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Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing (2014)
- brudgers 11y agoOriginal discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842282
- diskcat 11y agob-but isn't marketing purpose to generate sale?
- cheez 11y agoSales is the process by which you take a qualified lead and convert them to a paying customer. As a startup, before you start making money, your job is not to find a ton of people to close. Your job is to find out how to close people. It's a machine, a process for growth: 1. Idea 2. Validation 3. MVP 4. Sell to eager buyers 5. Iterate 6. ??? I don't know, I'm still on 4.
- puranjay 11y agoThe purpose of marketing is to generate demand, not sales. This means that marketing is supposed to get a product on your radar, explain to you how it can help you, and then capture some vital information from you - say, an email address or a phone number. THEN the sales team can swing in and push you the product.
- vit05 11y ago"you need to talk individually to early adopters to make a really good product" The text is really about this.
- andrewfelix 11y agoIt's presented as a really black and white argument. Marketing and a focus sales are not mutually exclusive at all.
- andrewfelix 11y agoThe author cites examples from Stripe and Pinterest, which are actually just anecdotes around usability testing, not recruitment of users. I would argue focusing on sales puts you at risk of narrowing your scope and broader appeal.
- danieltillett 11y agoSelling is hard. Cold selling is like walking barefoot over broken glass. I really admire people who can cold sell.
- mjevans 11y agoI really hate them. The best thing a sales team can do is ensure that a relevant description of their product is found when I search for something.
- danieltillett 11y agoYes being on the other end is not so fun. The basic problem is that very few customers that can really benefit from a product actually make the effort to find the product. I sell a product that is vastly superior to all other solutions, yet almost none of my customers come organically via a Google search despite being number 2 in the niche. Almost all our new customers come indirectly after losing a contract against a competitor using our product. I have to say that this is the best way to sell.
- apapli 11y agoThat's marketing's job - not sales
- fpoling 11y agoA good salesperson not only sells the product but also an idea. This way one can get a customer partially pay for the development of the final product bringing important source of financing. Having a good salesperson is very important even if the product is not yet ready. A sales
- cableshaft 11y ago"A sales-(end of comment)" Looks like your product (comment) was not yet ready. Where's your salesperson? :)
- fpoling 11y agoThe last line was a leftover from a draft and should be ignored...
- mikekchar 11y agoHa ha. I once worked on a team where the "sales" people made a "partnership" with a famous company. We paid the famous company for this privilege and were able to advertise that the famous company used our product. We also agreed to do custom work on the product for the famous company for free. As part of the agreement, the "sales" people signed a contract that said that we would pay a huge penalty if we didn't deliver a certain piece of functionality in a certain time frame. After the developers discovered this, the "sales" people were informed that the functionality was impossible (as in it is a generally unsolvable problem). Interestingly, when it all went bust, the company laid off all the developers and retained the "sales" people in the hope that they could somehow get some revenue flowing in. Not so funny at the time, but pretty hilarious to think back upon now. It has certainly shaped the kind of questions I ask when I interview for positions ;-).
- brightball 11y agoI remember working for a dev shop a decade ago where the sales people would sell anything before even asking the developers if it was possible. If they were ever met with a "that's technically impossible with current technology" the response was usually an inspirational quote about finding the answer followed by walking out the door.
- nandreev 11y agoReminds me of this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg