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Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
11–20 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#12You have one mouth and two ears. Use them in proportion.
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#13Not sure what you're selling, but if it's B2B SaaS at all, then Entrepid Partners have a great 40 pager on the sales cycle.
You have to sign up for their mailing list to get it, but here's the static file:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#14Think of sales as technique. The method IBM took from NCR provides a framework for understanding where you are and what you need to do next. "Prospect, survey, demo, proposal, close" Contains psychological truth upon which you can build a machine that pumps money.
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#15Would definitely suggest checking out these series of videos from a16z: https://a16z.com/2018/09/02/sales-startups-technical-founder... They're bite-sized sales videos from a partner over there, I found a lot of value out of them. For a sales strategy and organizational perspective, "Predictable Revenue" is a useful book. The hardest thing for me to get right was empathizing with my prospects and their challenges. Pu…
Thanks for sharing, I had no idea these videos existed!
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#16Learn to develop a deeply secure emotional attachment style.
Once I unlocked this, my close rate and inbound referrals went through the roof.
Literally closing 95% of leads and 100% of leads are from referrals.
Granted, this is in person 1 on 1 work but isn’t sense is that will translate into the other work you do.
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#17Don't. I mean it: if you are good on the technical part, focus on it and do it as good as possible and let someone else to do something that you don't know enough. You cannot become the master of everything, but it is fairly easy to become the master of nothing: don't go that way.
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#18I will be contrarian on HN. Hire a sales guy. It's worth every $.
"If you build it, they will not come"
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#19* It is a numbers game. You will fail more than you succeed. But the few successes will be material.
* Train yourself to equate the dopamine hit you get with running a new piece of code you made with the act (not necessarily success) of performing a sales activity. For example, by the end of today, do 10 cold emails and 10 cold calls. Then, feel good about it. Don't worry about the outcomes just yet; get into the groove of performing the act.
* Get out of the room. Always be getting coffee, going to meetups, connecting with groups you part of, etc. The more people know who you are, the more people can help you.
Re: Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
#20New things are hard. Don’t be put of by failure. You can do it, I believe in you.