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Ask HN: How to learn sales?

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Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#121

Post by georgeolaru »

djkz wrote: post #17

Bob Moesta's new book has some good pointers on it, it's currently on sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progr...

I just finished this book and I think it's the most down-to-earth approach towards selling. It even suggests an alternative title for "salespeople" that wants to help others make progress, which would be "concierge."

Looking forward to digging deeper into the Jobs-To-Be-Done theory with Clayton Christensen's book on "Competing Against Luck"

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#123

Post by blueblisters »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #114
skmurphy wrote: post #15

You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Marketing gets the phone to ring, sales takes the call and closes the deal. For B2B sales resembles project management: the goal is not to convince everyone to buy your product or service but to diagnose their needs and only engage with firms that will benefit. For larger deals you "sell with your ears" as much as you talk.…

Great summary on sales and marketing but neither is a monolith. Sales can best be distinguished by indirect sales and direct sales. Direct sales is where you go out and find clients. Indirect sales is where you go out and find partners to bring you clients. You don’t buy Coca Cola from Coca Cola. You rarely by HP from HP. Companies tend to be more successful when they find ways to grow using “channels”. This is a goo…

Has anyone had success doing B2B SaaS sales using cloud marketplaces like AWS marketplace, GCP marketplace, Azure, etc.? I wonder if that qualifies as "channel sales".

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#124

Post by biggestdummy »

Hire someone. Or, if you don't have money, bring on a co-founder.

All the books and suggestions could make you better. But if you've never sold, there's probably a 10% chance that you'll _ever_ be good at it. And if you had an interest, you probably would have done some SA/SE work earlier in your career - given that you haven't, your chances are probably lower.

Finding a good salesperson is also no easy task. Best advice is to recruit someone who has sold you something. You have the relationship already, and you know that they are able to build trust and win business.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#125

Post by gogopuppygogo »

blueblisters wrote: post #123
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great summary on sales and marketing but neither is a monolith. Sales can best be distinguished by indirect sales and direct sales. Direct sales is where you go out and find clients. Indirect sales is where you go out and find partners to bring you clients. You don’t buy Coca Cola from Coca Cola. You rarely by HP from HP. Companies tend to be more successful when they find ways to grow using “channels”. This is a goo…

Has anyone had success doing B2B SaaS sales using cloud marketplaces like AWS marketplace, GCP marketplace, Azure, etc.? I wonder if that qualifies as "channel sales".

I think any third party taking a margin off your sale to help facilitate the transaction constitutes a channel.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#126

Post by lasky »

Lean into and leverage your genuine curiosity about the worlds of the people whom you’re building for, and keep coming back to it.

Be willing to explore your curiosity for the problem(s) your product will be solving, and the natural/unnatural impact interacting with you and your software has on these groups of very real people, who cooperate under the conceptual guise of “Companies”, who you will call “Customers”.

Be careful about the temptation to confuse the very empty sweet/salty snack-bite sized “this is how sales works” mantras put out by all the pundits on twitter. Most of them are 10% truth, 90% “look at me”.

Talk to real people who have spent meaningful time in their careers in Sales and Sales leadership in the space you’re interested in.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#127

Post by nikitaga »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #125
blueblisters wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone had success doing B2B SaaS sales using cloud marketplaces like AWS marketplace, GCP marketplace, Azure, etc.? I wonder if that qualifies as "channel sales".

I think any third party taking a margin off your sale to help facilitate the transaction constitutes a channel.

Stripe isn't a channel though. The third party in question needs to actually do some work to bring you traffic / leads, not just do the mechanics of processing the transaction.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#128

Post by hypnotist »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #12

Something important to know is the difference between an actual sale (i.e. closing) and a sales process. If you want to be a good sales person, you focus on the sale, but if you are building a company, you need to figure out a sales process (which usually includes marketing on one end and onboarding on the other, not just sales). It doesn't matter how good of a sales person you are if you are not getting any leads. C…

This process is very nicely defined in Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#130

Post by apapli »

Read the “challenger sale” book. I’m 20 years in tech sales and it’s easily the best way to get started.

Also - sales is 1:1 conversations. Marketing is 1:many. That’s the easiest way to figure out the difference between the two.

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