In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work • Hacker News Board

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#301

Post by reshlo » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 7:46 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #225

proto-n wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states that he was fired because the company had financial problems, and not reading the required stuff was used as an excuse

The article was also written by someone who is not a reliable narrator. The type of person who would skip the legally required stuff while working as a telemarketer is exactly the kind of person who'd tell you he got fired for a "technicality", while he was actually fired because he was breaking the law and lying to customers.

Especially considering that even the unreliable narrator himself admits he was one of the first ones to be fired - why would you fire the best employee first if it wasn’t for cause?

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#302

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 10:03 AM UTC

nextworddev wrote: post #45

The real secret to having a successful sales career is to work at a company that sells a market leading product. This trumps 99% of anything you can do as an individual. I have seen complete noobs have good sales careers at AWS

[deleted]

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#303

Post by imhoguy » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

nappsec wrote: post #222

imhoguy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you don't need salespeople as it sells itself. You need on-boarding support people.

I'm guessing you've never worked in sales. Even well-known product lead companies like Atlassian employ sales reps, especially at the enterprise and strategic levels, because demonstrating value to the end user is only a part of the sales process. There's lots of additional work that's closer to project management that's required to close a deal. It's identifying and aligning stakeholders, helping to justify budget b…

You are right, I haven't done that level of B2B sales ever. Thanks for explaining.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#304

Post by sevensor » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 3:54 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #262

s1artibartfast wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers are awful too. The number of times I have been subjected to needlessly bad product designs far exceeds my negative interactions with sales people. And then there are the products that fail at their one function.

At least Engineers are trying to create something of value. Salespeople are just trying extract your value.

Try working at a company that doesn’t know how to do sales, and you’ll learn to appreciate a good salesperson.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#305

Post by amscanne » Sun, Jan 19, 2025, 7:40 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #209

amscanne wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My archetype of a good sales person is the successful realtor. Realtors tend to “eat what they can kill”, so you can see the skills power law clearly. They are selling themselves more than houses, but there’s a lot to learn from that. Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like an…

> Some people love their realtors I'm sort of concerned that some people have "their realtor". I've sold a few houses, realtors are companies I contract to sell my house and they can be fired.

Yeah, but it’s “your realtor” through that transaction, unless they are fired. Regardless, most successful realtors have repeat clients, for buying and selling (even if it’s years between transactions).