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> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pri

> Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > - Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > - Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > - Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doing high touch sales don't really respect my time and are shocked when I tell them to cut to the chase and yes, I do expect to hear about pricing on the first call, otherwise there won't be another call. Disclaimer: I have zero patience for abundant sales processes.

AznHisoka 8y ago
Another data point to support your view: I'm the same way. In fact, I want to hear about pricing in the first email you send me before we do a sales call, and maybe a short demo video. If I need help, then we can do a full demo. Otherwise, just take my damn money 'cause I desperately want you to solve my hairy problem.
lhh 8y ago
I agree if what the person is selling is solving a well understood problem. But what if it's something that you hadn't really thought much about before and need to take some time to wrap your head around? In sales, I think it's generally a mistake to talk about pricing until you've established the value of what you're offering first, which is where I think this advice is coming from.
jwdunne 8y ago
These rules only apply for higher-cost products and / or enterprise clients (in which the latter implies the former, anyway). Your sales team can only spend as long on the customer as the ROI of having salespeople allows. If you're selling £19.99/pm software to individuals, you probably don't even need a sales team. But if you're selling enterprise software to Fortune 500, you'll need a dedicated salesperson, or account manager, to look after and nurture prospects over months or years. So yeah, there are products and price points where if you're not closing first call you're probably wasting money.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  If you're selling cheap software you don't want a sales team, you want a marketing team.
weaksauce 8y ago
I went into a furniture shop and the guy was pressuring me to buy the couch almost immediately even after I said that I am just browsing what's available and didn't plan on buying until I move places. It was so damn aggressively annoying that I'd not buy from him on principle alone. There are definitely good ways to go about the sale process and shortening the timeframe when it suits the customer is absolutely fine. when they don't respect that it's not. It's all about the customer and doing the right thing for them... if that means that you suggest someone else's product or service then so be it(and is actually a good way to get referrals and trust from the customer who still might buy from you).
cdkee 8y ago
As a Solutions Engineer, we always want to conduct a "discovery" session so we can tailor a demo to your context. Otherwise we don't know what is interesting to you and we are effectively throwing darts blindly hoping to hit close to what matters.
Spooky23 8y ago
When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal. If they’re a good salesperson, they will find out if you are a decision maker. The high touch salespeople have a few hard jobs — match client to solution and figure out WTF makes a decision. A lot of times, the big mouth in the room is just loud. They need to balance keeping you happy with selling a far more lucrative solution/vision to the guy with the money. I usually play the direct guy role in these sorts of negotiations, and we do it because once you anchor to a price ($n-x%), you need to fight for every marginal dollar. When you start with the big bundle with the business vision guy, you start at $5*n and negotiate it down by 60%.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  >When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal I don't agree with that. I also don't have any patience for tedious sales processes. If I'm talking to vendors, it's because I at least want to buy something, and I always talk to a few of them. My goal in talking to them is only to get the information I need to make a decision. Being expected to sit through a sales script before my questions are answered is very frustrating, and usually sends me a "our product doesn't actually do what you want" signal.
ams6110 8y ago
> I have zero patience for abundant sales processes What? You forego the steak dinners and golf outings?
charleyma 8y ago
Main goals of a salesteam include building accurate pipeline, and closing that pipeline as quickly as possible. In B2B, level of touch definitely depends on the size of the deal. Excellent discovery + qualification done quickly is super important for larger companies. E.g. signing up for Dropbox for my 2 person company is (and very much should be) self service, with transparency around price and what it will look like as I grow in the short run. Signing up for Dropbox for an enterprise company for thousands of licenses, each with different apps, permissioning, environments, infrastructure, etc should be a much in depth conversation. Typically enterprise clients with volumes also expect to have discounts due to their scale (they know they're worth $$$), and in order to have a properly managed negotiation, a sales team needs to full understand who they're selling to, what they care about, what levers can be moved, decision maker, timing, etc. All of these attributes are typically much more distributed in large companies vs leaner entities with 1 decision maker. First call closes are great, what I can say is that I've never heard of a $1mm deal close on just one call.
- seem_2211 8y ago
  Yep exactly. And for the enterprise company it's never going to be a single sign off. You'll need to get IT involved, maybe legal, probably finance, maybe procurement. Every company has a different process, and everyone will want at least a few people saying "yes" when the price is high enough. Enterprise sales is more project management and scheduling than it is about learning the magic words that close any prospect.
goatherders 8y ago
Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much everything I've ever sold in 20 years. High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big purchasing decision. Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting. But it's also for the benefit of the company courting you. Making sure there is no charge-back and that the client is set up for success is a big part of being a successful salesperson.
- StaticRedux 8y ago
  I understand your point, and you aren't wrong, but you are short-sighted. You may only sell to big clients now, but you are also leaving a lot of money on the table for yourself, not your company, yourself. You've been selling for 20 years? How many of your customers have you had for longer than 3? Now I can hear your mind churning, 'but I'm at a different company now! I don't sell the same thing!'. It doesn't matter. Sales is sales. And the best sales people foster relationships for years before they really sell the big bucks. And can go back to those same clients and sell different products and it's easy because those clients know them and trust them. Ever get that little pang of jealousy wondering why that guy you know in sales plays golf every day with clients and doesn't seem to do much else? It's not because he's just that good. He's not. He might even suck. It's most likely bc he has been building relationships with those clients for years and they would buy a cactus as a new pillow if he asked them to. This attitude of telling the little guy to piss off bc he isn't your type of client might make for some ok sales now, maybe you even have a shiny BMW, but it doesn't make for long term relationships with people who trust you. Once those people at that big company move on to bigger and better things, you'll be stuck grinding it out with whoever they replace them with. I take it you work hard. You're certainly passionate. But after 20 years in sales, you shouldn't have to be working hard. Whether you changed companies and products every six months or still work for the same company, you should have been building relationships. Instead you are content writing off the little guy as a waste of your time. The same senior management you grind it out to sell to now who was a little guy 20 years ago. And the same little guys who will be senior management in 10 - 20 years. I imagine you'll still be grinding it out every day then also, instead of playing golf like you should be.
inopinatus 8y ago
SaaS founder here. I share your preferences when I'm on the receiving end, but some of our customers have taken months to bring onboard, including a couple of our lighthouse customers. It's my decision to accommodate onboarding cadence from minutes to months, primarily because this fits our GTM strategy. You're being alienated by process, and it's not impossible that in some cases that's a deliberate choice to segment a market by customer culture.
seem_2211 8y ago
As a consumer, completely agree. As a buyer in a B2B context, completely disagree.

AznHisoka 8y ago

Another data point to support your view: I'm the same way. In fact, I want to hear about pricing in the first email you send me before we do a sales call, and maybe a short demo video. If I need help, then we can do a full demo. Otherwise, just take my damn money 'cause I desperately want you to solve my hairy problem.

lhh 8y ago

I agree if what the person is selling is solving a well understood problem. But what if it's something that you hadn't really thought much about before and need to take some time to wrap your head around? In sales, I think it's generally a mistake to talk about pricing until you've established the value of what you're offering first, which is where I think this advice is coming from.

jwdunne 8y ago

These rules only apply for higher-cost products and / or enterprise clients (in which the latter implies the former, anyway). Your sales team can only spend as long on the customer as the ROI of having salespeople allows. If you're selling £19.99/pm software to individuals, you probably don't even need a sales team. But if you're selling enterprise software to Fortune 500, you'll need a dedicated salesperson, or account manager, to look after and nurture prospects over months or years. So yeah, there are products and price points where if you're not closing first call you're probably wasting money.

toomanybeersies 8y ago
If you're selling cheap software you don't want a sales team, you want a marketing team.

weaksauce 8y ago

I went into a furniture shop and the guy was pressuring me to buy the couch almost immediately even after I said that I am just browsing what's available and didn't plan on buying until I move places. It was so damn aggressively annoying that I'd not buy from him on principle alone. There are definitely good ways to go about the sale process and shortening the timeframe when it suits the customer is absolutely fine. when they don't respect that it's not. It's all about the customer and doing the right thing for them... if that means that you suggest someone else's product or service then so be it(and is actually a good way to get referrals and trust from the customer who still might buy from you).

cdkee 8y ago

As a Solutions Engineer, we always want to conduct a "discovery" session so we can tailor a demo to your context. Otherwise we don't know what is interesting to you and we are effectively throwing darts blindly hoping to hit close to what matters.

Spooky23 8y ago

When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal. If they’re a good salesperson, they will find out if you are a decision maker. The high touch salespeople have a few hard jobs — match client to solution and figure out WTF makes a decision. A lot of times, the big mouth in the room is just loud. They need to balance keeping you happy with selling a far more lucrative solution/vision to the guy with the money. I usually play the direct guy role in these sorts of negotiations, and we do it because once you anchor to a price ($n-x%), you need to fight for every marginal dollar. When you start with the big bundle with the business vision guy, you start at $5*n and negotiate it down by 60%.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
>When you do that, you’re sending a buy signal I don't agree with that. I also don't have any patience for tedious sales processes. If I'm talking to vendors, it's because I at least want to buy something, and I always talk to a few of them. My goal in talking to them is only to get the information I need to make a decision. Being expected to sit through a sales script before my questions are answered is very frustrating, and usually sends me a "our product doesn't actually do what you want" signal.

ams6110 8y ago

> I have zero patience for abundant sales processes What? You forego the steak dinners and golf outings?

charleyma 8y ago

Main goals of a salesteam include building accurate pipeline, and closing that pipeline as quickly as possible. In B2B, level of touch definitely depends on the size of the deal. Excellent discovery + qualification done quickly is super important for larger companies. E.g. signing up for Dropbox for my 2 person company is (and very much should be) self service, with transparency around price and what it will look like as I grow in the short run. Signing up for Dropbox for an enterprise company for thousands of licenses, each with different apps, permissioning, environments, infrastructure, etc should be a much in depth conversation. Typically enterprise clients with volumes also expect to have discounts due to their scale (they know they're worth $$$), and in order to have a properly managed negotiation, a sales team needs to full understand who they're selling to, what they care about, what levers can be moved, decision maker, timing, etc. All of these attributes are typically much more distributed in large companies vs leaner entities with 1 decision maker. First call closes are great, what I can say is that I've never heard of a $1mm deal close on just one call.

seem_2211 8y ago
Yep exactly. And for the enterprise company it's never going to be a single sign off. You'll need to get IT involved, maybe legal, probably finance, maybe procurement. Every company has a different process, and everyone will want at least a few people saying "yes" when the price is high enough. Enterprise sales is more project management and scheduling than it is about learning the magic words that close any prospect.

goatherders 8y ago

Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much everything I've ever sold in 20 years. High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big purchasing decision. Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting. But it's also for the benefit of the company courting you. Making sure there is no charge-back and that the client is set up for success is a big part of being a successful salesperson.

StaticRedux 8y ago
I understand your point, and you aren't wrong, but you are short-sighted. You may only sell to big clients now, but you are also leaving a lot of money on the table for yourself, not your company, yourself. You've been selling for 20 years? How many of your customers have you had for longer than 3? Now I can hear your mind churning, 'but I'm at a different company now! I don't sell the same thing!'. It doesn't matter. Sales is sales. And the best sales people foster relationships for years before they really sell the big bucks. And can go back to those same clients and sell different products and it's easy because those clients know them and trust them. Ever get that little pang of jealousy wondering why that guy you know in sales plays golf every day with clients and doesn't seem to do much else? It's not because he's just that good. He's not. He might even suck. It's most likely bc he has been building relationships with those clients for years and they would buy a cactus as a new pillow if he asked them to. This attitude of telling the little guy to piss off bc he isn't your type of client might make for some ok sales now, maybe you even have a shiny BMW, but it doesn't make for long term relationships with people who trust you. Once those people at that big company move on to bigger and better things, you'll be stuck grinding it out with whoever they replace them with. I take it you work hard. You're certainly passionate. But after 20 years in sales, you shouldn't have to be working hard. Whether you changed companies and products every six months or still work for the same company, you should have been building relationships. Instead you are content writing off the little guy as a waste of your time. The same senior management you grind it out to sell to now who was a little guy 20 years ago. And the same little guys who will be senior management in 10 - 20 years. I imagine you'll still be grinding it out every day then also, instead of playing golf like you should be.

inopinatus 8y ago

SaaS founder here. I share your preferences when I'm on the receiving end, but some of our customers have taken months to bring onboard, including a couple of our lighthouse customers. It's my decision to accommodate onboarding cadence from minutes to months, primarily because this fits our GTM strategy. You're being alienated by process, and it's not impossible that in some cases that's a deliberate choice to segment a market by customer culture.

seem_2211 8y ago

As a consumer, completely agree. As a buyer in a B2B context, completely disagree.