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Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#61

Post by paulstovell »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #43
paulstovell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%! My experience here: https://twitter.com/paulstovell/status/1389881033470869504 This talk by Paul Kenny is a really good talk here about the value of the sales function even if you don't want the revenue : Paul Kenny: Selling Sales to Techies (2010): https://vimeo.com/96703844

How do you make sure you get the good type of sales culture that is customer-centric, rather than the bad type of "trick customers into buying things they don't need"? Are there specific policies/incentives/etc that should be used? Or is it really just 'hire the right people'?

First is the right people - don't hire "Frank" from Paul Kenny's talk.

Second is to join sales calls or watch the recordings (Chorus.ai is great for this). Put yourself in the buyer's shoes and coach based on those recordings - I always listen from the point of view of "If I was the customer, do I think they really care about my problem, and is it credible that they will help me solve it?". Right now I watch 1-2 recordings a week and then chat with the team about what they think went well and where we might improve, and we are figuring it out together. That continuous process is what reinforces the culture. When the CEO is focussed on helping customers, and revenue as a secondary concern, it becomes the culture.

Third is probably for the sales team not to be an island. So get the engineering and product leaders to join the calls or watch the recordings too, so that the tiny features or friction points make their way onto the roadmap eventually.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#62

Post by paulstovell »

enraged_camel wrote: post #32
paulstovell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%! My experience here: https://twitter.com/paulstovell/status/1389881033470869504 This talk by Paul Kenny is a really good talk here about the value of the sales function even if you don't want the revenue : Paul Kenny: Selling Sales to Techies (2010): https://vimeo.com/96703844

Hey, thank you for this. Can I pick your brain about it sometime? I couldn't find contact info in your profile - my email is ege at pricetable dot io edit: why am I getting downvotes...

Thanks! My DM's are open, or paul at [my HN handle].com, happy to talk to anyone making this transition.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#63

Post by aaronbrethorst »

brtkdotse wrote: post #53
sam0x17 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do miss the days when merely building a good + cool product was enough and organic search traffic would do the rest. The early 00s were great

Care to share a few examples?

Pets.com, Webvan, or Flooz.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#64

Post by urthor »

probolsky wrote: post #2

I became a specialist. In my industry there are a ton of general consultants. Some make millions, most get by. When I chose to specialize, not compete with the general consultants, but make all of them clients, that’s when business took off.

There's a reason all those consultants went general though isn't there?

Historically speaking, building your practice as a specialist consultant is difficult. It works for certain niches only.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#66

Post by sdoering »

themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I could not agree more. I still find it difficult to talk about me providing services to others. I find it difficult, but once I do the pipeline opens up.

I was actually overwhelmed last year (my first as a freelancer on the side) and will scale back a bit to strengthen the foundations a bit better this year - but actually talking to people and when doing so always trying to create a little bit of value for them (and be it by 'oh now you mention that you need x, Paul over there is great and is actually looking for a way to sell x).

I am part of a business network and currently am working on providing a free short workshop for the people with online shops in basics about usability and conversion optimization. It will already provide them with the tools to make their shops better and also act as a marketing tool for deeper work on that topic with them (or a few of them).

And in parallel, as I am compiling the materials nonetheless I also will create additional ways to use the content in blog posts, Instagram and by creating checklists for others as a way to build an email list.

So this next to a day job and client work will probably be enough for me this year in marketing and business development work.

Let's see what comes of it.

[Edit typo]

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#67

Post by mythz »

urthor wrote: post #56
mythz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1129924410339495937

They don't advertise to consumers. They have an enormous B2B sales team. Sales reps are for B2B, not B2C. Generally speaking, business to business customers expect a certain amount of investment from your company into integrating with them when they offer you a contract. Sales is part of this.

"Sells itself" means the product able to stand on its own and raise awareness without paying for advertising to do it.

You of course need people to sign contracts & complete the purchase, that's irrelevant to how well the product is able to raise awareness without advertising, i.e. people interested in buying Tesla's didn't hear about it through any of their advertising.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#68

Post by yashap »

kcplate wrote: post #10

I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.

Sales and marketing are different - there are TONNES of super successful products/businesses that lack salespeople - or who maybe have some, but the vast majority of revenue is “self serve” (ppl buying the product without talking to a salesperson).

I do agree that virtually every product needs marketing, and many need salespeople as well. But for plenty of products, salespeople don’t make sense - for example high volume, low price SaaS.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#69

Post by dotancohen »

kcplate wrote: post #10

I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.

I believe that the Tesla Model S does. People were tripping over themselves to buy that thing with no marketing, for all its faults.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#70

Post by kcplate »

kortilla wrote: post #49
fphhotchips wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reformed salesperson here, you're 1 for 4, and Trello really should only get half a point because they've given up massive swathes of their addressable market to others (Wrike, Asana, Monday). Word and Excel have the giant Microsoft sales team behind them. One of the largest technical enterprise sales forces in the world. Gmail is similar. Google tried the "we'll build it, and they'll come" approach. It didn't work.…

Gmail was the world leading email provider before any of the google custom domain stuff. You’re confusing google for work or whatever it’s called now with Gmail.

When gmail was included as the email client for their paid office subscription there definitely was salespeople involved, because I heard from them weekly trying to shill it to me. I’d argue that if you take a free product and want folks to pay for it, you obviously need salespeople as Google did.
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