Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 305 posts

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#191

Post by reshlo »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #104
bee_rider wrote: post #62

> I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States. Oh neat, how? > Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.…

Articles like this are valued not based on how noble is the protagonist but based on how truthful is the account. The latter is of course not granted either but I would be even less inclined to believe a story of an airtight telemarketer. In general I think it's very easy to _not understand_ people i.e. "how could you". The interesting part for me is when I do understand: "oh this is how". From that perspective I enj…

> In general I think it's very easy to _not understand_ people i.e. "how could you". The interesting part for me is when I do understand: "oh this is how".

“How could you” is a rhetorical question to which the asker already knows the answer they would be given, which is almost invariably “because I lack empathy”.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#192

Post by reshlo »

juliusdavies wrote: post #122
kqr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not... good sales. This is making the numbers. The customers acquired with this method are not good customers. To future salespeople in here: please work on selecting customers carefully, and pitch only to great two-way fits. That way, both customer and your organisation will thrive. I get that the salesperson is judged by volume closed, but this gives the rest of the organisation churn problems to deal with.

I can’t remember if it’s against HN rules to implore people to read the actual article. The reason he became good at selling (according to the article) is because he changed his attitude despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment. It’s an interesting and probably helpful lesson for the startup hustlers here on HN if they can make it through this admittedly long essay.

> despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment

The article states that he was fired because he did not read the script he was required to read.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#193

Post by ckdarby »

bee_rider wrote: post #62

> I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States. Oh neat, how? > Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.…

The disclosure should be outside the phone conversation prior to funds transferring.

Send them to confirmation who should have a process of, we're sending you the email now where you enter you make an account and enter payment details. Stay on the phone with them while they do it to avoid drop off rates. During the account creation is the disclosures.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#194

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

amscanne wrote: post #81
reaperman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a salesperson deliver exceptional work? In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work.

My archetype of a good sales person is the successful realtor. Realtors tend to “eat what they can kill”, so you can see the skills power law clearly. They are selling themselves more than houses, but there’s a lot to learn from that. Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like an…

> although they do very little for their outlandish commissions

Realtors exist because buyers and sellers usually don't trust each other enough to talk directly.

It's stupid and inefficient, but here we are.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#195

Post by miiiiiike »

It’s weird to meet people who look for the short-term gain in every single situation.

Especially if they’re semi-talented but perennially “unlucky”. Usually trading on a curated public image or “likability” backed by nothing but positive sounding words and shifting excuses. Unable to build anything sustainable because they piss off every person with the ability to make them rich.

Walk away. Remember them as they were; and write them off.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#196

Post by marcus0x62 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #74
nextworddev wrote: post #45

The real secret to having a successful sales career is to work at a company that sells a market leading product. This trumps 99% of anything you can do as an individual. I have seen complete noobs have good sales careers at AWS

That's the difference between being a great salesman and having great sales. Any idiot can sell something that's in demand. It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. It's better to be the idiot.

I worked (in sales engineering) at such a company with a market-leading product. For a few years there, at the height of the market/mindshare dominance for their main product, I observed a recurring theme:

We'd hire a new manager from outside the company. This new manager would go around and meet some sales teams, meet some customers, then a month or two in, end up at a meeting where they gave a speech. At this speech, they would opine that customers loved our product, that it "practically sold itself" and our job was at least 90% execution.

Translation: a trained circus monkey could do your job. Just show up, answer your emails, and the product will do all the heavy lifting. Don't come complaining to me about how your quota is too high, product isn't taking your feature requests seriously, etc. Those are just excuses for poor performance.

I saw this happen a half dozen times, at least. In every case -- every case -- those people were singing a very different tune after they had been around for six months and saw what the job was really like.

Now, having good traction in the market, and analysts saying good things about you, and customers excited to be references? All that is really important. But in large enterprise sales, nothing "sells itself." And, for the record, we had plenty of people who weren't idiots, who nonetheless couldn't sell a product that was in very high demand. At least, not enough to keep their job.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#197

Post by proto-n »

reshlo wrote: post #192
juliusdavies wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t remember if it’s against HN rules to implore people to read the actual article. The reason he became good at selling (according to the article) is because he changed his attitude despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment. It’s an interesting and probably helpful lesson for the startup hustlers here on HN if they can make it through this admittedly long essay.

> despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment The article states that he was fired because he did not read the script he was required to read.

The article states that he was fired because the company had financial problems, and not reading the required stuff was used as an excuse

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#198

Post by restateplumjer »

mooreds wrote: post #6
Ozarkian wrote: post #4

This piece obviously puts sales in a bad light. If you had asked me what a salesman is like in my early 20s, I would have described them much as this article expresses. But in my career in Silicon Valley I really came to respect good salespeople. I often had roles where I was debugging customer-reported issues, and good salespeople make everything smoother. I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales tra…

> I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales transactions: one that is a one-time transaction and one that is an ongoing transaction. Incidentally, this is the difference between a good real estate agent and a "door opener".

For a real estate agent knowledgeability about the property would be even more important than maintaining relations, even if you're just trying to sell me this thing to never see me again, when I ask to see the breaker box or what kind of heating system is this and get a "I don't know where/what that is" It's not making a strong case for a six-figure purchase.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#199

Post by reshlo »

proto-n wrote: post #197
reshlo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment The article states that he was fired because he did not read the script he was required to read.

The article states that he was fired because the company had financial problems, and not reading the required stuff was used as an excuse

The point is he did not read the scripts verbatim as you claimed.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#200

Post by proto-n »

reshlo wrote: post #199
proto-n wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states that he was fired because the company had financial problems, and not reading the required stuff was used as an excuse

The point is he did not read the scripts verbatim as you claimed.

(Wasn't me claiming that, read usernames)

Yeah, but you are, at least seemingly, missing the point: the scripts he was referring to in context weren't the legal disclosures but the sales tricks that were handed to them to use. He is pointing out that the 'elite' saleswoman wasn't better at strategy or sales tricks, but was effective because she made them feel good.

Post reply on HN