Learn to sell • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn to sell

#81

Post by syntaxing » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

I agree with the author of the article that sales is important to any organization. It's a chicken and egg game between engineering and sales. No sales means no customer but no engineer means no product. I feel like sales gets a bad rep from engineering because whenever we do projects, it feels like we do the work and they get the glory and money (which may or may not be true). The worse is when a company cuts out engineers from the decision process for project requirements. We end up being liable to lucrative claims that other make.

That being said, I absolutely DISAGREE that everyone should get some hands-on sales experience. Just like how not everyone is suited for engineering, not everyone is suited for sales. The author comes from a product management role so I would guess s/he is more extroverted than most engineers. I have met many design engineers that are ridiculously introverted. However, that's the beautiful thing about engineering. It doesn't matter. If you can design something that solves the customers problem, then you are doing a good job. A good manager would make sure a good design engineer get's shielded from the political bs. Unfortunately, the engineering culture is turning into a culture where we promote those with charisma rather than a good designing skillset.

Re: Learn to sell

#82

Post by zipwitch » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

tagami wrote: post #24

madamelic wrote: post #8

Does anyone have any book suggestions for an engineer who wants to learn sales / convincing people? Do you recommend doing trial by fire and getting a sales job? I've realized that I am good at the technicals but terrible at selling why people should do what I say.

Sales is not "convincing" people. A sale is when the products, goods, or services you represent fill a need. Listening and asking open ended questions help the sales person determine that need.

And then lie about their ability to fill it.

Re: Learn to sell

#83

Post by gtycomb » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

madamelic wrote: post #8

Does anyone have any book suggestions for an engineer who wants to learn sales / convincing people? Do you recommend doing trial by fire and getting a sales job? I've realized that I am good at the technicals but terrible at selling why people should do what I say.

"Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win when the Stakes are High" by Jeff Thull. When selling enterprise software, you have to convince many decision makers, there is often no point person to sell to. You may not know some of them even exist until its too late. One needs a process to organize such sales undertaking. This book talks about it.

Re: Learn to sell

#84

Post by scrumper » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #42

scrumper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your situation sounds shitty. It shouldn't be that way; I hope you're able to find time to step back over the holidays. A company shouldn't treat you like that, perhaps another one would be better. Sales is no picnic though. I know it looks like a bunch of high-fiving frat boys talking sports metaphors and rarely coming to work, but the reality is very, very tough. Different challenges to engineering, for sure, but v…

> when else do you get time to write proposals and draft contracts? Depending on the industry, sales people aren't the ones to do these tasks. There's other people that do this for them (nor should they, most of the time, based on stories I've heard from my girlfriend, who is a proposal manager. She constantly has to fix and unbreak and un-ugly whatever they do send her). In fact for the companies she works it sounds…

I agree it's industry by industry. Your girlfriend's experience is at another end of the scale from mine. Every enterprise software company I've ever worked at, sales has both written and presented proposals. There's very deep subject matter expertise required to do so and I can't think of any occasion when sales didn't own that entire aspect of work. These were 50-1,000 employee firms selling complex . More established companies had standardized contracts and larger legal teams so less for sales to do; smaller ones were more bespoke and in those cases sales was heavily involved.

(One particularly memorable job had me finding clients, pitching ideas, writing proposals, negotiating and closing the deal, drafting and negotiating contracts, and then managing the actual project itself for $1m+ fixed price bespoke software consulting engagements. I'd have sold organs to have someone like your girlfriend on the team.)

I'm fortunate to have done both engineering and sales in my career. I'd like to say it's given me sympathy for both sides; mostly I've always just wished I was doing the other role at any given time :)

Re: Learn to sell

#85

Post by notquitesure » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

joshwcomeau wrote: post #49

> It doesn’t matter how brilliant your software engineering is if no one buys it. Right, because so many people buy Facebook products, or Twitter, or Google... Many, if not most, software products don't sell anything. While there are tons of problems with getting 100% of your revenue from ads, the fact remains that many companies don't have anything to sell to their consumers. Of course, you have to make a good, stic…

Google revenue: 89b in 2016

Facebook revenue: 28b in 2016

More than 30k of Google's 80k employees on LinkedIn have titles including either "Sales" or "Account" (Account Executive, Account Manager, etc.). For Facebook it's 9k out of 26k.

Facebook and google both sell user attention to advertisers. Exxon deploys vast engineering resources to extract and collect oil, but it would be weird to say that because they don't receive payment from their wells and refineries that they don't make sales

Re: Learn to sell

#86

Post by leonroy » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:43 PM 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…

I've been/seen both sides of the coin. It's not quite that black and white in most of the organizations I've seen. Sales is pretty rough, it's a lot of slog through lead after lead. There's a fair bit of creative writing and targeting, generating social media buzz, networking at industry events and building product presence organically, as well as of course handling potential leads directly.

It can sometimes feel like you're chasing your tail and there can be many, many days or weeks even of drought where you've got little in actual sales to show for all your work. That's pretty demoralizing and whilst engineering can be similar (think failed or canned projects) the highs and lows of engineering don't even compare.

They're both very tough gigs and both involve long hours, but as some of the posters below are suggesting you might be in a poor job situation yourself. Engineering roles don't have to be like the life you're describing.

Re: Learn to sell

#87

Post by nrhk » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:53 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #61

busterarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is "lucky" to be working long hours. No matter how much they love what they're doing. An engineer making $150k working 60 hour weeks is making $5/hr less than an engineer earning $100k working 36 hour weeks. The latter is literally earning more _for their time_ working half as much for 2/3 the salary. The hourly rate of an engineer earning $250k for 60 hour weeks is the same as an engineer earning $150k for 36…

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.

Usually the time you need to book is lower than the full 40 hour week, I have to book 37 even if I'm pulling 60 or 30.

I think you do have to acknowledge the point that engineers are sometimes thought of as commodities and the business often don't realize the effects of their requests on the engineering team. Management is always very quantitatively focused and its hard to justify a lot of the yak shaving that needs to be done . This leads to poorer quality code or engineers working extra hours so they don't end up swimming in shit every day.

Of course if you are in those situations, just leave, we're in high enough demand right now. Only in a recession should you worry about those qualms.

Re: Learn to sell

#88

Post by ethbro » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:56 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #79

hardtke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always tried to sit in on a few sales calls at any place I've worked and have encouraged people working for me to do the same. It's valuable to see your products from the Sales team and customer perspective. The surprising thing I've observed is how great sales people spend most of the call listening to problems, not offering solutions.

I always have every member of the exec team attend a sales call per quarter. Yep, even the CFO. Amazing the impact it has on the staff meetings, much less the decisions made.

Amen. If everyone at the org can't describe at least one type of customer for the product, in detail, then there's something wrong.

And this definitely includes software engineers.

Re: Learn to sell

#89

Post by EGreg » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 7:56 PM UTC

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...

Bill Baren has some things

Re: Learn to sell

#90

Post by Libturd » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

pipio21 wrote: post #70

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…

Take a week off and go travel to India or Africa(Ethiopia, Sahara Morocco, Congo are good candidates) or Tibet. Join some NGO or missionary for helping them. You need perspective in your live to understand how really lucky you are. It is always greener on the other side of the fence. Your life is miserable and the faster you change your track the better for your life. For me it is just obscene hearing you. You are a…

kill yourself.