardless of how you get there.

I'm a fan of Jeff Thull's "Diagnostic Business Development" approach, and in his book Mastering The Complex Sale he makes a similar point. And think about it: If this customer is not going to buy your product (because they don't need it, don't like you, or because of your skin color, whatever) the sooner you find out, the better... because now you can divert that energy and attention to a different prospect who may be more likely to buy.

I'm still trying to learn to be a salesman after 20 some odd years of being a coder first and foremost, so a lot of this still feels foreign to me, but at least some of it is starting to make sense. Hopefully salesmen can be "made" and don't have to be "born".

This advice may have been based off a long time best selling book that the author fails to mention, either because he doesn't know about the book (ignorance) or because he knows about the book, but he forgot to mention it (forgetfulness).

The name of the book is: Go For No http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Destination-How-You-There/dp/09663...

It's a great book.

I'm wondering if no one says no in the face of this persistence on the simple basis of saying "you're annoying". If someone was to call me every hour I don't think I'd really even care what it is that they're offering me. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I would think that there are only a few people who will actually then offer you insights into why they don't want your product.

Reminds me so much of boiler room: And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that's it, I'm done.

That said it's a technique that works really well.

I like this advice a lot. We have been wasting way too much time with maybes instead of pressuring them into a yes/no. People are worried that the pressure is harmful to the brand/relationship but its not as harmful as wasting a lot of time on a maybe which ends up as a no. Great post.

Can't believe that there are no negative comments yet. So ridiculous. No wonder so many people are sending endless sales emails. No reply after several attempts is a NO. DOH.

Now thousands of people reading this ridiculous blog post will copycat. FACEPALM.

Please. Stop. this. nonsense.

Reminds me of something I wrote similar to this, learned it from another founder who went to Stanford and did his MBA there: http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/hacking-the-system-how-to-...

Context: I was writing a book and needed it finished before final exams my senior year. I had to get people to say yes or no, but no responses were just wasting time. Not a single person was offended when I used this trick.

An important tip missing on the OP is: be persistent, fully knowing that you might be annoying, but never, under any circunstance admit that you are annoying, or act as you knew you were being annoying. You must sound totally naivee, act as all you want is your prospect to better and completely convinced that using your product would make him a better person/professional. Act surprised when the prospect act irritated. And always use the argument that the prospect himself kept that door open with you by not saying he didn't want your product.

This was a great read to me, because now I know that I've been doing it right for the last few years. Before my "2013 startup year" I worked on a philanthropy advisory non-profit. 80% of my job was selling to wealthy individuals our service of being a guide to better donations. So I was basically a salesperson selling a service that almost nobody in Brazil consider a real need or problem - btw that's one difference between cause driven non-profits and market driven startups, you don't pivot if the market doesn't need your service, you persist. Mainly because the people you are solving a problem and the people giving you money are two separate stakeholders usually. That's kind of inevitable, because the social problem wouldn't be there to begin with if the market/society were really bothered by it. I can't imagine Watsi pivoting because people do not want to pay for medical anymore, but they would be willing to pay for a exotic tourism service to where the people they aid are from. They might get more money this way, but social tourism is another cause, solves another problem (maybe). It is not an acceptable pivot for a non-profit.

Back on topic, I learned to be persistent to get to a no. People hate saying no to something that the society consider the right thing to do, even if they have no intention of actually doing it, so this was crutial to my job - get a "no" was always my objective.

But I disagree with a reason to do it is getting feedback. I never got real feedback for why people were saying no - maybe because of what I was selling, there is a stigma in saying "I won't donate because I earned it by myself and I am antitled to spend on whatever I want, and giving them away to other people's benefit is not my idea of a money well spent".

The problem with this type of advice is that you're going to end up approaching prospects from a very narrow point of view. For example, enterprise markets typically have excruciatingly long sales cycles with several layers of decision makers. Those types of deals require longterm investments in the prospective relationship.

Persistence is an admirable trait of any good salesperson though I would never recommend irritating an answer out of someone.

I remember a sales book once. Cannot remember the title. But it had an interesting diagram.

Most people think: Failure --> Success

It is actually: Failure --> Failure --> Failure --> Success

I think most guys (and possibly girls) eventually learn (sometimes through painful experience) that getting a quick rejection is better than being friend-zoned. Fail faster! Talk to that interesting person who intrigue you!

The key thing is to make sure you understand why the customer is saying no, or why they are saying yes. If you don't get a firm no you can never actually ask the questions that will let you understand where there is a mismatch between the potential customer and product. After understanding you can better alter the product or customer you go after.

They don't show me any content until I give them my email address? Am I missing something?

Great post, it is high value business stuff like this that I read HN for.

Can someone shed some light on what he means by "prospect" "product" and so on? This is all highly abstract, bordering on generic sales advice.

There's a similar idea in Sandler Selling, where in your voice mail you invite them to say that it's over, and just to let you know that it is.