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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?

#71

Post by joseakle »

Don Tempelton's Sales Ready Product concept [1] (adopted by Sequoia), especially the ideas around MVP vs. SRP [2] were very useful to me.

Summary

To transform your product into a Sales Ready Product, you need:

- Unified Engineering, Product, Design and Sales teams

- First-hand customer research

- An inventory of customer objections

- Understanding of what matters most to customers (and what you can ignore)

- A qualification list (and the right initial customers)

- A demo that uses data from the prospect and includes a light switch moment

- Standardized and unified sales training and materials

[1] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/srp/

[2] https://www.inkling.com/sequoia/

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

#72

Post by WhitneyLand »

What would you tell a sales founder who wanted to learn development? Best option is to be a key part and advocate of the sales process, and getting someone experienced to help steer biz dev.

If that's not an option second best choice is watch and learn. Find sales people who are good that will eat lunch with you often and maybe let you go on a few in person customer calls as a person in the background.

I'll tell you from experience, don't underestimate the skill it takes. I spent quite a bit of time as CTO working closely with a talented team, you'd be amazed at the EIQ and nuance required.

It's hard to explain because the skill set is so different than the product side, and even different from the marketing side.

You'll be visiting a foreign country, but spend enough time there and you'll become fluent enough in the language.

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

#73

Post by lsc »

As a former technical founder? The advice I would give my past self is "get a business co-founder." - reading business books and business advice is all well and good, but you actually need someone who is good at that sort of thing if you want your company to do well.

I don't know how you evaluate a business co-founder when you don't have those skills yourself. Because of that? When I was a founder, I avoided getting a business co-founder, even turned down several that would probably have been great. But that's the thing, without that side of the house, it's really hard to get the company to go anywhere, even when everything else lines up.

I mean, evaluating people who provide skills you don't have is hard; that's why companies without a technical person on their founding team have such a hard time. So it's really hard to pick a good business co-founder. It's one of those decisions that will almost certainly kill the company if you choose poorly.

But... there are a lot of decisions that will kill the company (or worse) if you choose poorly.

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

#74

Post by browsercoin »

i recommend two books

SPIN selling is good for technical products that needs lots of explaining.

Challenger sales is advanced and tough to master but the ideal target just from statistics-those who challenge the prospect with a market insight. Craziest thing I learned was you introduce your product at the last slide! You really get into the prospects world and then challenge the old way of things...thats all i can remember....also marijuana is legal in Canada today so its kicking in so im in the writing mood.

I'd love to write a bit about my experience as a sales engineer and also selling SaaS tool ($99~999) over thet phone if anybody is interested...basically I went from being a coder to hustling.

edit: https://medium.com/@browsercoin/hustle-code-a-hackers-guide-...

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

#75

Post by virgilp »

A smart guy once told me that the easiest sales pitch is "I've got money for you!".

Think how you convince the buyer that your product will help him earn more money/ save more money. If you can e.g. get a percentage of the money that (s)he makes/saves, that's very often an easy sell.

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

#76

Post by amirathi »

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,"…

> Also remember that sometimes it's not a good fit, and that's okay

One can go beyond and suggest alternatives to their own product that might be a better fit. Remember to keep customer's best interest at heart.

I'm in dev tooling market and have suggested open source tools as alternative to my own products numerous times. The kind of trust I gained through it is immense.

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

#77

Post by tixocloud »

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,"…

Changing my mindset about sales to advisor has been immensely useful for earning trust. In the enterprise space, we’ve been able to secure demos with folks we would not have reached had we tried hard sales.

The first goal is to start a conversation and the 2nd is to get a callback for a 2nd conversation.

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

#78

Post by vram22 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #51
vram22 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Thanks.

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

#80

Post by RaceWon »

If they don't like you, they won't buy. Sure there are exceptions but it's an excellent rule of thumb.

Look at Trump: hate him or love him virtually every person he meets face to face comments on how warm, interested and compassionate he comes across as. BS or not... that's the way most perceive him.

Oh yeah, and this Is a hard and fast rule. The instant that they say yes; Stop selling. You never know if that one more thing you consider to be a benefit will backfire and make them decide not to purchase.

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