8 ms·

What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.

by na85 10y ago

arbuge 10y ago
I do not think the approach he described would lead to the conclusion he's an obvious salesperson.
snowwrestler 10y ago
It's not sales, it's mentoring. A lot of established business folks like to do a bit of it.
goatherders 10y ago
I run the sales division of a nine figure web hosting company.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  The fact that you work in a "9 figure web hosting company" might be a cue of why you can start a conversation, because of the brand of a company. Im sure Airbnb can get into a broker house any day to have a chat. Do you think it would be easy for you to walk into Uber in the next few days and someone tell you what you should be building that they would buy? Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)
  - goatherders 10y ago
    Before that I ran my own semiconductor brokerage abd the approach was the sane. "what about your job sucks?" "it sucks when I plan a build for Monday and 49 chips show up but 1 doesn't arrive until Wednesday. So my customer is mad that we are behind schedule and I pay mt staff to stand around.". So I started selling complete kits. One vendor, One PO and one box of components that arrives on time with everything in it. Doesn't matter that I now have a known brand behind me. Customers want the same essential thing: That you care about their success. I still answer my cell in the middle of the night during an outage because clients want to know i care and feel their pain because my company is impacting their ability to be successful, to pay employees, to pay bills, to feed their families. The point is the same throughout and hits at my philosophy. I don't sell servers or hosting or support. We sell good days. We sell a developer wowing his or her boss. We sell an absence of worry that a client will be pulled away from time with their family to solve a web issue. We don't sell RAM and processors. We sell good days.
    - primitivesuave 10y ago
      This is one of the most inspirational sentiments I've read on HN, thank you for sharing!
    - Uptrenda 10y ago
      Got to say. That last paragraph was impressive. Wow.
    - ddingus 10y ago
      Awesome sauce. This is all spot on. The beauty of it is the real friends you make and what it is all worth. There are calls I answered at O'dark thirty 10 years ago that are HUGE today. People starting careers, people I helped to get there. They remember, and when I need or ask, they return consideration I gave them. Or, I walk into a booming department, shake hands with the person building it, and we go have a lunch to chat about the early days.. They share all they are doing, and it's awesome. When people know you know it makes sense to get there more than just do a deal, everyone values that.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Persistence pays. I was an account manager intern at a VAR in college and was really shocked to discover this. I sold about $50k of training to a big company based on a cold call. One time a guy called looking for advice on sharing files on NT4 and ended up in a conversation about licensing -- I sold him an EA. Another time I was in a wingman role for a site visit with an account exec. On the way back, we stopped at a really large company, the account exec bullshitted his way in, and we ended up chatting with their local IT director for about an hour. We started getting RFPs a few weeks later. There's no secret. Just treat people well, talk to them and find out what problems they have. If you can't solve them, refer them to someone who can.
    - onion2k 10y ago
      Aren't the statements "the account exec bullshitted his way in" and "Just treat people well" a little contradictory?
      - ddingus 10y ago
        Not really. Social charm is often the necessary bit of lubricant needed to get a conversation going. Think of it this way... It can be an excuse to make a pitch, which sucks. Everyone knows the charm was just a ruse. Or, if your team has a genuine interest in the field, that charm isn't a ruse. It's genuine and earnest interest. It's the piece that can get the real convo started. The difference is, after a time and maybe some business done, whether real understanding and a shared, common interest in success exists. Where it does, everyone will have improved and that network of people has value. Becomes a center of gravity, attracting others. Where it does not, it's just a deal, and maybe it was worth it, maybe not. But nobody is invested on a personal level. There is no real understanding. With the former, it's common to check in, exchange news, share success, failure, introduce new people, etc... With the latter, it's extremely common to only talk when needed, as it's just noise otherwise. Truth is, for a given niche, there are always interesting people who care about it. You want to be and cone to know those people because they are where all the real action is. Circle back to the bullshit way in. Having the goal I put here means that conversation is extremely likely to have enough value to warrant the effort needed to start it.
conanbatt 10y ago
Honestly, I agree with you. Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger.. Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.
- pryelluw 10y ago
  Are you leveraging social media to warm up the leads? Find and target them with ads and follow up with a phone call or visit. Works pretty well.
  - manmal 10y ago
    Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?
    - pryelluw 10y ago
      They signed up for it by using the network. Try it.
  - smokinhotdaisy 10y ago
    You are right and it is proven effective. :) Tried that and still doing it.
    - pryelluw 10y ago
      Yeah, I use it with clients and always blow them away with the results.
  - exceptione 10y ago
    What kind of ad do you make? I am very interested in the way you concretely go about this!
    - 10y ago
flyosity 10y ago
You pay them to talk to you, whatever their hourly rate is. Not a big secret.
- clort 10y ago
  I worked for a market research company once (reasonably well respected, in their field) and we still had a hellish time getting employees to talk to us for money. Many staff are not comfortable with talking about their area of expertise (which is obviously related to the company they work for) outside of the confines of that company, or are certainly not going to accept cash for doing so off the books even if that is donated to a charity organisation. Additionally, many companies are not really set up to handle contracting out their already occupied employees (especially senior staff) for an hours salary. Actually, thinking about it most of the reputation we had was in speaking to smaller owner-operated businesses where the owner or self-employed associates were free to speak to us and could gauge the benefit to themselves from doing so (our interviews were often on behalf of larger companies testing the market for product ideas, so they would get the satisfaction of providing feedback and even getting advance notice of what may be on offer) anyway, what I'm saying is.. it can be difficult and time consuming to arrange that but it is possible to get somebody else to do the drudge work.
beambot 10y ago
Ask friends. Ask friends of friends. Go to a party or local event and ask others (after striking up real conversations). Are you a regular patron at any establishment? Speak to a low-level employee you regularly interact with; then speak to their manager. Ask your mail carrier; ask your paper delivery boy; ask your milkman. If it's 7-degrees of indirection to get to Kevin Bacon, it's probably just 1-2 degrees for people in your community. Just start talking to people... or to the parent's point: Listen to people (and follow up!). You're looking to build relationships, not marks (I hope).
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
SMEs do, particularly if you're local IME.
ddingus 10y ago
I've done it a ton of times! Engineering software, process, tools. Stopping by to learn about a company, share experiences, maybe buy a lunch isn't a bad thing. It is regional. There are parts of the nation very hostile to this. They don't even have receptionists. For those parts, working social media, holding events, making calls works to get that appointment. In all cases, general networking is needed. Give and get.

What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.

by na85 10y ago

What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.

arbuge 10y ago

I do not think the approach he described would lead to the conclusion he's an obvious salesperson.

snowwrestler 10y ago

It's not sales, it's mentoring. A lot of established business folks like to do a bit of it.

goatherders 10y ago

I run the sales division of a nine figure web hosting company.

conanbatt 10y ago
The fact that you work in a "9 figure web hosting company" might be a cue of why you can start a conversation, because of the brand of a company. Im sure Airbnb can get into a broker house any day to have a chat. Do you think it would be easy for you to walk into Uber in the next few days and someone tell you what you should be building that they would buy? Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)
- goatherders 10y ago
  Before that I ran my own semiconductor brokerage abd the approach was the sane. "what about your job sucks?" "it sucks when I plan a build for Monday and 49 chips show up but 1 doesn't arrive until Wednesday. So my customer is mad that we are behind schedule and I pay mt staff to stand around.". So I started selling complete kits. One vendor, One PO and one box of components that arrives on time with everything in it. Doesn't matter that I now have a known brand behind me. Customers want the same essential thing: That you care about their success. I still answer my cell in the middle of the night during an outage because clients want to know i care and feel their pain because my company is impacting their ability to be successful, to pay employees, to pay bills, to feed their families. The point is the same throughout and hits at my philosophy. I don't sell servers or hosting or support. We sell good days. We sell a developer wowing his or her boss. We sell an absence of worry that a client will be pulled away from time with their family to solve a web issue. We don't sell RAM and processors. We sell good days.
  - primitivesuave 10y ago
    This is one of the most inspirational sentiments I've read on HN, thank you for sharing!
  - Uptrenda 10y ago
    Got to say. That last paragraph was impressive. Wow.
  - ddingus 10y ago
    Awesome sauce. This is all spot on. The beauty of it is the real friends you make and what it is all worth. There are calls I answered at O'dark thirty 10 years ago that are HUGE today. People starting careers, people I helped to get there. They remember, and when I need or ask, they return consideration I gave them. Or, I walk into a booming department, shake hands with the person building it, and we go have a lunch to chat about the early days.. They share all they are doing, and it's awesome. When people know you know it makes sense to get there more than just do a deal, everyone values that.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Persistence pays. I was an account manager intern at a VAR in college and was really shocked to discover this. I sold about $50k of training to a big company based on a cold call. One time a guy called looking for advice on sharing files on NT4 and ended up in a conversation about licensing -- I sold him an EA. Another time I was in a wingman role for a site visit with an account exec. On the way back, we stopped at a really large company, the account exec bullshitted his way in, and we ended up chatting with their local IT director for about an hour. We started getting RFPs a few weeks later. There's no secret. Just treat people well, talk to them and find out what problems they have. If you can't solve them, refer them to someone who can.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Aren't the statements "the account exec bullshitted his way in" and "Just treat people well" a little contradictory?
    - ddingus 10y ago
      Not really. Social charm is often the necessary bit of lubricant needed to get a conversation going. Think of it this way... It can be an excuse to make a pitch, which sucks. Everyone knows the charm was just a ruse. Or, if your team has a genuine interest in the field, that charm isn't a ruse. It's genuine and earnest interest. It's the piece that can get the real convo started. The difference is, after a time and maybe some business done, whether real understanding and a shared, common interest in success exists. Where it does, everyone will have improved and that network of people has value. Becomes a center of gravity, attracting others. Where it does not, it's just a deal, and maybe it was worth it, maybe not. But nobody is invested on a personal level. There is no real understanding. With the former, it's common to check in, exchange news, share success, failure, introduce new people, etc... With the latter, it's extremely common to only talk when needed, as it's just noise otherwise. Truth is, for a given niche, there are always interesting people who care about it. You want to be and cone to know those people because they are where all the real action is. Circle back to the bullshit way in. Having the goal I put here means that conversation is extremely likely to have enough value to warrant the effort needed to start it.

conanbatt 10y ago

Honestly, I agree with you. Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger.. Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.

pryelluw 10y ago
Are you leveraging social media to warm up the leads? Find and target them with ads and follow up with a phone call or visit. Works pretty well.
- manmal 10y ago
  Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?
  - pryelluw 10y ago
    They signed up for it by using the network. Try it.
- smokinhotdaisy 10y ago
  You are right and it is proven effective. :) Tried that and still doing it.
  - pryelluw 10y ago
    Yeah, I use it with clients and always blow them away with the results.
- exceptione 10y ago
  What kind of ad do you make? I am very interested in the way you concretely go about this!
  - 10y ago

flyosity 10y ago

You pay them to talk to you, whatever their hourly rate is. Not a big secret.

clort 10y ago
I worked for a market research company once (reasonably well respected, in their field) and we still had a hellish time getting employees to talk to us for money. Many staff are not comfortable with talking about their area of expertise (which is obviously related to the company they work for) outside of the confines of that company, or are certainly not going to accept cash for doing so off the books even if that is donated to a charity organisation. Additionally, many companies are not really set up to handle contracting out their already occupied employees (especially senior staff) for an hours salary. Actually, thinking about it most of the reputation we had was in speaking to smaller owner-operated businesses where the owner or self-employed associates were free to speak to us and could gauge the benefit to themselves from doing so (our interviews were often on behalf of larger companies testing the market for product ideas, so they would get the satisfaction of providing feedback and even getting advance notice of what may be on offer) anyway, what I'm saying is.. it can be difficult and time consuming to arrange that but it is possible to get somebody else to do the drudge work.

beambot 10y ago

Ask friends. Ask friends of friends. Go to a party or local event and ask others (after striking up real conversations). Are you a regular patron at any establishment? Speak to a low-level employee you regularly interact with; then speak to their manager. Ask your mail carrier; ask your paper delivery boy; ask your milkman. If it's 7-degrees of indirection to get to Kevin Bacon, it's probably just 1-2 degrees for people in your community. Just start talking to people... or to the parent's point: Listen to people (and follow up!). You're looking to build relationships, not marks (I hope).

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

SMEs do, particularly if you're local IME.

ddingus 10y ago

I've done it a ton of times! Engineering software, process, tools. Stopping by to learn about a company, share experiences, maybe buy a lunch isn't a bad thing. It is regional. There are parts of the nation very hostile to this. They don't even have receptionists. For those parts, working social media, holding events, making calls works to get that appointment. In all cases, general networking is needed. Give and get.