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You lost me here: you can consider the typical “coin operated” sales person at a mature company to be more akin to a script kiddie than a hacker. The terminol

by lquist 10y ago

You lost me here: you can consider the typical “coin operated” sales person at a mature company to be more akin to a script kiddie than a hacker. The terminology you use belies a lack of understanding of sales' place in an org and is frankly just insulting. To borrow from Lars Dalgaard [1]: The “coin operated idiots” mindset toward sales is a mistake for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s a kind of bigotry, because it basically writes off an entire workforce of human beings who create so much value everyday. An outstanding and involved sales force can often make or break a company. It’s why companies with an inferior product but a superior sales force sometimes still win. But the real problem with the coin-operated idiots mindset is that it relegates salespeople only to the field or to the phone, when they really should be considered part of the company leadership. Not this decapitated thing you “slot onto” your organization when you need to... Having a salesperson in the room means bringing in a bullshit meter. The sales rep is the one who is going to say, “I know you’re excited that this product was built on/with such-and-such, but so what? That’s not going to excite my customers. How is this differentiated from everything else out there?” They’ll ask the hard questions. [1] http://a16z.com/2015/06/01/clean-up-your-startups-b-s-bring-sales-into-the-leadership-team/ http://a16z.com/2015/06/01/clean-up-your-startups-b-s-bring-...

tafda 10y ago
Having a salesperson in the room means bringing in a bullshit meter "Meter" isn't quite the right noun to go with the adjective here, .
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Propagator? :-)
thucydides 10y ago
That's an uncharitable reading. I do a lot of sales now, and I've watched a lot of enterprise salespeople do their work. As in any other human endeavor, some of them are phenomenal. I routinely sat in on one friend's sales meetings and calls. After being raised watching Gil, the hapless salesman from the Simpsons, this was like watching Billy Joel play the piano or Roger Federer play tennis. It was obvious he was a master craftsman. He was so expert at getting people to act in their own best interest, while making it look pleasant and effortless, it was - seriously - beautiful to watch. Other salespeople... not so much. I've seen them too. They don't have the intellectual horsepower, they don't prepare, they... I mean, frankly there are a million reasons they're mediocre. Their mediocrity is overdetermined. I think that's all the author meant by coin-operated salesperson or "script kiddie" salesperson: a mediocre one.
- radicalbyte 10y ago
  It's the Sales equivalent of the copy/paste programmer.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    And/or one who is paid "by the line" or "by delivery speed" and sacrifices everything else to those metrics.
- startling 10y ago
  How is this what "coin-operated" means?
  - thucydides 10y ago
    “coin operated” sales person at a mature company ... more akin to a script kiddie than a hacker. It's sometimes unfairly used as a slur on the whole profession. Here he seems to be talking about that class of poorer salespeople who need to be told exactly what to do, given precise scripts, can't leap hurdles themselves, etc.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- mkagenius 10y ago
  If you reward the salesperson for each sale he/she does then he is a coin-operated salesperson, i don't think we can link that to being mediocre.
api 10y ago
Historically there was a school of thought in business where sales is everything and every other role is interchangeable and secondary. It's still very common on the east coast. All you need is a couple extroverted dominant personalities and everything else will just take care of itself. It doesn't work very well, and it tends to result in a very toxic culture. You get a restaurant that's packed on opening day but the food sucks, or there's no food and the sales guys run across the street to McDonald's in desperation and try to pass it off as high cuisine. Then they blame everyone else. Now that tech types often found and run companies I think we have an opposing and probably retaliatory mindset emerging. Now all you need is a few super genius engineers and the rest... well... Unfortunately this doesn't work well either and also tends to result in a toxic culture. You get a restaurant with five star food and a lot of empty seats. Everyone else tends to get blamed here too. In a healthy company you have a culture that respects the need for a wide variety of skills.
- dadro 10y ago
  "It's still very common on the east coast." What is that supposed to mean? I could use purely anecdotal experiences and make the same remark about the West Coat.
  - api 10y ago
    I think a more accurate thing to say would be that California seems like the only place you find anything other than the Dale Carnegie school of business... at least to any significant degree. You do find that in California too, but that's not all there is.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    In general, or the weird land of Silicon Valley?
    - dadro 10y ago
      I've seen plenty of the ultra-hyped sales culture in LA and SF. Saying it is purely an East Coast phenomenon is completely misinformed.
djyaz1200 10y ago
Slow clap!
manigandham 10y ago
> Having a salesperson in the room means bringing in a bullshit meter. The sales rep is the one who is going to say, “I know you’re excited that this product was built on/with such-and-such, but so what? That’s not going to excite my customers. How is this differentiated from everything else out there?” They’ll ask the hard questions. I've also seen the opposite even more - bringing in (average or lower) salespeople usually adds to the bullshit.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
To touch upon and dive deeper into your comment about how the author lacks expertise when selling into enterprise accounts. In enterprise I've found that most of the time when prospecting the equation for selling is 95% TRUST & 5% VALUE. Enterprise customers have a lot to lose if your offering goes south on them, so they need to trust their vendors. That said it takes time to build trust. You can establish it over time by building authority and offering social proof in any industry. Going direct to customers is a good way to start revenue but it's tough to scale. HP sells 80% of its revenue through partners. Instead of going direct to customers you should build a channel sales program and build up partner relationships. Partners you work with should have clients already, clients you want. Clients that trust these partners because they do a good job. That's how you get into enterprise quickly and scale. I have built and sold five companies in the last 7 years. I was CIO at a $50M/year sales organization by age 24, now I am going to be taking over 170 (as of writing this) startups through a probono training on how to do sales for enterprise. I'd like to extend an invite to everyone on here if anyone is interested in joining our session. No cost to anyone for as long as I enjoy hosting it. It's going to be hosted over a webinar on May 26th. Email me hn (at) strapr (dot) com to get on the list.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > No cost to anyone for as long as I enjoy hosting it What does this mean?
  - 50CNT 10y ago
    Think what he means is that he is doing this for fun, but if it stops being fun (eg. too much of a hassle), he may start charging for it instead.
    - godzillabrennus 10y ago
      That was my intent. As long as this is fun and people are reasonable with requests on my time then I'll gladly help them.
corney91 10y ago
It’s why companies with an inferior product but a superior sales force sometimes still win. Do we want inferior products to win?
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Yeah when I read that I realized why a lot of these startups are kicking incumbent ass. They focus on value. Who needs trust when you can contractually obligate something?
wiz21c 10y ago
interestingly, as an IT person, I'd say the same thing for dev's when talking to sales : put a dev, in the leadership, a dev. is a bullshit meter for the sales, etc.
- scardine 10y ago
  Developers are not bullshit-proof - they just tend to be lured by another type of bullshit. Many fall easily for the last shinny new technology.
Chris2048 10y ago
> I know you’re excited that this product was built on/with such-and-such, but so what? That’s not going to excite my customers short term versus long term? edit: I'll add - sales would suggest building a faster horse.
- pc86 10y ago
  > I'll add - sales would suggest building a faster horse. Wrong - the customer would ask for a faster horse. A bad salesman would sell them one. A good salesman will get them to want a car.
- notahacker 10y ago
  Long term, your customer still doesn't give a shit that your product is built on a bleeding edge javascript framework (except if it has more bugs as a result). And salespeople are perfectly capable of grasping "if we don't fix this technical debt, it'll be really difficult to do anything very much with the product in future". They're just immune to "look, open source, new architecture, shiny!" The salesperson is the one that says "you're not going replace horses with automobiles, unless they're faster or more reliable than a horse". As well as the one that says "don't make a faster aeroplane, make one with lower fuel burn instead"
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Building on a bleeding-edge JS framework for the sake of bleeding-edge is poor practise. If there is some advantage to using that framework, though, the customer may well care. What development monkeys, attracted to whatever shiny thing comes along, are you describing? You're not gonna get much enthusiasm here for negative dev stereotypes, especially if you're gonna cast sales as noble protectors of the business in contrast. Many devs (especially in "enterprise") are quite conservative. In fact, I've seen sales/management sometimes care more about the latest buzzword shiny than development. > salespeople are perfectly capable of grasping Doesn't mean they'll care, especially if they'll be out, commission in hand, by the time the debt hits. > The salesperson is the one that says "you're not going replace horses with automobiles, unless they're faster or more reliable than a horse". I'm not sure cars were either of these. And the point is, how do sales know what the customer wants, if the customer doesn't know what they want?

by lquist 10y ago

tafda 10y ago

Having a salesperson in the room means bringing in a bullshit meter "Meter" isn't quite the right noun to go with the adjective here, .

Chris2048 10y ago
Propagator? :-)

thucydides 10y ago

That's an uncharitable reading. I do a lot of sales now, and I've watched a lot of enterprise salespeople do their work. As in any other human endeavor, some of them are phenomenal. I routinely sat in on one friend's sales meetings and calls. After being raised watching Gil, the hapless salesman from the Simpsons, this was like watching Billy Joel play the piano or Roger Federer play tennis. It was obvious he was a master craftsman. He was so expert at getting people to act in their own best interest, while making it look pleasant and effortless, it was - seriously - beautiful to watch. Other salespeople... not so much. I've seen them too. They don't have the intellectual horsepower, they don't prepare, they... I mean, frankly there are a million reasons they're mediocre. Their mediocrity is overdetermined. I think that's all the author meant by coin-operated salesperson or "script kiddie" salesperson: a mediocre one.

radicalbyte 10y ago
It's the Sales equivalent of the copy/paste programmer.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  And/or one who is paid "by the line" or "by delivery speed" and sacrifices everything else to those metrics.
startling 10y ago
How is this what "coin-operated" means?
- thucydides 10y ago
  “coin operated” sales person at a mature company ... more akin to a script kiddie than a hacker. It's sometimes unfairly used as a slur on the whole profession. Here he seems to be talking about that class of poorer salespeople who need to be told exactly what to do, given precise scripts, can't leap hurdles themselves, etc.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mkagenius 10y ago
If you reward the salesperson for each sale he/she does then he is a coin-operated salesperson, i don't think we can link that to being mediocre.

api 10y ago

Historically there was a school of thought in business where sales is everything and every other role is interchangeable and secondary. It's still very common on the east coast. All you need is a couple extroverted dominant personalities and everything else will just take care of itself. It doesn't work very well, and it tends to result in a very toxic culture. You get a restaurant that's packed on opening day but the food sucks, or there's no food and the sales guys run across the street to McDonald's in desperation and try to pass it off as high cuisine. Then they blame everyone else. Now that tech types often found and run companies I think we have an opposing and probably retaliatory mindset emerging. Now all you need is a few super genius engineers and the rest... well... Unfortunately this doesn't work well either and also tends to result in a toxic culture. You get a restaurant with five star food and a lot of empty seats. Everyone else tends to get blamed here too. In a healthy company you have a culture that respects the need for a wide variety of skills.

dadro 10y ago
"It's still very common on the east coast." What is that supposed to mean? I could use purely anecdotal experiences and make the same remark about the West Coat.
- api 10y ago
  I think a more accurate thing to say would be that California seems like the only place you find anything other than the Dale Carnegie school of business... at least to any significant degree. You do find that in California too, but that's not all there is.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  In general, or the weird land of Silicon Valley?
  - dadro 10y ago
    I've seen plenty of the ultra-hyped sales culture in LA and SF. Saying it is purely an East Coast phenomenon is completely misinformed.

djyaz1200 10y ago

Slow clap!

manigandham 10y ago

> Having a salesperson in the room means bringing in a bullshit meter. The sales rep is the one who is going to say, “I know you’re excited that this product was built on/with such-and-such, but so what? That’s not going to excite my customers. How is this differentiated from everything else out there?” They’ll ask the hard questions. I've also seen the opposite even more - bringing in (average or lower) salespeople usually adds to the bullshit.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

To touch upon and dive deeper into your comment about how the author lacks expertise when selling into enterprise accounts. In enterprise I've found that most of the time when prospecting the equation for selling is 95% TRUST & 5% VALUE. Enterprise customers have a lot to lose if your offering goes south on them, so they need to trust their vendors. That said it takes time to build trust. You can establish it over time by building authority and offering social proof in any industry. Going direct to customers is a good way to start revenue but it's tough to scale. HP sells 80% of its revenue through partners. Instead of going direct to customers you should build a channel sales program and build up partner relationships. Partners you work with should have clients already, clients you want. Clients that trust these partners because they do a good job. That's how you get into enterprise quickly and scale. I have built and sold five companies in the last 7 years. I was CIO at a $50M/year sales organization by age 24, now I am going to be taking over 170 (as of writing this) startups through a probono training on how to do sales for enterprise. I'd like to extend an invite to everyone on here if anyone is interested in joining our session. No cost to anyone for as long as I enjoy hosting it. It's going to be hosted over a webinar on May 26th. Email me hn (at) strapr (dot) com to get on the list.

Chris2048 10y ago
> No cost to anyone for as long as I enjoy hosting it What does this mean?
- 50CNT 10y ago
  Think what he means is that he is doing this for fun, but if it stops being fun (eg. too much of a hassle), he may start charging for it instead.
  - godzillabrennus 10y ago
    That was my intent. As long as this is fun and people are reasonable with requests on my time then I'll gladly help them.

corney91 10y ago

It’s why companies with an inferior product but a superior sales force sometimes still win. Do we want inferior products to win?

cmdrfred 10y ago
Yeah when I read that I realized why a lot of these startups are kicking incumbent ass. They focus on value. Who needs trust when you can contractually obligate something?

wiz21c 10y ago

interestingly, as an IT person, I'd say the same thing for dev's when talking to sales : put a dev, in the leadership, a dev. is a bullshit meter for the sales, etc.

scardine 10y ago
Developers are not bullshit-proof - they just tend to be lured by another type of bullshit. Many fall easily for the last shinny new technology.

Chris2048 10y ago

> I know you’re excited that this product was built on/with such-and-such, but so what? That’s not going to excite my customers short term versus long term? edit: I'll add - sales would suggest building a faster horse.

pc86 10y ago
> I'll add - sales would suggest building a faster horse. Wrong - the customer would ask for a faster horse. A bad salesman would sell them one. A good salesman will get them to want a car.
notahacker 10y ago
Long term, your customer still doesn't give a shit that your product is built on a bleeding edge javascript framework (except if it has more bugs as a result). And salespeople are perfectly capable of grasping "if we don't fix this technical debt, it'll be really difficult to do anything very much with the product in future". They're just immune to "look, open source, new architecture, shiny!" The salesperson is the one that says "you're not going replace horses with automobiles, unless they're faster or more reliable than a horse". As well as the one that says "don't make a faster aeroplane, make one with lower fuel burn instead"
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Building on a bleeding-edge JS framework for the sake of bleeding-edge is poor practise. If there is some advantage to using that framework, though, the customer may well care. What development monkeys, attracted to whatever shiny thing comes along, are you describing? You're not gonna get much enthusiasm here for negative dev stereotypes, especially if you're gonna cast sales as noble protectors of the business in contrast. Many devs (especially in "enterprise") are quite conservative. In fact, I've seen sales/management sometimes care more about the latest buzzword shiny than development. > salespeople are perfectly capable of grasping Doesn't mean they'll care, especially if they'll be out, commission in hand, by the time the debt hits. > The salesperson is the one that says "you're not going replace horses with automobiles, unless they're faster or more reliable than a horse". I'm not sure cars were either of these. And the point is, how do sales know what the customer wants, if the customer doesn't know what they want?