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Ask HN: How to learn sales?

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Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#31
Oh boy - I didn't realize a question could be so topical. Another first-time founder here (engineer turned founder) that is currently in the middle of learning how to do the b2b sales process (which I'm assuming is what you're doing, if you're interested in b2c, I'm not sure how much of this translates). Needless to say that: (1) I'm most certainly NOT an expert (just someone figuring this out as well); (2) I'm super-duper interested in the responses here.

First things first, I think before selling, my understanding of sales was largely grounded as an "art", and by far the largest turning point in my understanding has been that sales has a pretty large "science" component to it as well, by which I mean tried and true repeatable steps that can be applied consistently.

As a founder, before sales, you need feedback. Assuming you don't have product-market fit (which you almost certainly don't know, because you don't have users), it is MOST important that you talk to customers to get a handle on what they need. The two books I found most valuable here are: - The Mom Test - Talking to Humans

(The Lean Startup has a good section on this as well; if, like me, you haven't reread it since starting a company - I would highly recommend doing so, you grok so much more than when you first read it without any experience to ground it to.)

Once you have some intuition around your market and that your product is actually tackling the right problem. I would read Founding Sales (https://www.foundingsales.com/). I was recommended this book by a founder-friend who told me "Literally stop whatever you or your team is doing and take the next two days to read this book" and I'm glad I did that. The book has given me a solid anchoring, vocabulary, and makes a compelling case that founder-sales are fundamentally different than regular sales: regular sales are what happens AFTER you have a repeatable process, founding sales requires much more of a product mind to rapidly integrate feedback and live-iterate on the product.

From there, you'll realize you have two skills you really need to learn: marketing and sales. Broadly: marketing is about getting leads, sales is about closing them.

Marketing: There are a whole bunch of books and articles I've been recommended on marketing (Traction being one of top recommended ones). However, after having done a lot of this I'm not convinced that this is a good use of time as a founder. So much of what I've heard / seen is that your first few customers WILL be warm intros from within your network. So a better use of your time may be a LinkedIn subscription and to go through the network of: your VCs, any former companies you've worked at, any school you graduated and shamelessly ask for intros. A good article that popped up on HN recently was: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales. (Also, for the theory of marketing, I personally found Crossing the Chasm a solid book to contextualize what phase of selling I was in and how it might change over time.)

Sales: Is hard. The best advice I've received is: remember it's about them. Not about you. When someone is gracious enough to take a phone call with you, do not immediately pitch them. That makes it about you. Instead, ask them about their process and the pain point you address. This helps both: you discern if it's a real painpoint, them realize that they have / the magnitude of that pain. Two frameworks that have helped me are: - BANT: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/bant - MEDDIC: https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/close-more-deals-with-meddic...

Also, something that's been really helpful here are mentors. Finding other founders who have successfully navigated from seed -> series A usually have good advice on how they did early sales (also, some sales people that have been at early companies have been particularly helpful, especially when they first acknowledge founder sales is a similar but different animal than they may be used to).

Other than that, there's only so much you can read, just go ahead and try it! I believe that a lot of this probably takes practice above all else, and you're not going to sell your product without talking to anyone!

Best of luck! I'm happy to talk to you about your product - and thank you for posting a question that's been on my and my cofounder's minds for weeks now. And, as I said at the top, I am not an expert--just another person trying my best to figure it out. I've already found a bunch of the other responses useful :)

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#32
You can learn about the theory of sales, I’ll leave the others to post it. Long time sales specialist here: Sales is situational and hard to generalise. There is an important social aspect to sales. You need to know your customer and be able to read their reactions. All individual customers are, well, individuals. They react differently, have different expectations and bring different experience and behaviour to the table. You need to adjust during conversation and be prepared for the worst case scenarios.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#33
The best way is to take one of those day gigs selling anything under the sun: magazine subscriptions, American Airlines credit cards, Joe Biden fundraising, etc. Getting over the fear of the “no” is critical, and getting the occasional “yes” is also important, and these sales gigs teach you both.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#34
Lots of good, more specific recommendations, so here's some broad and cliched advice:

You have two ears, one mouth. Focus on what your potential customer needs, their problems, pain and goals, and how your product can help. It will help you get out of your own head.

Don't take rejection personally. If you can't sell the product then you can at least sell yourself as someone trustworthy, friendly and helpful.

Remember that people are not purely rational, and often have hidden motives, biases, and incentives. You may win or lose a sale on factors totally out of your control, or because of reasons that are not at all clear on the surface.

Charm is a real thing. I can think of a few times I've bought something solely because the salesman was doing SUCH A GOOD JOB of making me feel special, cared for and considered. Even consciously recognizing what was happening didn't change that I wanted the experience to run through to its natural conclusion and to complete the ritual.

Something interesting I found reading Caro's LBJ biographies is how much of a Jobs-like Reality Distortion Field the man had. People who worked with him describe how he'd wind himself up mentally and emotionally while working on an issue. He'd hit some inflection point where he truly believed whatever he was selling, even if he'd been very opposed to it only shortly before. Once he was there, the emotion and energy would overwhelm resistance and he'd get his way.

I'm not saying either of those men are to be idolized, but they do reveal something about the power of exposing your emotional side during a sale. I mention this because you said they can bog you down. Consider how you might turn that to your advantage.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#35
Source: I’ve been in biz development and pre-sales for almost 10 years.

I like the Sandler sales methodology as a simple and cooperative process.

Cooperative in the sense that you’re continuously moving closer to a signed deal _with_ the prospect’s commitment and understanding.

It helps you not to waste time with “tire kickers”. By focusing on a “pain” to solve. If someone wants you the spend your time with them educating them at length about your problem and don’t have a clear problem they’re trying to fix then stop immediately and get them to engage with marketing.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#36
A big part of sales is handling rejection. There are books that help you detect buying signals and shape conversations in your direction, but dealing with rejection is a big, big part of sales.

If you want to start selling on your own, I would have a goal to talk to at least _x_ people per day about your product. Ask questions more than you talk at them. A LOT of people will think that you’re crazy, but some will entertain your ask and might even give you useful information.

If you want some help, you should hire (or ask) a salesperson and go out on cold calls/pitches with them. Observe more than you speak.

As far as books go, “The Little Red Book of Selling” is a classic along with “Spin Selling.”

Last thing I’ll add here: if conversation with people that you don’t know is difficult for you, that is the first thing I’d focus on. People need to trust you to buy from you; that trust is built through rapport. 2020 is a terrible year for this since the best way to practice conversations is through meeting people outside, but when things stabilize, I’d go to Meetups, conferences, and the like and try to meet x people per day, just like the goal above.

Source: Me selling myself when pick-up artistry was a thing, then using those same skills when I built my (failed) startup. Eventually landed me jobs in consulting.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#37
I've posted this a few times, but my favorite book is just an ebook from Fog Creek (makers of FogBugz, Trello, Stack Overflow, and more) http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/20324/203241714.pdf

It's 24 pages, so it's a quick read, and it's from the perspective of an engineer who has to do sales for the first time. A lot of the ideas are taken from Frank McNair's book "How You Make the Sale" https://www.amazon.com/How-You-Make-Sale-Salesperson/dp/B01G...

The other option is to get a job as a Sales Engineer, Customer Engineer, Solution Architect, etc. These are all pre-sales engineering roles where you aren't responsible for closing sales, but are exposed to the process. I know you're already an engineering manager, but Solution Architect is a very entrepreneurial role. IMO, it's a tough skill and tough process to learn by reading, so getting a job with real life experience could be worthwhile.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?

#39
The answer depends on what you sell. If you sell an enterprise product to big corps then the patio11's guide [1] would be a good starting point.

Otherwise, selling is simple - just solve the customer's problem as if it was your problem.

What's really hard is marketing. And you will need marketing because marketing generates leads and without a stream of leads you can't do sales.

[1] https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...

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