Ask HN: How did you learn sales?
33 comments
Wow... this is a much MUCH bigger question than you think it is. My answer will be obviously extremely incomplete.
Sales was my first profession. I was good at my work. After a decade, I decided I wanted a change of pace and moved into programming. I very much miss selling and will probably go back someday.
I got my start as a concert promoter selling concert tickets for my friends bands. I eventually tried most of the major categories of sales: SMB, Enterprise, Retail, Door to door, Patent sales, etc but ended up preferring mostly retail and SMB because the sales cycles were quicker and it made the job a little more fun. Enterprise tends to be the best paid, but much slower and often feels more like project management than a sales gig.
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To answer your question"sales" isn't just sales. There are many different types, approaches, techniques, skills, cultures, etc. If you are inclusive of any job performed by a "compliance professional" (Cialdini) or where there is a transaction involving two or more people, sales is the largest profession in the United States.
If you are just looking to get started I'd recommend 1) To actually sell something 2) get reading the literature.
As far as actually selling something: try reselling something at the farmers market, or go door to door and sell basic manual labor... those two things have high demand which you should be able to land a sale or two right away to get a vibe on a basic process.
As far as literature here are a couple of classics:
(sorry for the terrible and short answer)
Sales was my first profession. I was good at my work. After a decade, I decided I wanted a change of pace and moved into programming. I very much miss selling and will probably go back someday.
I got my start as a concert promoter selling concert tickets for my friends bands. I eventually tried most of the major categories of sales: SMB, Enterprise, Retail, Door to door, Patent sales, etc but ended up preferring mostly retail and SMB because the sales cycles were quicker and it made the job a little more fun. Enterprise tends to be the best paid, but much slower and often feels more like project management than a sales gig.
---
To answer your question"sales" isn't just sales. There are many different types, approaches, techniques, skills, cultures, etc. If you are inclusive of any job performed by a "compliance professional" (Cialdini) or where there is a transaction involving two or more people, sales is the largest profession in the United States.
If you are just looking to get started I'd recommend 1) To actually sell something 2) get reading the literature.
As far as actually selling something: try reselling something at the farmers market, or go door to door and sell basic manual labor... those two things have high demand which you should be able to land a sale or two right away to get a vibe on a basic process.
As far as literature here are a couple of classics:
- Influence
- the little red book of selling
- SPIN selling
- Secrets of closing the sale
- The challenger sale
- The presentation secrets of steve jobs (for presentation skills)
- The rules of the game (neil strauss)
- Nudge
(sorry for the terrible and short answer)
By selling.
Two experiences when I was 16:
(1) I was launching a blog on geopolitics in 2002 and needed to get subscribers. I went out with a clipboard to various political events and asked people if they'd like to sign up. A lot said "no", some said "yes" -- got to 2,000 subs.
(2) Summer camp where I focused on a product design. Then my instructor said, "OK, now go call 5 businesses and see if anyone wants this." No script, no vision deck, no PPT -- just made a call and of those 5 companies, 1 said "Hey, this sounds kind of interesting."
The validation was so exciting.
Since then I've hired sales coaches, sales reps, etc. but honestly, nothing really beats doing it... Just accept 90% of the time you'll get a "no" and 5% of the time you'll get disrespectful attitudes, but 5% of the time you'll get a "yes" and you'll love it.
Two experiences when I was 16:
(1) I was launching a blog on geopolitics in 2002 and needed to get subscribers. I went out with a clipboard to various political events and asked people if they'd like to sign up. A lot said "no", some said "yes" -- got to 2,000 subs.
(2) Summer camp where I focused on a product design. Then my instructor said, "OK, now go call 5 businesses and see if anyone wants this." No script, no vision deck, no PPT -- just made a call and of those 5 companies, 1 said "Hey, this sounds kind of interesting."
The validation was so exciting.
Since then I've hired sales coaches, sales reps, etc. but honestly, nothing really beats doing it... Just accept 90% of the time you'll get a "no" and 5% of the time you'll get disrespectful attitudes, but 5% of the time you'll get a "yes" and you'll love it.
If you're on LinkedIn you should follow VP of sales, Account Executives, SDRs, BDRs at people who work for sales software companies (SalesLoft, Outreach, Gong, Lavender). They post incredible advice.
You have to get past their writing style and tone which can be off putting for technical people but it's gold.
Things I've learned, tried and realize work: 1. Instead of the "hey checking in" followup emails, send a joke or a meme. 2. Researching 20 people who really fit what you're trying to do is worth 100x more than 100 people who aren't great fits. 3. Figure out what the person is trying to accomplish and fit your pitch to that goal. Remember you are there to help them.
You have to get past their writing style and tone which can be off putting for technical people but it's gold.
Things I've learned, tried and realize work: 1. Instead of the "hey checking in" followup emails, send a joke or a meme. 2. Researching 20 people who really fit what you're trying to do is worth 100x more than 100 people who aren't great fits. 3. Figure out what the person is trying to accomplish and fit your pitch to that goal. Remember you are there to help them.
> Researching 20 people who really fit what you're trying to do is worth 100x more than 100 people who aren't great fits.
This holds true in much more than sales :)
This holds true in much more than sales :)
As a manager, I've done quote a bit of tech sales. The way I look at it is, you're trying to understand your customer (or prospects) problems and see how your product offerings may help solve their problems. I'd never try to hard-sell a prospect something if it didn't seem like a good fit, even if you do a great job they still won't be happy. That's no good. There are some books you can read if you want to pick up some basic pointers, a lot of it is common sense.
Above all, listen and try to understand what your prospect needs or think that they want.
1. Know your product(s) inside and out. 2. Know your customer/prospect's business inside and out. 3. Imagine what your prospect's objections may be and have answers lined up ahead of time. If you don't know the answer to a question, say so. Let them know you will research it and get back to them. 4. Try to build a rapport. 5. Be prepared for your meeting. 6. Know the audience, is it a tech person or executives? 7. Keep following up, set reminders on your calendar to do so.
And...like others have said, you kind of just need to start doing it.
Above all, listen and try to understand what your prospect needs or think that they want.
1. Know your product(s) inside and out. 2. Know your customer/prospect's business inside and out. 3. Imagine what your prospect's objections may be and have answers lined up ahead of time. If you don't know the answer to a question, say so. Let them know you will research it and get back to them. 4. Try to build a rapport. 5. Be prepared for your meeting. 6. Know the audience, is it a tech person or executives? 7. Keep following up, set reminders on your calendar to do so.
And...like others have said, you kind of just need to start doing it.
Cold calling 100 people a day every day for 9 months, except Saturdays and Sundays: Saturdays it was 50, Sundays I took off.
I sold insurance and investment products, and would grab the phone book and just pick a section and call the numbers/people in it.
Day 1-10 I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Rejection is personal and becomes internalized at this point. It sucks A LOT. You either get through this period and build VERY thick skin or you quit and decide sales is impossible and only doable by those "born with it".
Day 11: You realize talking to people is becoming easier and you are stuttering/stumbling/mumbling/apologizing less. You know 95% of all objections to your sales pitch. You realize your sales pitch either sucks or is non-existant, but you can verbatim introduce yourself and explain your product/service. However, you realize you are not actually asking for a sale effectively or handling objections properly. You are beginning to see the problems with your approach.
Day 11-30: You experiment with various WRITTEN sales scripts and objection handlers to see what works best. You weak this script until you have something you are comfortable with and works effectively to
1. Introduce yourself and your expertise, 2. Explains your product and service succinctly, 3. ASK for the sale effectively, 4. "Handle" prospect's objections and reiterate your service's benefits
After a month (hopefully much sooner) and after perfecting your script, you will learn that not everyone you speak with is worth your time nor is a potential customer. You will learn what makes a potential customer and how to qualify a prospect before asking for the sale and once you do this, you will vastly reduce how many objections you need to "handle".
You will also learn very quickly that sales is a numbers game: The more prospects you talk with, the more potential customers you will find, and the more sales you will make. If you understand that not every prospect is a customer and it typically takes 100 prospects to find 1 customer, you can gamify the process. My numbers always looked like this:
100 prospects -> 30 talk-tos (actual people i spoke with) -> 10 appointments set (people said they'd meet me/seemed interested) -> 3 appointment show-ups (actual interested people that showed up to meet me) -> 1 sale
End of day it takes practice and incremental improvement. I tried reading books, a lot of books, but realized I was simply wasting time trying to find a process, when the only thing to do was actually put in the work and improve the process I was already doing.
I sold insurance and investment products, and would grab the phone book and just pick a section and call the numbers/people in it.
Day 1-10 I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Rejection is personal and becomes internalized at this point. It sucks A LOT. You either get through this period and build VERY thick skin or you quit and decide sales is impossible and only doable by those "born with it".
Day 11: You realize talking to people is becoming easier and you are stuttering/stumbling/mumbling/apologizing less. You know 95% of all objections to your sales pitch. You realize your sales pitch either sucks or is non-existant, but you can verbatim introduce yourself and explain your product/service. However, you realize you are not actually asking for a sale effectively or handling objections properly. You are beginning to see the problems with your approach.
Day 11-30: You experiment with various WRITTEN sales scripts and objection handlers to see what works best. You weak this script until you have something you are comfortable with and works effectively to
1. Introduce yourself and your expertise, 2. Explains your product and service succinctly, 3. ASK for the sale effectively, 4. "Handle" prospect's objections and reiterate your service's benefits
After a month (hopefully much sooner) and after perfecting your script, you will learn that not everyone you speak with is worth your time nor is a potential customer. You will learn what makes a potential customer and how to qualify a prospect before asking for the sale and once you do this, you will vastly reduce how many objections you need to "handle".
You will also learn very quickly that sales is a numbers game: The more prospects you talk with, the more potential customers you will find, and the more sales you will make. If you understand that not every prospect is a customer and it typically takes 100 prospects to find 1 customer, you can gamify the process. My numbers always looked like this:
100 prospects -> 30 talk-tos (actual people i spoke with) -> 10 appointments set (people said they'd meet me/seemed interested) -> 3 appointment show-ups (actual interested people that showed up to meet me) -> 1 sale
End of day it takes practice and incremental improvement. I tried reading books, a lot of books, but realized I was simply wasting time trying to find a process, when the only thing to do was actually put in the work and improve the process I was already doing.
Sounds an awful lot like interviewing for a remote position.
Interviewing is basically just you selling yourself to the company, so it checks out
A big part of sales is getting people to even know your product exists. How are people on HN reaching out to customers? Advertisements don't quite work for tech geeks and people that would use SaaS (Adblock, general detest against ads, etc). I am curious what are good marketing strategies that reach potential customers in ways that they are not annoyed by it, but the opposite - they are thankful for discovering your product or service?
I led sales at our company and have sold many (tens of) millions of enterprise software. Not all lessons carry over to every company / product / buyer group but below are my high level thoughts. I am happy to take this offline as well if you have specific questions (I enjoy paying it forward). Note that the below is predicated on the assumption that the product you are selling has product market fit - without that, nothing matters because it isnt a product worth selling.
The Golden Rule (for us): people do business with people they know, they like, and they trust. - To be known, you need to make an effort to connect and build / maintain a relationship. That doesnt mean you need to be friends but you can't be one and done. Listen to clients and prospects and learn about what they care about and remember it the next time you speak. - To be liked, be genuine, forthcoming, a good listener, etc - To be trusted, always operate with integrity and NEVER sell something you don't believe in. I have a rolodex of clients that buy literally every product we launch before we launch it because they blindly trust us. I will do everything in my power to preserve that trust.
If you only read three books on sales, I would recommend the following. The value of #1 is 1000x all others. Read it and put the principles in practice and you will have laid a great foundation for success in life and it automatically puts the Golden Rule in practice.
1- Dale Carnegies How to Win Friends and Influence People 2- Getting to Yes 3- Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion
The above covers disposition. Process and accountability is a HUGE driver of success in sales. At our company, we DEMAND you have strong systems of accountability and follow through. I find the best salespeople are constantly thinking about their funnel. I was in a lecture in college with Larry Silverstein (NYC real estate billionaire) who said success can be quantified pretty easily: make 10x more phones calls and you'll be 10x more successful. You'll hear this as a recurring theme in life, as Wayne Gretzky said "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and woody allen said "90% of success is showing up". Show up every day and put in an honest days work building and maintaining your funnel, and conduct yourself reasonably and with integrity, and things will close.
There is so much more to this topic and it varies from being average to being good to being a top producer... but I think the above is the pre-req.
The Golden Rule (for us): people do business with people they know, they like, and they trust. - To be known, you need to make an effort to connect and build / maintain a relationship. That doesnt mean you need to be friends but you can't be one and done. Listen to clients and prospects and learn about what they care about and remember it the next time you speak. - To be liked, be genuine, forthcoming, a good listener, etc - To be trusted, always operate with integrity and NEVER sell something you don't believe in. I have a rolodex of clients that buy literally every product we launch before we launch it because they blindly trust us. I will do everything in my power to preserve that trust.
If you only read three books on sales, I would recommend the following. The value of #1 is 1000x all others. Read it and put the principles in practice and you will have laid a great foundation for success in life and it automatically puts the Golden Rule in practice.
1- Dale Carnegies How to Win Friends and Influence People 2- Getting to Yes 3- Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion
The above covers disposition. Process and accountability is a HUGE driver of success in sales. At our company, we DEMAND you have strong systems of accountability and follow through. I find the best salespeople are constantly thinking about their funnel. I was in a lecture in college with Larry Silverstein (NYC real estate billionaire) who said success can be quantified pretty easily: make 10x more phones calls and you'll be 10x more successful. You'll hear this as a recurring theme in life, as Wayne Gretzky said "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and woody allen said "90% of success is showing up". Show up every day and put in an honest days work building and maintaining your funnel, and conduct yourself reasonably and with integrity, and things will close.
There is so much more to this topic and it varies from being average to being good to being a top producer... but I think the above is the pre-req.
I've read "How to Win Friends and Influence People", fascinating book. Since I read it, I also started putting into practice what the author says. Guess I'll have a quick re-read to see if I overlooked anything. The other 2 books are in my reading list, I'll move them up haha.
Happy to chat about what I took away and put lessons learned from these in practice. You can't use all the tools all the time but we routinely do and the value created has been enormous.
Sales is incredibly hard to learn without actually doing it. It's a soft skill so it requires a lot of reps and practice.
I wanted to get great at sales after my startup failed and I decided the best way to learn would be by joining a company as a solutions engineer (being a developer, I felt like it was role that was perfect for me since it combined sales with technical skills).
It ultimately ended up being the best decision of my life, and I couldn't imagine doing anything outside of sales/go-to-market now. I'm happy to talk more about my experience over zoom if you'd like! Feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected]
In terms of book recommendations, I do recommend the book "To Sell Is Human" by Daniel Pink to people deciding whether or not to get into sales. A lot of people associate sales with the "annoying car salesman", but this book gives really great insight into how sales has transformed into "consultative" in order to survive.
I wanted to get great at sales after my startup failed and I decided the best way to learn would be by joining a company as a solutions engineer (being a developer, I felt like it was role that was perfect for me since it combined sales with technical skills).
It ultimately ended up being the best decision of my life, and I couldn't imagine doing anything outside of sales/go-to-market now. I'm happy to talk more about my experience over zoom if you'd like! Feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected]
In terms of book recommendations, I do recommend the book "To Sell Is Human" by Daniel Pink to people deciding whether or not to get into sales. A lot of people associate sales with the "annoying car salesman", but this book gives really great insight into how sales has transformed into "consultative" in order to survive.
I learned sales by selling weed in college.
More anecdata admittedly but I know of at least one YC founder that could say the same.
I have curated thousands of sales threads from twitter - the new learning university. Dm me to get early access. https://twitter.com/v2s2c/status/1522481960471252993
There are a few techniques that a half decent course will teach you:
Questioning techniques: one specifically called "funnelling" and another called ABC (Always Be Closing)
Selling benefits instead of selling features
Objection handling etc.
Closing techniques: Namely stop selling after the customer had agreed to buy.
Etc
Questioning techniques: one specifically called "funnelling" and another called ABC (Always Be Closing)
Selling benefits instead of selling features
Objection handling etc.
Closing techniques: Namely stop selling after the customer had agreed to buy.
Etc
>Objection handling etc.
Details?
Details?
Like how to move an opportunity on from one phase (prospecting) to the next phase (qualification) when you customer is reticent, or unconvinced, or tardy.
This should be done without being pushy, but, with careful techniques, the sales cycle can be shortened and objections that occur _throughout_ the sales process are either handled, or the opportunity is closed as lost.
A focus on sales pipeline measurement, efficient use of sales effort and focussing attention on where the business is most likely to be, etc, etc is all a part of this.
This should be done without being pushy, but, with careful techniques, the sales cycle can be shortened and objections that occur _throughout_ the sales process are either handled, or the opportunity is closed as lost.
A focus on sales pipeline measurement, efficient use of sales effort and focussing attention on where the business is most likely to be, etc, etc is all a part of this.
A lot of things can be learnt using books and mentors but as far as selling is concerned you might as well be asking "how did you learn to swim?"
It's the same answer.. you learn to swim by swimming. You can ask all the people jumping into the water on which technique is best and what hacks are the best.. but even after all the advice you will get shocked and struggle with it when you jump in the first time and it will take a lot practice before you do the first lap.
So depending on the type of profession there is no better way to pick up the phone, write that email or start connecting with the right people (irl or online) and just get started to learn it.
It's the same answer.. you learn to swim by swimming. You can ask all the people jumping into the water on which technique is best and what hacks are the best.. but even after all the advice you will get shocked and struggle with it when you jump in the first time and it will take a lot practice before you do the first lap.
So depending on the type of profession there is no better way to pick up the phone, write that email or start connecting with the right people (irl or online) and just get started to learn it.
https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Sales-Go-Market-Handbook-ebo...
This is a decent book. The good thing about reading a book or two about sales is it will give you a little bit of confidence. Even if nothing beats getting out there and doing it, feeling like you sort of basically get it will drastically increase the chances you'll actually get out there...
This is a decent book. The good thing about reading a book or two about sales is it will give you a little bit of confidence. Even if nothing beats getting out there and doing it, feeling like you sort of basically get it will drastically increase the chances you'll actually get out there...
I've long wondered why there are no college courses on sales.
Almost every company has a sales department and there are tons of careers in sales, yet there is no formal path to learning in higher ed.
Almost every company has a sales department and there are tons of careers in sales, yet there is no formal path to learning in higher ed.
For my money, all "sales advice" are secondary to this one :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ
Easy - just spend your time yacking and anoying productive people in the next cube. And then get the person in the next cube to actually make the sale.
Best thing I did was just get a job in sales at a startup. You get the mentorship and a way to practice with very minimal risk.
Did you already have some sales experience before joining the startup?
for starters, try to actually experience your market as a buyer.
excellent advice.
i would add:
dont try to sell something you dont believe in.
i would add:
dont try to sell something you dont believe in.
Also, how would you recommend someone to start learning sales?