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Sales mistakes that software engineers make

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Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#171

Post by TheShrug »

fuball63 wrote: post #131
phkahler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I have found a little success going to meetups and talking in person to other developers and entrepreneurs... Perhaps you need to go to meetups with potential customers instead of other developers.

The problem is that what I'm building is a function as a service platform, a general development tool. So developers/managers are the target audience. I think it's a matter of finding the “BANT” (budget, authority, need, timeline) requirements the article mentions.

Why not use this time to "sell" us your function as a service platform? You keep saying its a function as a service platform, but I still have no idea what it is or why it would be useful. I think you're missing a perfect opportunity to tell us more and get feedback from your potential customers (considering the HN crowd is full of developers/managers).

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#173

Post by galvarez800 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #77
martinraag wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a similar situation play out at a startup and I can see your point. However, I think there's a difference between talking to potential customers about requirements they have vs. promising to deliver a solution for them on the spot. IMO you don't have to, or rather shouldn't, close the sale when first reaching out to potential customers like this. The goal should be to simply validate the problem statement -…

I totally agree with you if we are talking about preliminary market research, which also usually involves components of research into the technical investment required. That said, the article of this post seems to emphatically say something different: that you should actively _sell_ before building. Not merely collect research, but to sell stuff you do not already have the capability to deliver, and then somehow back…

My take is that the purpose is not to actually close a sale before building, but to make sure that you could actually close a sale.

The article makes the correct point that many people confuse "being sort of close to closing a sale" with actually closing a sale, and these people may waste time building a product that clients are only sort of interested in but aren't willing to actually pay for.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#174

Post by devit »

It's because sales, and in general any social activity, has inherently unpredictable and random results, while engineering is mostly deterministic.

Also, much easier to sell something that exists since obviously customers don't gain much by and thus don't care much about signalling whether they would buy something that they might be able to buy in the future, as opposed to just buying something they want and can get immediately.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#175

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

slededit wrote: post #170
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know they are solvable if you pick what problems to solve before consulting engineers about feasibility or cost?

Go back and re-read the title, it's literally advice for Software Engineers.

Why do you think my comments did not already account for that? The article claims that software engineers make the mistake of building before they sell, and advises an aggressive form of selling before building instead.

But that advice directly means to skip engineering due diligence (which very often requires building before you sell). It doesn’t matter if the person implementing the advice would be an engineer or a sales person or anyone else.

Your comment comes off as if it is supposed to glibly (and I think also rudely) undermine what I wrote, but in fact I think you didn’t understand what I wrote, and you seem to suggest that it would be impossible for an engineer (using the article’s advice) to fail to consult an engineering estimate of technical feasibility prior to selling something.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#178

Post by king_phil »

Darmani wrote: post #157
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to do indie game dev without building something and throwing it out there? Small games seem like a market where it's nearly impossible to know what's going to sell ahead of time, because buyers don't know what they want until they see it. Or until a lot of people are telling them it's the Next New Thing. It's relatively easy to research a market where you're offering a practical solution to a real prob…

Prototype. Make a pen-and-paper version, pantomime the game, tell the story -- do something to test the game's excitement power before building it. http://www.pathsensitive.com/2015/10/the-prototype-stereotyp...

Not sure if angry birds would have made a great pen & paper game ;-)

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#179

Post by mygo »

djrogers wrote: post #84
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #35

The first point is often totally wrong. I worked in a place where the sales team sold the product hard before much of it was built and before it was reliable. It turned out to be way harder to build what customers actually wanted than anyone knew ahead of time. Nobody could foresee it. The only way we could have known we were egregiously over-promising in the sales pitches was to just actually start building it first…

I think you might be taking the term ‘selling’ too literally - it’s pitching an idea and soliciting feedback. If you’re taking orders for something that doesn’t exist yet, you’ve done it wrong. OTOH, if use the 3/12/24 months it takes to build the product to listen to future customers, you can ship something of value as soon as its ready.

Then every single Kickstarter is doing it wrong.

Nothing wrong with taking orders for something that doesn’t exist, so long as you can deliver.

The sales team’s problem is that they didn’t know what was technically feasible.

There may have been a way to decipher whether what was promised was build-able... before trying to build it.

And in any case, the point of collecting payment is to validate the market. No better validation than actual sales. But doesn’t mean the money has to be spent. They should hold on to it in case they need to give out refunds, and give out refunds when they have determined that they can’t deliver.

And in the special case of a kickstarter type campaign then the basis of that relationship was that the product may or may not come to fruition and that they don’t have to give out refunds.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#180

Post by achillesheels »

irrational wrote: post #60
fuball63 wrote: post #56

I fall into the "Build before talking to customers" trap constantly. Even though I know it's "wrong", it is hard to escape it because of the simple problem of not knowing who to talk to. The article suggests doing a search for potential companies, finding contacts on linkedin, and sending out some emails. But what about experimental technologies or developer tools? I wouldn't expect a lot of success with a slow movin…

>finding contacts on linkedin, and sending out some emails Has that ever worked? I'm not on LinkedIn, yet somehow companies still find my work email and I'm always getting emails from people about how there product is the best thing ever and can we set up a call, or there is a webinar, or can they come by. Oh, and did I not see their previous attempts to reach me? Yes, I saw them, but I've never responded to any of t…

I made a living using LinkedIn’s sales navigator premium subscription to field prospects. It required me to (a) have a large amount of connections in the first place and (b) have a solution for large enough companies to be represented on LinkedIn. (I did electrical product contract manufacturing sales)

Once the decision-maker position is knowable thanks to (a) + the subscription, it was quick to find a name to use to break into the fort so to speak via a “two-touch” method of email and cold calling. A sale at the end of the day begins with a conversation and a persistence in continuing the contact in order to accelerate a deal.

It’s important to note that presentation goes a very long way; it helps I write in my leisure and have a fastidiousness which shows off in my email templates. That’s where I think many cold callers fail: they are too urgent or come across as too unprofessional which registers as a sense of risk before the relationship can even begin.

Finally, everything involves iterating. I was able to comfortably deliver my sales pitch in under 10 seconds over the phone to some of the largest retail buyers in North America by crafting the message via answering the question: “what is it they need to hear?”

10 seconds is a lot of time, but not so much time that it will leave a bad taste in the customers mouth if they have no current interest. You are trying to help them, after all, and they should be able to receive that first impression no matter what.

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