Learn to sell • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn to sell

#131

Post by Jgrubb » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 5:05 AM UTC

chasedehan wrote: post #57

bluGill wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you leave then? There are jobs everywhere. Even in the smallest town in middle on nowhere (say Montana) you can find a job. It might not be a perfect fit for your skills, but you can find one. There are thousands of small towns scattered across the US with some little company that makes something obscure but essential to society. Example: you probably never think about sewage pumps (not the treatment plant,…

>(say Montana) While most of what you say is true - that there really are jobs everywhere - Montana is actually tough. I really want to move to Montana and have seriously struggled finding something to fit my skills. The alternative plan is to figure out a remote gig and then truly live wherever you want

sofi.com - they’re hiring a lot of technical roles in Helena.

Re: Learn to sell

#132

Post by Jerry2 » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 5:31 AM UTC

markfer wrote: post #115

Jerry2 wrote: post #80

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book or an audio/video course on sales for beginners? I'd like to learn this skill in 2018...

I'll be launching mine shortly - I can let you know when it's live if you'd like.

Sure!

Re: Learn to sell

#133

Post by jimmywanger » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 6:29 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #60

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not accept this as the status quo. It sounds like you live in California? If you're a decent software engineer in any major city in California, you are one of the luckiest people who has ever lived. You have your choice of employers paying you six figures to sit at a desk and push buttons 40 hours per week. If you're overworked and underpaid to the point that what I just said sounds crazy, it sounds like you need…

Despite my rebuttal to the GP stating single people in California are the most taxed in the country, Californians do have a downright oppressive tax structure for upper-middle class high income individuals. Couple that with high cost of living and federal taxes and it's hard to have the same quality of life in San Jose that you can have in Atlanta or Columbus or Minneapolis on half the income or less (and you'll make…

Culture has a whole lot to do with it.

I was from the Bay, and moved to Reno. I really miss Asian food and Asian people.

Heck, I was even thinking of going to conversation clubs at UNR just so I could hear Chinese spoken again, and maybe eat some dumplings.

Re: Learn to sell

#134

Post by whataretensors » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 7:24 AM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #4

The life of an engineer is a life if sacrifice and 7 days a week work for five days pay. Often you never have a partner so you're the most highly taxed people in the country especially in California. While you often work triple time you're rarely if ever paid for overtime it's taken for granted that you're not ever compensated for 3/4 of the hours you work. Nothing can happen without you but sales people get a piece…

This is truth. Common stock is worthless. Most engineers don't know how to say no. Often they are overworked and told to be grateful that they make 5-10x more than a low-skilled worker. They are often unattractive men, rarely popular in life, and told that they are privileged by the rest of society.

We are in an industry that is growing exponentially in value, yet pay seems to continue to grow linearly. Meanwhile extremely talented engineers often work for manipulative non-coding managers. I see it all the time.

The best part is though, you can do anything you want to once you figure out that you make the decisions in your life and get over your fear of failure. Stop asking for permission. You also have to be very strict about committing to anything. Make 'no' your default answer. You have the talent, you set the rules. Have a meeting you hate? Stop going. Don't like waking up in the morning? Stop doing it. Want to work from home but your company doesn't allow it? Do it anyway.

Additionally, my advice if you are single and feel this way - quit your job, live on savings, try to make products or otherwise hack your income in a way that serves you in 2-5 years and beyond. It's a simple maximization function that any engineer can figure out - and once you do you'll be shocked at how little any company pays.

Seinfeld didn't have to keep making tv shows. Software should be the same way. Follow your passions and create a hit. If you don't know what your passion is, spend a year or two discovering them. Life is only short if you never actually live it.

Re: Learn to sell

#135

Post by bartvk » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 7:31 AM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #4

The life of an engineer is a life if sacrifice and 7 days a week work for five days pay. Often you never have a partner so you're the most highly taxed people in the country especially in California. While you often work triple time you're rarely if ever paid for overtime it's taken for granted that you're not ever compensated for 3/4 of the hours you work. Nothing can happen without you but sales people get a piece…

> The life of an engineer is a life if sacrifice and 7 days a week work for five days pay

No, _your_ life as an engineer is a life of sacrifice. I work four days a week, from 07:00 to 15:30, and then head home to my family.

Re: Learn to sell

#136

Post by vadimberman » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 7:59 AM UTC

When I cofounded my first startup, I had to participate in the sales calls (most of them). It was a very illuminating experience. Now, in my second one, I often lead the charge.

As an engineer, you start to understand why sales people overcommit, oversell, and overpromise. Why they can't produce a sale. It's not always their fault. But the good ones normally know what works and what doesn't. A good sales person:

* knows or takes time to learn the product to the point of a junior techie

* tries hard to work in tandem with the techies

* is NOT a frat boy / girl, but knows to talk to people of all walks of life, and in today's globalised world, of all backgrounds

* has the character to say "no" when it's better to walk away

* is at least in their late 30s or older

* a great listener trying to solve the customer's problem, not push a new shiny toy

* mature enough to lead a company.

While over-selling, "make-a-buck-now-lose-everything-later" idiots prevail, sales jobs are tough. It is hard for us engineers to grasp sometimes what is means to have your compensation ALWAYS be tied to some figures - so-called "performance", which is a combination of your ability to convince, the market, and the products you are selling. Imagine that, as an engineer, you'd get a deduction for every bug the customer discovers; feels different, doesn't it?

For a great fictional portrayal of a (pre-tech but enterprise) sales person's life, watch "The Big Kahuna".

Re: Learn to sell

#137

Post by tomxor » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 12:36 PM UTC

grasshopperpurp wrote: post #98

tomxor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps not but: > If they're not on the same page, they make each other look worse This is right, engineers need to understand the problems that their end users have and of those problems those that severely affect sales should be considered carefully... however what seems to happen more often is sales or management end up dictating the solution to a problem... but software solutions are software engineers jobs. Thi…

That sounds very annoying, and I infer that some people have it even worse. What efforts do you see upper management making to bring the two sides together? I notice that as I get to know someone better, I can understand our differences by understanding the ways in which we process information differently. Of course there will be exceptions, but sales people and engineers (beyond their tasks/goals being different) ha…

> I notice that as I get to know someone better, I can understand our differences by understanding the ways in which we process information differently. Of course there will be exceptions, but sales people and engineers (beyond their tasks/goals being different) have different strengths and weaknesses as people and processors...]

In my small experience I actually find the "role" to be the overriding factor in determining how an individual processes information, because their "problem" defines their perspective.

> how often do sales people and engineers problem solve together?

I'm breaking definitions here a bit because in the context I am drawing upon sales are not a generic salesman, but someone who has a deep understanding of the fairly niche and complex activity the customers are doing, actually they are scientists, but not coders, so I suppose that is quite unlike the ordinary salesman to be fair ... but In this context I find that first recognising our quite different perspectives and then trying to make each other understand our different perspective allows us to extract the relevant understanding from each other to converge on a reasonable solution (or not, sometimes once you both understand the problem better from both ends you realise it's actually something else entirely, or that attempting a solution would be a fools errand).

I find this extra step invaluable because I have more empathy with the real problem using their expert knowledge of the customer and activity, and they have empathy with the potential technical challenges at hand, and as a result are more willing to accept alternatives in the knowledge of the real technical cost. I can't say how applicable it would be to collaborating with a more generic sales department though.

It doesn't really matter who instigates that mixing of perspectives, but I find as a coder I have a tendency to zoom in and out of contexts more to better understand a problem... it's not much of a step to keep zooming out / panning until you can start digging into the perspectives of your peers.

Re: Learn to sell

#138

Post by dennis_jeeves » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 1:19 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #93

siliconc0w wrote: post #33

One of my first jobs out of college was software sales. Really opened my eyes to the absurdity of that industry. Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped in to gr…

The rise of big tech is basically a market response to decision-makers who acted like you observed. When you've got a bunch of executives who will drop millions of dollars on open-source software because they needed to check a box, that's a huge economic inefficiency waiting to be arbitraged away. What "big tech" founder/CEOs did was say "Well, I understand the technology, I can learn the domain knowledge more easily…

Well articulated nostrademons, feel free to email me of ideas that you think are suitable low-hanging fruit but still not tackled by the tech community at large.

Re: Learn to sell

#139

Post by mlevental » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

welder wrote: post #120

> I find it remarkable how little the tech world talks about software sales, given how central it is to everything we do. Sales is the whole reason we build anything; it’s how we assign value to what we do. Nope, not for consumer products. SF doesn't talk about sales because consumer products don't need sales at first.

name one consumer sales startup other than Amazon

Re: Learn to sell

#140

Post by mlevental » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 2:41 PM UTC

peterburkimsher wrote: post #130

knight17 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By copy, I think he meant the writing of the page, copywriting. Please pursue the below links, you may find them helpful. I also recommend redesigning the site to be little more visually appealing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11469889 https://medium.com/@InVisionApp/10-ux-copywriting-tips-for-d... https://medium.com/talking-microcopy-writing-ux/go-to-guide-...

I know what copy is. Google Translate doesn't have any copy either, and they serve 200 million people daily. This is a tool, not a cover letter for a business.

man you're destined for failure. you ask for advice and someone actually takes time to give you very good advice and you not only once but twice behave defensively. I'm in the same position as you and I'm going to implement literally every single thing sogen recommended because I don't care about being wrong I care about succeeding.