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

Learn to sell

blairreeves.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–157 of 157 posts

Re: Learn to sell

#151

Post by dreamfactored »

1_2__4 wrote: post #104

My counter argument is I’ve tried to take this advice multiple times in my life and each time came to the (re)conclusion that I will never be able to think of it as anything but lying and manufactured conflict. Some of us just don’t have brains that allow for that kind of thinking, at least not without severe anxiety and discomfort. I can’t sell. I’ll never be able to sell. I think that makes me feel like a more hone…

Sales is about discovering what people's real problems are and helping them find a solution. It's the polar opposite of inauthenticity, but there are an awful lot of clueless salespeople who are trying to live up to the stereotype they've seen in movies and which you are talking about. It's a strange job because in some ways it's like being a counsellor, but at the same time a ruthless numbers game (for the salesperson) and therefore very stressful for them.

Re: Learn to sell

#152

Post by dreamfactored »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #16

tl;dr - Most of the article tries to justify why it's important to Learn to sell. Actionable guidance: "cold calling, sending tons of emails, doing prospect/company research and developing cold leads into warm ones" and get a job in sales ("role", "experience", "career"). My personal project is a Chinese learning page. https://pingtype.github.io I tried sending hundreds of emails, researching all the Chinese language…

re the cold call/mail outreach -

1. You need to be contacting individuals not generic addresses or gatekeepers ('people buy from people')

2. You need to be explaining the value to them or people like them that they can identify with in terms of shared problems (i.e. in the same line of work), not how it helped you. So for example, if you can get the first customer in any way (maybe a friend or freebie), you can make a case study to send to similar people.

3. You need to contact people with a mix of phone and personalised email 8-10 times until you get a meaningful conversation, which should be in person if possible. Everybody is firefighting and you will be astonished how many come back to you on the 6th time thanking you for persisting and reminding them. You will need to learn about objection handling as well (loads of articles here - http://blog.close.io/manage-any-sales-objection-successfully).

Sales is very hard work, but getting results is very rewarding.

Re: Learn to sell

#153

Post by sogen »

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.

> consumer products don't need sales

UH!?

Sales(money) is the blood of Any business. (Here I include Anything i.e. charities).

Re: Learn to sell

#154

Post by sogen »

mlevental wrote: post #140
peterburkimsher wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10.- validate first (ie Buffer, Zapier)

Re: Learn to sell

#155

Post by maxpupmax »

goialoq wrote: post #113
maxpupmax wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't read the Dale Carnegie book, read "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham and the book "Getting to NO" <- best book on negotiation I've ever read.

Do you mean "Getting to YES" ? "Getting to NO" is a book about breaking habits.

I totally borked the title. This is the book I was thinking of: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014DUR7L2

Re: Learn to sell

#156

Post by pc86 »

mlevental wrote: post #69
pc86 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a founder but agree with a13n. Working long hours is not the norm for software development. I live in a city 99% of the people here have never heard of, working 40.0 hours a week (not 36, which seems like an odd number to pick), and I'd need to make $330k in San Francisco to have the same standard of living. There are plenty of very well compensated 40-hour-a-week software development jobs available.

i'd like to hear about this city

Any small city with computers, honestly. There are tens of thousands of senior developers, architects, programmer analysts etc that are making $100k or $125k or more in cities you've never heard of with a cost of living that is a small fraction of Silicon Valley. Yes, you're going to find a lot of .Net and Java work, but there's more cutting edge stuff as well (and plenty of the .Net and Java developers I know love talking about Vue or React or anything else tech).

But you need to be okay living in a city nobody's ever heard of, working for a company nobody's ever heard of, and not changing the world. But honestly 99.9% of the people working 80 hour weeks in VC funded start-ups writing the next big CRUD app aren't going to change the world either, and they're paying $3500/mo to rent a 1-bedroom while people in these small cities are paying $1k/mo for a 2-bedroom mortgage a 10 minute commute from their office.

Post reply on HN