231–240 of 305 posts
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
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Sales are maligned for good reason. I'd wager I've experienced the "you know nothing about formal wear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in" salesperson a handful of times. Now, the number of times I've had someone try to sell me something while clearly not listening to what I have to say and getting uncomfortably pushy about it, well... yikes.
Two types of sales philosophies: 1. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it's about the sales technique. 2. Develop deep domain and customer expertise. The former is the scammy type, the latter is the type we love to work with. But the same is true in any industry. Too many of us in technology are doing the technology equivalent of 1--becoming experts in C++ or React--instead of becoming deep domain and user expert…
I despise the guy who sells extended service contracts at the car dealership. I sure as hell don't want that guy selling software work because I won't be able to complete the work profitably and I'll be dealing with angry customers who don't trust me.
In a past life I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners. You began your lead generation process by making cold calls, starting with your family and friends before expanding outward. Securing an appointment with a potential customer allowed you to demonstrate the product directly in their home or office. A key part of the sales presentation in people’s homes involved vacuuming the customer’s mattress using a black cloth, secured…
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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.
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We had a sales guy that the rest of the office hated, but whom I absolutely loved. He'd sell the craziest shit. E.g. him and I attempted to replace a customers Kubernetes stack with Azure websites and CosmosDB, saving them two years of hosting the first month (We failed because the client didn't feel like we where being serious). At one point he sold a project that would lead to his termination and it was the most br…
What lead to his termination? Was the on-call team not thrilled with having to (even minimally) deal with issues from the systems of another company?
Another part was that was yet another service which we technically didn't offer, which he sold. He was always very upfront about the fact that he knew that a lot of the stuff he sold was not actually something we offered or necessarily knew how to do. That pissed of a lot of people, but in hindsight, five years later: He sold the right things and we should embraced those sales/potential sale, because the local market has moved in the direction he was going.
Can someone summarize this insane wall of text?
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To reward positive stories that include crime, just because other people "might also be doing it" is ehhh. That's literally what criminals tell themselves, that everyone else does it. For a liar and a cheater, it's basic modus operandi to tell you some of their lies to give themselves a veneer of honesty. Agree with you in some sense, it is what it is, but why trust anything else they say to "rescue the story"? That'…
Is it not that we grant that person no reward, and instead take from their story lessons to our benefit? The little in the story that speaks about the author, is necessary as a vehicle to narrate the experience. The crux of the story is sales, and how it worked. The core point was the dehumanization, as well as the people who are the most effective in this era. Also, I can appreciate someones shoes, while acknowlding…
I think that this is the way how most reasonable/average people will view it? Reading the article doesn't make me think: "Gee, I should swindle some people out of a lot of money for personal gain!" but rather feel happy that my own career doesn't put me in a spot where I'd need to do anything similar to that.
And even if someone does take that as a playbook, it's not like the article is advocating for that or that author would benefit from that (e.g. like the lifestyle gurus and self-proclaimed pros at anything, that are almost always selling courses, often coupled with a get rich scheme).
The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all. They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on…
If you’re cold-selling people on a shitty widget they don’t need, you’re going to have to be a sleazeball.
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> For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples You’re describing low value, low recurrence sales. Those are numbers, not relationship, games, with high churn at that.
I think low recurrence is the bigger factor for sleaziness: roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman.
They’re low value, comparatively speaking. High-value sales starts where your client can afford to do their own diligence and retaliate if you screw them; that’s typically around the $10+ million level.
The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all. They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on…
Sales are maligned. There is the guy at the car dealership who specializes in adding an extended service contract for your new car. Then there's the guy who sells a software development project that lands a well qualified customer (joy to work with) and a good specification which was well estimated and price so you can complete the work profitably. Maybe you know nothing about formalwear but somebody sells you a suit…
In theory you should have better luck by walking in and saying I'll pay MSRP (thus giving them a reasonable profit) if you don't add all that other BS. In practice they won't know how to do that because nobody else does