As someone who wouldn't in a million years buy anything from anyone who was trying to sell me something, how do I learn sales?
You can't till you over come this mental barrier. There is this great book called To sell is human. Try giving it a read.
Ask HN: How to learn sales?
81–90 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#82Shifting from engineering to sales requires a shift in mindset, from scarcity to abundance. Engineering = scarcity: time-bounded sprints, finite teams, large backlogs of features and tickets, strict prioritization. Sales requires you to think in terms of abundance. There are always more leads, more channels, more tactics.
Also, it's debatable whether being talkative helps sales. Listening is far more critical.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#83I haven't done sales, but look up Brian G. Burns on LinkedIn. Dude does a lot of short videos on sales (many of them generally applicable, though) with really good insights. How to communicate better, move towards action, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#84To start, you should purge everything you think "sales" is. Good sales teams are process and data oriented, talk to customers about solving real problems, and have great long-term relationships with customers. I think your comments about being talkative and being emotional are really just about the phases of sales you'd worth most about which are the introductory meetings and final pricing stages. You can hire plenty of people that can coach you through that.
Whatever culture you are building for you company should be adaptable to your sales org as well, so I'd say you start there. Work the opportunities yourself, start tracking them in a spreadsheet, do write-ups for the company about the wins and loses, and use your founder hustle to get started. It won't be as daunting as you think.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#85The biggest difference between sales and engineering is the concept of closing.
Engineering or research work is never completed. We are always improving and perfecting the machine.
Closing needs to be thought of binary. This doesn't necessarily mean via contract. Good sales people will close the sale well before anything need to be signed. An expert sales person understands the customer's psychology and leaves them thinking of no other option than to purchase from you.
In technical sales it pays to be knowledgeable and understand the customer's objectives. But even smart buyers and not immune to subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, closing techniques. If you don't employ aggressive closing strategies at the right opportunities, your competition will beat you to it.
I worked in tech sales for couple of years and did just OK. My style was a little too far on the consultative side and I realised I lacked the killer instinct to close hard often enough. Possibly not all industries are as competitive as the one I was in (PCR equipment/reagents). But I decided my personality was just better suited to tinkering so I became a coder instead.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#86TBH, having witnessed the work of some great salesmen as a VPE of a successful startup, I think with training you could do a _passable_ job of it, but you're unlikely to be amazing at it. So do what you can in the interim, but spend an unreasonable amount of effort trying to find that magical sales guy/gal who can sell ice to people inhabiting the polar stations. Such salespeople exist, and they're worth their weight in rhodium.
There are two schools of thought, one says "work on your weaknesses", another says "play to your strengths". As I get older and gain more experience, I'm firmly in the second camp. Learn enough sales to have a good bullshit detector, though.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#87Exercise regularly. Gym is not necessary but hour long walks daily will raise Testosterone levels considerably, add to overall calmness and dull your emotions.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#88Hey, I worked in sales for years. So did my mother. I started B2B sales when I was 16. Don’t “learn” sales. A lot of reading material and courses could actually negatively effect you by causing you to overthink things. At best, you will come across as calculating and at worst you’ll lose deals due to getting lost in the weeds. Here’s two things: Whenever you deal with someone, try to conceptualize yourself as a consu…
I would argue against this comment... it is very useful to actually learn the culture and the techniques. Not that the general advice here is in poor taste, just saying that simple concepts won't help you fully understand something that is inherently complex.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#89Highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Triangle-Selling-Sales-Fundamentals-G... - as an engineer and first-time founder(Glisten AI - YC W20) it gave me a great framework to approach sales calls with.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#90As an engineer turned founder, your instinct to jump in and start doing it is correct. It’s hard to learn from books. I never did, neither did the successful engineers turned sales people that I know. The key is learning to read each situation so you can apply the right approach. You also seem self aware which will help you learn faster. My biggest advice is get a coach/mentor/consultant who you talk with once per we…
Out of curiosity, how did you land on the concept for your business?
The short version is we saw a big gap in the product analytics market when we were building a consumer app. We were going to work on building a company no matter what and it was the best opportunity we found. B2B was much easier than consumer for us. All you have to do is build what your customers ask and then they’ll pay you money!
I just did a podcast on it if you’re curious: https://theboostvcpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ep98-the-e...