Zig Ziglar audio books.
Ask HN: How to learn sales?
91–100 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#92Learned sales by doing and w/ help of a friend as a first time founder. B2B. Happy to pass it forward to B2B first time founders. Book a 20 min mtg w/ me if you like. https://meetings.hubspot.com/boris40.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#93First time founder here who came from sales at a big consulting firm, and then and then had to develop the whole marketing and sales stack for our startup. Most of the books recommended in this thread assume that you're working for a established firm, with product / market fit, etc. Clearly that's not the case for a start-up. Read up on what Pete Kanzanjy publishes https://www.foundingsales.com/ - it covers the the "…
+1 to Founding Sales — it's great, and Pete is great as well
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#94Sales isn't hard. You just go do it, then you iterate and adapt. With an engineering background, you'll be a better sales person in a week than your average sales person probably in their career.
Why? Because you will observe what works and what doesn't; you'll listen to what the customer says and understand what they're looking for; you know your product and will have great answers. You'll quickly hone your message and most importantly, you'll constantly adapt what you say to the next customer learning from the last. Basically, your sales pitch is going to improve exponentially.
Believe me, I've experienced this. As an engineer with no sales training, I agreed to help a friend sell his product at a week-long major "show". Turns out sales is just another system, a system with rules, which makes it an engineering problem to be solved.
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#95First time founder here who came from sales at a big consulting firm, and then and then had to develop the whole marketing and sales stack for our startup. Most of the books recommended in this thread assume that you're working for a established firm, with product / market fit, etc. Clearly that's not the case for a start-up. Read up on what Pete Kanzanjy publishes https://www.foundingsales.com/ - it covers the the "…
Heads up. The foundingsales website took my username and password but did not give me access to the material. Instead its putting me through a "Buy the Book" or "Register to Read" cycle.
That’s odd. There’s a couple dozen people on the site right now.
What browser are you using? Sounds like maybe a Memberspace issue with a config you have?
Check to see which of these chapters you can access: https://www.foundingsales.com/table-of-contents
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#96You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Marketing gets the phone to ring, sales takes the call and closes the deal. For B2B sales resembles project management: the goal is not to convince everyone to buy your product or service but to diagnose their needs and only engage with firms that will benefit. For larger deals you "sell with your ears" as much as you talk.…
> You need to separate sales from marketing. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Close, but not quite. Marketing is the brand, the image, points of differentiation, etc. It's the message. Advertising is the broadcast. It's how the message is communicated. It's the medium. Marketing + advertising = prospects and leads. Sales is the last mile. It takes the results of marketing + advertising (i.e., leads…
> Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not talking.
I've been in pre-sales for about 8 years now. From the vendor and reseller side. Mostly on the technical side (SE) but I also know the process side of the account executive (AE) very well at this point.
Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer. If a customer is always telling me what they need from me then I'm not providing any value. And, honestly, it's very rare to find a customer who's ahead of a good sales team. We have full access to PMs, internal business units and access to far more insight to our bits and pieces than any reseller or customer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying customers can't be experts. But I'm here to know and bring things to the plate that they just can't.
Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than listening to them outright. I've found paths for the customer that has helped them avoid making mistakes, saved them money or improved their operations through paths they hadn't considered or didn't know existed. Good sales teams work hard across the board through strong technical positioning as well as strategic deal creations.
There are sales teams that rinse and repeat for every interaction and then there are sales teams that are looking to help their customers, trying to find where the wins are for the prospect. I've walked away from deals by telling a customer we weren't a fit for them. Sales gets a bad rap, but there are some of us out there that walk into every conversation not with the only intent of closing quota, but trying to make a positive impact.
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#97Hey there, my friend Waseem tipped me off to your question.
Your situation is why I wrote Founding Sales: https://www.foundingsales.com/
The full text is available online on that Squarespace site.
I wrote it after selling my last company - it chronicles what I learned going from a PMM / PM at VMware to a business generalist founder, who then had to learn how to sell, and then manage sales people.
Also, this deck will be useful to you: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pcSy-zV-776abGmZ8WJ7...
Hope that helps!
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heads up. The foundingsales website took my username and password but did not give me access to the material. Instead its putting me through a "Buy the Book" or "Register to Read" cycle.
That’s odd. There’s a couple dozen people on the site right now. What browser are you using? Sounds like maybe a Memberspace issue with a config you have? Check to see which of these chapters you can access: https://www.foundingsales.com/table-of-contents
I just tested this with a new account and it’s working fine from mobile Chrome. It returns you to the home page on registration so perhaps access one of the chapters? Like this one to start: https://www.foundingsales.com/1-mindset-changes
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#99Most people's vision of a salesman is a smiling guy who talks a mile a minute, won't let you get a word edgewise and won't take no for an answer. There are even courses that teach you how to be that guy. Sorry the reference is dated but a Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati type of guy.
The best mental picture of a salesman is as a consultant. You're there to solve their problem, hopefully using your product. But if your product isn't their best solution send them to your competition. You do it by asking them questions, then stopping to listen to their answer which prompts more questions.
If they don't have the problem, apologize for wasting their time and leave. I remember one of Gary Vaynerchuk's DailyVee videos where he flew to Chicago for a single hour long meeting. In less than ten minutes he realized he wasn't going to get the sale, said goodbye and headed back to the airport.
The other thing to remember is to always be asking for the order. I can't tell you how many times ten minutes after getting there I threw away the rest of my questions and wrote up an order. It is entirely possible to talk yourself out of a sure sale, when I was starting I did it multiple times.
I know a lot of introverts think they can't do sales but sometimes they make the best sales guys. That's because they have less of a problem talking all the time. Ross Perot was definitely more of an introvert yet he was once IBM's top salesperson in the country. He once made his entire yearly quota in a week!
Re: Ask HN: How to learn sales?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s odd. There’s a couple dozen people on the site right now. What browser are you using? Sounds like maybe a Memberspace issue with a config you have? Check to see which of these chapters you can access: https://www.foundingsales.com/table-of-contents
I just tested this with a new account and it’s working fine from mobile Chrome. It returns you to the home page on registration so perhaps access one of the chapters? Like this one to start: https://www.foundingsales.com/1-mindset-changes
I have the same isssue. I think it may be a Safari issue. Works fine for me on chrome not Safari.