Ask HN: Recommended books for a sales newbie? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommended books for a sales newbie?

4 pointsmogston5 comments

We're about to launch our first freemium based web app and will primarily be advertising the service via traditional online channels (organic search, adwords, banners etc) in order to generate online sales. Our application is aimed at marketing agencies, project teams and social media power users and can be used online, or the source code downloaded to work within corporate firewalls.

Although sufficiently experienced at marketing online, we don't really have any experience selling offline (face to face, conferences, cold-calls, events etc). Being based in London, it seems sensible to try and obtain sales offline as a lot of our UK target market will be based here, particularly at events and conferences.

We already have two other relatively successful websites, but have relied on our ad networks (not Google) to provide the sales expertise - our new project does not display banner ads, so this is not an option.

As with any startup, time is very very precious, so i'm looking to source a couple of powerful, practical sales books that don't take months to read or require weeks to learn a completely new vocabulary.

I've been searching around HN for recommendations, and have so far picked our the following books that have been suggested (i've already read The Secrets of Selling by Geoff King)

* Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Red Book of Selling * How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling - by Frank Bettger * Bag the Elephant - by Steve Kaplan

Are there any other books that you would recommend for a small startup in our situation? Any help you can offer would be appreciated.

Unless you are good at sales, focus on

1. provide a product with a compelling, obvious, and objective advantage over the competition. (either better or cheaper, but preferably both.) You don't have to be better in every way, just obviously and objectively better in some way.

2. let people know you exist.

Seriously, this is the way to 'scale' sales. Face-to-face selling is excessively expensive, and best left to the professionals.

Personally, in person I usually end up talking up my competitors. For example, I always say I've heard good things about slicehost. Slicehost sells a directly comparable product, and my advantage over them is obvious, dramatic, and objective. Other than price, though, I haven't heard anything bad about them.

If you need to co-locate high-power boxes, or rent high CPU but low-ram boxes, I like rippleweb.com. Rippleweb charges something like $80 for each rack unit of space, no matter how much power you use. So if you have a 1u box with 2 CPUs, (likely eating more than 200w) rippleweb is cheaper than I am for co-location. (I happen to know that rippleweb has significantly lower power costs than I do. And Raphael is pretty good.)

If you do have a low-volume, high-margin product without sales skills, I'd suggest getting a hired gun. Do you think you can compete with a professional on sales? Do you think a professional salesguy could compete with you when it comes to programming after reading a few books?

I personally don't use a reseller program or commissioned sales folks, first, because I have a low margin, high volume product, so giving someone 30%, while doable, would hurt some, and secondarily, because I have very specific ideas about what I want my image to be. And personally, I like the "I'm bad at marketing" image. Besides, I'm selling out about as fast as I can put servers up, even with my nearly zero effort marketing.

Thanks @lsc! I love you approach -how are you getting word out about your hosting business? What % are you getting actual sales from word of mouth versus SEO/online marketing versus direct face to face selling?

I suggest these all from personal experience and success (yes, these books have indirectly made me money):

* Tom Hopkins - How To Master The Art Of Selling (some of it is a bit American but the overall concepts learned here are priceless)

* Harry Beckwith - What Clients Want

* Leil Lowndes - How to Talk to Anyone (not directly sales, but this is a massive part of it nonetheless)

* Sam Horn - POP! Stand Out In Any Crowd (this will help you hone your message - learning to sell is good, but if your message sucks, so will the selling)

All of these are reasonably short, cpl hundred pages at most.

Thanks for the recommendations, i'll check them out and let everyone know how i get on.

I've finally just ordered my copy of 'The Four Steps to the Epiphany' - can't wait to get stuck in.

I would also recommend: Ice to the Eskimos: How to market a product nobody wants - by Jon Spoelstra (an awesome awesome book. More about strategy than face to face selling though. But one of the best marketing books I've read.)

Top Dog Sales Secrets: 50 Top Experts Show You Proven Ways to Skyrocket Your Sales - by Michael Dalton Johnson

Art Sobczak is another good author for learning about cold calling. I've read some of his stuff which is good - but not his books. But you may want to check his book out: How to Sell More, in Less Time, With No Rejection : Using Common Sense Telephone Techniques

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