Sales mistakes that software engineers make • Hacker News Board

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#51

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:55 AM UTC

Are there examples of great companies that actually started selling before building the product?

From Google to Facebook, all the companies that I've ever researched seems to be based on people fiddling with ideas and then quickly iterate to the direction when they start getting traction.

Sure, there are crowdfunding sites or established companies selling based on CGI drawings or concept videos but this seems to be not the rule but the exception for the products that I use. What seems to be the rule is that people have some ideas, they build MVPs and fast-iterate or pivot based on the reception.

For the b2c, at least... Anyway, the article is probably talking about b2b where it can be O.K. to start with some slides of value propositions and build the thing later because of the selling process taking moths and the implementation, potentially years.

edit: hmm, maybe I am taking the "selling" a bit too literally.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#52

Post by 0xferruccio » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:57 AM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #50

0xferruccio wrote: post #39

I can resonate with this so much. Just recently I had an idea for a product and rushed to building it because it “solved” a problem. But then when it came to trying to get some sales it has been a failure. The only people that were willing to buy the product didn’t understand it. When starting out in my opinion if you don’t have a large network of people in the tech industry it’s important to focus on products that e…

I think a similar issue is rushing to fix something in an industry you have no experience of. You might not think you need to know about property before you start an AirBnB but actually they had to learn from mistakes and wrong assumptions, fortunately they were agile enough to pivot. Engineers often assume that everything is as simple as "my product can do that, please pay me money" when there are a raft of other bl…

Asking questions and trying to sell something is an amazing learning experience.

Especially if you don’t have experience in an industry the best thing you can do to learn is to try and sell something or schedule calls with people in the industry.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#53

Post by yread » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #40

Fergi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Jeff from PipelineDB / author here) Good questions! I would definitely suggest being straightforward and honest with the potential customers you're talking to. And ideally, it would be better to have a MVP you can demo than nothing, but the main point here is that talking to potential customers before building anything is a better strategy than building a product and then talking to customers. If you talk to a bunch…

> “If you talk to a bunch of potential customers about a product idea and discover that there is demand for the product, then building a MVP that you can demo would be a logical next step. And if the MVP is something you can build quickly, then it probably makes sense to do this sooner than later.” Sales to Engineering Managers: Alright team, we’ve talked with a lot of customers and realized there is a huge demand fo…

You should have really spent the time it took you to type in this over-the-top response to read the article with a bit more sympathy instead. It's not necessary to solve unsolvable technical challenges to make something that helps people.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#54

Post by bsvalley » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:07 PM UTC

Great pieces of advice but it’s like asking a sales person to learn how to code. My best advice and where I believe engineers should spend 100% of there energy up front, is to go out there and find a cofounder who’s primary skill is to sell stuff. Product or marketing folks.

Both strategies (yours and mine) are very tough and time consuming, so I’d definitely pick mine. Why? Because it would be so much more optimized in the long run. That’s how most of the tech companies started and there’s a good reason for that.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#55

Post by 0xferruccio » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #51

Are there examples of great companies that actually started selling before building the product? From Google to Facebook, all the companies that I've ever researched seems to be based on people fiddling with ideas and then quickly iterate to the direction when they start getting traction. Sure, there are crowdfunding sites or established companies selling based on CGI drawings or concept videos but this seems to be n…

Google and Facebook are moonshots by extremely talented people. I don’t know about you, but I have no close to zero chances of building something similar.

It’s wiser to be realistic, find problems businesses have, understand them better than anyone else and try to solve them.

EG. some dropshipping platforms don’t have integrations with some e-commerce platforms, interview dropshippers and build the ones they’d need. It might not be fancy, but it works. I respect this more than people that try and change the world with a new decentralised web 3.0 no one will ever use

EDIT: you added a reference that your thoughts are for B2C. But Facebook and Google are B2B, the Cs are the product

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#56

Post by fuball63 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:13 PM UTC

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 moving Fortune 1000 company in my city, and there's no way to search "startups using x" for a generic technology, like serverless or NoSQL.

I have found a little success going to meetups and talking in person to other developers and entrepreneurs, so maybe I need to more aggressively take this route. The internet is too big/impersonal/oversaturated from what I can tell.

What would really be helpful as a software engineer is a guide on how to improve entrepreneurial networking, which has to be the foundation before tackling some of the techniques in this article.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#57

Post by jeremyjh » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:18 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #24

> Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling (...) If you’re wrong, you’ll save time and money by not building something people don’t want. I fell into this trap often, so I know it well. The reason why we don't ask first is, we want to build something . Anything. If we're "wrong", we won't "save" time and money, we will delay the moment we start making, maybe indefinitely. What if we never find something p…

This is all very true and relevant, yet still its also true that we see lots of stories from founders regretting that they never established market fit before sinking years into development. This is probably the pattern for 90% of indie game developers, but it crops up in other contexts as well. Once they finally know they are at the end of that road to nowhere, they do have regrets, and they have had other ideas in the meantime that they did not pursue because they were dedicated to the current project.

All this aside, I have a side-project, and I'm not looking for any validation of it, just classic "build it and they will come" type thinking.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#58

Post by ivanhoe » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

In my opinion these advices apply mostly to B2B and enterprise segment, where you sell to much smaller group of people and it's easier to articulate their needs and demands ahead, and where each individual sale is a significant achievement.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#59

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

0xferruccio wrote: post #55

mrtksn wrote: post #51

Are there examples of great companies that actually started selling before building the product? From Google to Facebook, all the companies that I've ever researched seems to be based on people fiddling with ideas and then quickly iterate to the direction when they start getting traction. Sure, there are crowdfunding sites or established companies selling based on CGI drawings or concept videos but this seems to be n…

Google and Facebook are moonshots by extremely talented people. I don’t know about you, but I have no close to zero chances of building something similar. It’s wiser to be realistic, find problems businesses have, understand them better than anyone else and try to solve them. EG. some dropshipping platforms don’t have integrations with some e-commerce platforms, interview dropshippers and build the ones they’d need.…

So, are there any examples of something that started with the selling first building later?

Sure, for a small operation that is not particularly innovative you can do that. You can first sell someone a house and later build it but I am not aware of a product that made it big by consulting the potential users without having a product(MVP or even a POC) in hand. Usually, it seems, people start with a product that they have some kind of awareness of its purpose and value, measure the reactions and iterate it thereafter.

I mean, if selling first and building later is the right way to do a start-up, there must be people who actually succeeded with their start-ups by selling first and building later but I'm yet to hear about one.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#60

Post by irrational » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:37 PM UTC

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 them from anyone. I just can't imagine cold-calling/emailing people actually works.

The best thing you can do is to make sure you appear high in the google rankings so that when I have a need and start searching for whom might be able to fill that need, you come up near the top.