Reading this was incredibly difficult because the letter F didn't show up in any words for some reason. Arch Linux + Firefox Aurora.
Sales for Hackers
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Sales for Hackers
#12Hi folks. Author here. Happy to answer any questions if you like.
I follow up but never a response. Do you think its good to bug them following up more and more?
If you're following up and are not getting a response then set a limit to the number of times you'll try again. I personally do 3 follow-up email over the course of a 3-6 weeks. On the last email, I let them know it'll be the last time I follow-up and let them know how they can reach me if they'd like to talk in the future.
If you just keep following up and never stop, you'll likely annoy someone who is probably not interested in what you're selling and you'll likely get spam filtered.
Sometimes we just have to take the hint :)
Re: Sales for Hackers
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I follow up but never a response. Do you think its good to bug them following up more and more?
If you're following up and are not getting a response then set a limit to the number of times you'll try again. I personally do 3 follow-up email over the course of a 3-6 weeks. On the last email, I let them know it'll be the last time I follow-up and let them know how they can reach me if they'd like to talk in the future. If you just keep following up and never stop, you'll likely annoy someone who is probably not…
One other spin on the follow up comes in timing and content:
Follow up after 2 days, 7 days, 2 weeks, 3 months, and annually. This increasing time frame rarely is found to be annoying and is an effective way to keep in front of them. Also try and send a new set of content after 2 contacts.
Re: Sales for Hackers
#14I'm sorry, but my inner hacker just has to mention this: There's a syntax error in your BANT script - one closing paranthesis missing at "(match(features, needs)". But the article overall is great!
if ( (budget >= price) AND (Authority.isInvolved()) AND (match(features, needs) AND (timeframe == now)) {
proceed();
} else {
quit();
}Re: Sales for Hackers
#15I'm sorry, but my inner hacker just has to mention this: There's a syntax error in your BANT script - one closing paranthesis missing at "(match(features, needs)". But the article overall is great! if ( (budget >= price) AND (Authority.isInvolved()) AND (match(features, needs) AND (timeframe == now)) { proceed(); } else { quit(); }
btw there's a syntax error in your markdown.
Re: Sales for Hackers
#16Really great advice. All of the points made in this article can be distilled into one maxim - LISTEN. If you actually listen to your customer instead of trying to "sell" your product the conversation will naturally lead into discussions of budget, time frame, objections, etc.
The biggest mistake I've made with sales is getting nervous and talking too much. Ask open-ended questions and let the prospect do the rest.
Can't stress getting to the top quickly enough. It's so rare for a sale to close from the bottom-up in my personal experience.
Re: Sales for Hackers
#17Really great advice. All of the points made in this article can be distilled into one maxim - LISTEN. If you actually listen to your customer instead of trying to "sell" your product the conversation will naturally lead into discussions of budget, time frame, objections, etc. The biggest mistake I've made with sales is getting nervous and talking too much. Ask open-ended questions and let the prospect do the rest. Ca…
I have a counter to the emphasis of getting to the top. I used to work for a much larger company (definitely "enterprise") and as a product manager I was often the decider of a vendor to use. There were times where the vendors' sales teams wanted to make an end-run and get to someone on the upper management/executive level to influence the decision.
If anything, that became more of a negative because it meant that I had to spend more time managing those conversations rather than analyzing the fit for their product.
I would change "getting to the top quickly" to "identifying the decision maker and getting to them quickly".
Re: Sales for Hackers
#18as a developer, how can I target the enterprise market, namely ERP, CRM type of software? I wouldn't mind creating one from scratch or based on some open source software and delivering that.
Re: Sales for Hackers
#19One point to note is that you don't necessarily need to explicitly ask their budget, you can ask questions about the size of their operation instead. eg. For an IT sale, ask about number of employees in the IT department, number of desktops serviced, tech refresh cycle frequency, server numbers, etc... You can then get a gauge on what their true overall budget is without having to ask for it - as that will possibly be lowballed. A 100 man department with 10000+ desktops to support can probably afford a 6-digit equipment sale, whereas a 10 man dept. with only a hundred users will perhaps be looking at low 5-digits spare on their budget.
Similar applies to the authority question. The larger the department/company, the less likely that a huge sale will be authorised by just one individual. Although the contrary can also sometimes be true in this case - very small/new companies may have the directors signing off on all the major purchases.
Re: Sales for Hackers
#20Personally, I'm very strong on the social networking side. And I love the engineering side, too. Part of the attraction to consulting for me is in meeting and getting to know new people. Especially, C-level. I've always done best reporting to or working directly with senior management or owners.
Spending too much time in one can leave the other feeling under-utilized. I'm guessing I'll end up needing to have engineers on contract and have 70:30 business dev to engineering ratio or something. I'm not sure but that ratio seems about right given how much time the social networking side needs to keep money coming in consistently.
Plus, there's the downtime needed to make the mental switch from one to the other. Or maybe just contract out all the work and do my various hobby projects on the side to satisfy the engineer in me.
Edit: Cold Calling: Things I learned in a non-tech venture.
Visualizations, and rehearsals (mental and physical) of each step of the calling process were very, very helpful. One click dialing straight off a spreadsheet of cold contacts made things easier, too.
After getting through the first 100 or so numbers dialing started to give me a rush. Fear was starting to be replaced by excitement. Very curious experience.
One other thing. I was told to expect, and found, roughly speaking, half of the numbers I dialed on an industry specific list of small to medium sized companies, no one answered. Another quarter were busy or couldn't talk and it really had nothing to do with me.
These numbers held across a few different industries. Since I was rather likely to NOT reach someone for a conversation I found it much easier to dial.