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Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#51

Post by beaconstudios »

vram22 wrote: post #46
acconrad wrote: post #43

I'm a technical consultant so the business isn't the same but I do have to do a ton of sales and I've done multiple six-figure deals and generated multiple six figures in revenue per year, so I am able to sell to some regard. I'd recommend just reading a ton of books. There's a formula to sales that is well documented, you just have to adapt the pieces that work with your personality. The ones I'd recommend reading a…

>so I am able to sell to some regard Not clear to me what that means. Means sell well?

it means they are able to sell but are being humble about it because they are not explicitly a salesperson.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#52

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

Listen more than you speak. The customer will tell you their pain points which is your chance to see if you have a solution.

Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"-Dale Carnegie, to keep empathy in mind when dealing with different people.

Create a system to track all sales interactions in a pipeline. Potential deals enter and move through confirmation stages: customer interested, value proven to customer, customer says they'll buy, purchase order received, check clears and product delivered. Take the $ amount of the potential deal and value it at 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% as it progresses.

If you build a pipeline of deals you'll have an idea of how much revenue to expect from your current prospects. 200% pipeline value to your goal would give you a lot o confidence that you'll close enough deals to make your number.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#53

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

mindcrime wrote: post #22
gamechangr wrote: post #18

I will be contrarian on HN. Hire a sales guy. It's worth every $. "If you build it, they will not come"

There's no doubt that experienced sales people are valuable, but I would argue that there is a point in a startup lifecycle where it's too soon to hire one. For one or both of two reasons: 1. You're still trying to figure out exactly what it is you're building and how to best price/sell it. That is, you're still in more of a "customer development" mode than a pure "push the accelerator on sales for all it's worth" mo…

Both excellent points! Also, sales people don't come cheap but effective sales people bring in far more revenue than they cost in commissions.

But... there is probably a baseline price below which it doesn't make sense to have a full time sales person knocking on doors. In that case, drop down one level to "Inside Sales" where you hire people to cold call a list and pitch your product.

If your product can't afford inside sales, sell direct online and optimize your funnel.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#54

Post by kozikow »

Personally, as a technical founder that learned some sales and is still learning, I would say that the biggest mistake I initially did is picking wrong sales "role models".

All "role models" for sales I knew were akin to used car salesmen. They try to push something on you very hard using cheap sales tactics.

This doesn't work in B2B, especially enterprise. Sleaze salesmen are going extinct. People are getting immune to any "one weird trick to get a sale". You are there to solve your customer problem, help your sponsor look good inside their enterprise and only then get paid. Focus on maximizing the value you are providing to the customer, making this value very clear as early as possible and only after that getting a fraction of that value back in $.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#55

Post by adpirz »

josephmosby wrote: post #8

Think less about pushing your product, and more about aligning your product to a stated need. Instead of "how do I get Product X into Company Y," ask "how can I help Company Y accomplish their mission with my product in a way they are currently unable to do?" The flipside of this question is "if I were CEO of Company Y, why should I want to buy Product X?" Instead of "how do I convince Buyer Z to go with Product X,"…

Along this note, one of the best quick tips I've heard about sales conversations is that you should be doing much more listening than talking, and always start not by talking about your product, but by asking good probing questions about their experience. In many cases, you'll catch something that will directly let you say "oh you have problem X and $THINGYOUDO makes that so much easier by..."

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#56

Post by busterarm »

josephmosby wrote: post #8

Think less about pushing your product, and more about aligning your product to a stated need. Instead of "how do I get Product X into Company Y," ask "how can I help Company Y accomplish their mission with my product in a way they are currently unable to do?" The flipside of this question is "if I were CEO of Company Y, why should I want to buy Product X?" Instead of "how do I convince Buyer Z to go with Product X,"…

Think about unstated needs too. There isn't just a single relationship that matters and the person you're talking to usually has different goals than the business you're selling to.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#58

Post by skmurphy »

josephmosby wrote: post #8

Think less about pushing your product, and more about aligning your product to a stated need. Instead of "how do I get Product X into Company Y," ask "how can I help Company Y accomplish their mission with my product in a way they are currently unable to do?" The flipside of this question is "if I were CEO of Company Y, why should I want to buy Product X?" Instead of "how do I convince Buyer Z to go with Product X,"…

This is really good advice, early sales for founders looks more like a combination of problem diagnosis (often of your own feature set or assumptions which makes premature "objection handling" very dangerous as it cuts off learning) and project management.

I think Saras Sarasvathy's Effectuation Model offers some excellent guidelines on how to approach building trust and developing a viable business relationship. See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2010/02/07/saras-sarasvathys-e... and https://www.amazon.com/Effectual-Entrepreneurship-Stuart-Rea... for more on this.

Jerry Weissman's "Understand-Believe-Act" sales model is also a very good fault tree to use in diagnosing where your efforts may be stalled:

Understand: do prospects understand what it is you can do for them (here vision generation and simple explainer demos can help as well as basic case studies with clear examples).

Believe do prospects believe that you can deliver the results you promise (here technical proof demonstrations, benchmarks, case studies, references can all help).

Act: Do they have a reason to act. Are you addressing a critical business issue or a nice to have. What is the total cost of implementing your product (not just your price but any changes in workflow or practice or infrastructure that will be required). How does this compare to value. Is there a critical event or date that offers a strong reason to act.

See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/08/08/understand-believe-... and https://www.amazon.com/Presenting-Win-Telling-Your-Story/dp/... for more on Weissman's model.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#59

Post by gamechangr »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #32

The hardest thing for me to learn was the million unique aspects of our product that we spent years creating, while they did make the user happy with our product once they were a customer, were not influencers in the sales process. That's why our Founder/Developers couldn't sell for shit. But a salesperson could. Because it was blue. Fucking blue.

Totally agree.

Self awareness is a killer for most developers. They are too close to the music. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Hopefully you are selling to other technical people, in which case a multitude of sins are covered if your product is truly needed.

Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?

#60

Post by rubbingalcohol »

mindcrime wrote: post #22
gamechangr wrote: post #18

I will be contrarian on HN. Hire a sales guy. It's worth every $. "If you build it, they will not come"

There's no doubt that experienced sales people are valuable, but I would argue that there is a point in a startup lifecycle where it's too soon to hire one. For one or both of two reasons: 1. You're still trying to figure out exactly what it is you're building and how to best price/sell it. That is, you're still in more of a "customer development" mode than a pure "push the accelerator on sales for all it's worth" mo…

If someone even has to ask the question in the OP then they need a co-founder to handle the soft skills. I really think it's as simple as that. It's unreasonable to expect to be able to get good at everything.
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