Ask HN: How to learn sales?

1. Listen to yourself pitch. Ask people you talk to if it's OK to record the pitch and then listen to it repeatedly and take notes. It will be painful, and you'll notice so many things you hate, but you will get better. This is the number one thing that helped me get better.

2. Understand your customer. Really understand them. What are their hopes with buying your product? What are their fears if they make the wrong choice, or no choice at all? The stuff that's really at the core of these questions-- it's deep, personal, often embarrassing stuff people won't just tell you. Getting at this sort of thing is a skill. If you do it well, you'll not only sell better, you'll have a better sales process, and probably a better product.

3. Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence) by Robert Cialdini. If you're a former engineer, you'll especially love this book. It helps you understand how people tick, including yourself, and some of the techniques your competition are probably using.

Finally, don't be an asshole. It's so easy when you get good at sales to view the sale itself as the goal. It shouldn't be. The goal should be solving the customer's problem. Getting the sale is the first step, but make sure you only get it if you can genuinely help the customer-- if the customer will be thrilled they bought from you a month from now. The world has too many assholes willing to sell people the wrong thing for them. Don't be another one.

1) wife and ex are not what you would think are first glance as sales people. Far from pushy, one a bit shy, neither big networkers. However, when It comes to the job, they always do what they say they will do, when they say they will do it, the way they say they will do it. Their customers (well most anyway) love working with them because they get a prompt response and follow through on commitments. When a problem occurs, my wife is on it and doesn’t rest until it’s fixed.

2). You need to make it about your customer, not you. The sooner you realize helping your customer helps you, the more successful you will be. I’ve worked at large companies where salespeople only do what’s in their goals and bonus. Unless you are lucky, this will backfire.

3). Be interested in who you sell to. I work at a company that sells chemicals, some of which they could get elsewhere. The relationships the sales team build are amazing. They know everything about their customers personally and I’m impressed with the little details our commercial team remembers.

4) know everything about your product, from how it’s made to who makes it, what’s it cost to make, how does your accounts payable team pay bills for you materials, how does sourcing buy those materials and from who, etc. no question is too detailed!

Selling an EMR to a hospital, selling pharmaceuticals to a doctor, sell used cars, selling insurance at circuit city, or selling customer software development are all sales jobs but put someone who is successful at one into another job and very likely they would struggle.

Even selling software is very different. Some important attributes to consider are

"who you are selling to?" Selling to Walmart is very different from selling to Joe who runs his own plumbing company. They make decisions differently, what they care about is different, how many people you need to convince to make a sale is different.

"how much does what you sell cost?" This will determine what sales strategies are viable. If you are selling something that is $100 sales is closer to "marketing will tell you to give me a call" vs selling something that's $100,000 will allow you to pursue more hands on strategies.

"why would someone buy your product?" The big reasons people buy things are to drive up revenue, drive down cost, or reduce risk. How and who you sell these things to differs.