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All Things Sales: Mini-lessons for startup founders
- curo 8y agoSuper grateful to a16z and YC for these. I wonder as a founder doing their own sales, if there are resources about actual tactics, how to make calls, handle objections, etc. These strategy videos are great. Does anyone have a recommendation on an equivalent for the day-to-day of working a pipeline?
- cornflake 8y agoI imagine it would depend a lot on what type of service you are offering and whether sales and marketing is something you can automate digitally for your business. Jordan Belfort's straight line persuasion sales training video series offer an interesting analysis of how to perform direct to consumer telephone sales: http://jordanbelfort.com/order-straight-line-persuasion/ http://jordanbelfort.com/order-straight-line-persuasion/
- sky_rw 8y agoCheckout the Salesman Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5m7amy0FXEAe9WxhXTI_A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5m7amy0FXEAe9WxhXTI_A Huge amount of great content here.
- raefa 8y agoOne book I really liked on the topic is Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff.
- jblazevic 8y agoI’m just reading it now and I must say it’s a rarely honest book and has actionable models and tactics for the sales non-“naturals”. It has opened my eyes.
- jkuria 8y agoMy favorite book on sales tactics is Chet Holmes, the Ultimate Sales Machine. Here is a summary: https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary-the-ultimate-sales-machine.html https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary-the-u...
- mindcrime 8y agoI'm a big fan of Chet Holmes and The Ultimate Sales Machine as well. He did a series of videos as part of some conference thing with Tony Robbins, and those videos have some really good stuff in them. I'm not necessarily a huge Tony Robbins fan per-se, but the stuff he did with Chet was solid.
- yread 8y agoUseful stuff, but some of it is rather... unstartupy? The suggested ad text for a "superstar" employee (what kind of advice is that anyway? "Hire smart people"? Eh thanks!) reads like the most generic job ad ever. And having "How much would you pay to save your own life?” as a health insurance advertisement? That's some /r/LateStageCapitalism material
- browsercoin 8y agoIndeed. I thought it was going to be a one off video but pleasantly surprised by the comprehensive coverage of all parts of sale thats relevant to a solo founder. These kind of stuff are the rare gems you get once in a while from HN.
- mindcrime 8y agoI don't have a ton of experience selling and haven't closed any deals for our company yet, so take this with a grain of salt, but... the sales approach that I am very fond of, and think has a ton of potential, is Jeff Thull's system, as outlined in Mastering the Complex Sale, Exceptional Selling and The Prime Solution. Thull's approach is rooted in a developing a deep understanding of how you can create value (real value, mind you) for your customers, and to communicate with them in a way that conveys a very honest and sincere approach. As opposed to the old "Always Be Closing" mantra ala Glengarry Glen Ross, Thull advocates an "Always Be Leaving" approach, where you leave as soon as it's obvious that your solution isn't good for the customer. He would have you recommend a competitor's product if it's actually the better choice, etc. The idea is, as I understand it, two-fold: 1. Trying to sell a solution to a customer who doesn't really need it / has better options, is wasting your time and 2. The more honest relationship you develop doing this this way will benefit you down the road when the same customer has new needs and your product is the best solution, or when they recommend you to their friends because you treated them with respect, etc. If I had to summarize it in a way that is probably grossly over-simplifying, but which still captures a lot of the spirit of the thing (I think), I'd say it comes down to: 1. Develop a very deep understanding of your customer, their business, their market, etc. 2. Be hyper-honest with your customers. I think this approach has a lot going for it, but again, I can't say from real first-hand experience because I haven't spent enough time in the field actually working it. Ask me in a year and hopefully I'll know a lot more.
- ninja10 8y agoThis lessons were very informative and nicely structured. Having these type of short, concept focused lessons are perfect for serving as introductory material.
- avinium 8y agoGreat stuff - like many things in the business world, fairly simple and common-sense but it’s highly valuable to run through.
- braindead_in 8y agoGreat series. It mentioned salesforce.com a couple of times. Any other tools that we can use?
- fh973 8y agoPipedrive. Surely not applicable to every type of sales process but clean and intuitive UI.
- dstick 8y agoI’d like to suggest “Hacking Sales” for a fantastic up-to-date list of modern sales tools. The book is all about the “Sales Stack” ;-) Short but sweet!
- yread 8y agoI've used https://leadiro.com/ https://leadiro.com/ recently. You can search for people based on their job description. It worked OK - I'm trying to sell to a niche of professionals and it found about 5% of how many I would expect given my query but it's better than nothing
- r_singh 8y agohttps://close.io/ https://close.io/ (YC W11) Close is much simpler and BS free than Salesforce. Most sales teams I know dislike using salesforce as it is almost always configured to be more complicated than necessary.
- gk1 8y agoIf you’re hoping to become a >100-person company I would recommend against Close.io. The reality is that Salesforce is what is what everyone is familiar with, and sooner or later you’ll be glad it’s as extensible as it is. I’ve worked with two startups that started with Close.io and pretty much outgrew it by the time they had 3 salespeople. It’s made for very small and simple sales operations. I ended up migrating them to Salesforce. The migration is a mess because of Close.io’s unconventional way of handling account and lead records, which is unlike any other CMS.
- deepGem 8y agoLoved the 6th video - How, when and who of sales. I was pleasantly surprised how the generic advice to find a corporate sales guy to lead your early stage startup sales is so ineffective. A similar analogy to engineering also applies I guess. One who functions well in a corporate engineering department - with a ton of support might not do well in an early stage startup and vice versa.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jgh 8y agoWow this looks great, time to dig in!
- computator 8y agoCommand to download all 16 videos for offline viewing into a separate directory indexed by video order: youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5rtyzi7g-5ObKubmZFiTIlD https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5rtyzi7g-5O... On Windows, the single quotes might need to be double quotes. The above uses youtube-dl (YouTube downloader) which is a multi-platform public-domain Python program available here: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/.
- kalehrishi 8y agoThis is neat!
- aidos 8y agoI haven't had the chance to watch the videos yet (though I will) but I'm curious about the compensation aspect. Why is it that sales teams are often paid via some sort of commission structure?
- huhtenberg 8y agoTo motivate them to sell more.
- disiplus 8y agowhy not use the same tactics for developers and others ? is it because it easy to measure it for sales but not for developers ?
- jholman 8y agoA) First and foremost, yes, that's why. B) I think the assumption is that 100% of salespeople are motivated almost entirely by greed, whereas it's less clear that this is as simple with people in general.
- notahacker 8y agoEasy to measure and easy to budget for as directly linked to company income. And since a low basic & high OTE is also the market expectation, paying a flat rate either means shelling out a lot more money (because you're paying salespeople their expected earnings regardless of performance) or attracting/retaining weaker salespeople (because it represents less income for high performing salespeople and more income for low-performing sales people) Certain types of high intensity sales roles lend themselves towards people who are highly motivated by opportunities for incremental commission increases too.
- r_singh 8y agoThere's many reasons for this, one that's simpler to explain is relative performance. If sales person A is working a lot harder/smarter/adaptive to get more clients that sales person B. It may lower his morale to see B get the same compensation as him. This affects sales people more than other functions because the output of a sales person is more or less quantified by the revenue they are responsible for generating (exact metric would be different of course).
- r_singh 8y agoIt's awesome to a series on Sales from another top venture firm. For anyone that's looking for similar resources. Here's another awesome series I came across (while searching for YC resources on this topic): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1c0oEEXWIZiWzdtUOUhlirJr2fXfbxX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1c0oEEXWIZiWzdtUOUh... It was apparently a 'Sales School' for one of the YC batches in 2014. Hadn't heard of Steli before, his videos really give me a lot of energy. He also reinforced my belief that founders have to be great at selling their creation and gave me insights on what it takes to be great at sales.
- fermienrico 8y agoWatching these videos made me realize how much I hate sales people. Every time I sign up for a trial or act remotely interested in something, I get inundated by assholes like the lecturer in these videos. Loud, aggressive and as he said "Hustlers". I immediately don't want to use that product or service and I look for alternatives if there are. I feel like there is no better way to penetrate through the noise of the internet and products/services out there that Sales has to become aggressive. I don't think there is a solution to this? Is there?
- r_singh 8y agoIt's easy to get annoyed by the aggression and the overall tone of the speaker, this happened to me as well. However, when I look at what he is saying objectively, he is suggesting quite the opposite from what the tone implies. A good sales person is a great listener, one that doesn't make you feel like the way you described. Overall, I love the series because of what I learnt from it, on viewing it objectively.
- lapnitnelav 8y agoGreat stuff, there's always more than meet the eyes and that's true even for sales ;) This being said, slight nitpick on #11 and #12. Include clawbacks, especially if you're fairly dependent on sales / more geared towards high touch deals. This obviously goes on hand in hand with reasonable targets. Otherwise you create an incentive for sales people to make their number in any way they can to meet their ridiculous target / driven by the usual greed. The hidden cost of that can potentially be huge, especially if your pool of potential customers is -relatively- small.
- tsenkov 8y agoI just watched the series and posted my notes here: https://tsenkov.net/2018/09/03/a16z-crash-course-on-sales https://tsenkov.net/2018/09/03/a16z-crash-course-on-sales Thanks to a16z and Peter Levine for this course.
- factsaresacred 8y agoAnd thank you for the notes!
- tsenkov 8y agoYou are welcome!
- wungsten 8y agoAwesome work. I'll always take print over video.
- tsenkov 8y agoNo work on my part at all. TBH, I actually prefer video when I first consume the content (or audio, I am listening to a bunch of podcasts; or video, working just as well as audio), but I want to have something I can comeback to and quickly check when I try to remember specifics from the videos, without the need to go through the entire youtube playlist to find it. Recently, I started keeping notes on podcasts, but I haven't published any of those. Maybe I should. <shameless-plug> In fact, I just recorded the 82nd episode of a daily vlog I've been keeping, while developing a new product (haven't published a single episode, yet). Closed beta starts in a few days. I think it's pretty interesting stuff (I meant to do this, ever since I discovered Alex Bloomberg's Startup podcast) and I honestly hope to win-over even folks who prefer print, like yourself. Of course, my main focus is on the product, but it will be absolutely amazing, if even a few people get inspired from the story surrounding its creation. </shameless-plug> Cheers!
- RobertRoberts 8y agoUsually I do to, but these videos are like 1-3 minutes, and there is vital information and explanations of what the graphics mean that would literally take as long to read yourself. :P
- razin 8y agoDoes anyone have the syllabus for the Stanford MBA course that these videos are based on http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=STRAMGT%2B351&academicYear=20182019 http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=STRAMGT%2B351&ac...?
- taherchhabra 8y agoAre all these things applicable before finding the product market fit ?
- r_singh 8y agoHaven't gone through the series yet so I can't confirm whether the things discussed are applicable or not. However, I can confidently say that founder driven sales efforts are important even before 'finding' the product market fit and will most likely even help a startup reach product market fit.
- anoncoward111 8y agoYou know we've reached Peak Valley when VCs are advising to spend more time selling than iterating. Outbound sales is short-term begging for money, period.
- origami777 8y agoThat's a bold statement. What's your reason to make it?
- anoncoward111 8y agoI replied to the other two posters with some detail but I will give you another story from a former employer: This employer sold a tool that removed crappy data from salesforce databases. It was available for free from competitors, but the company was too proud to release it for freemium-type marketing. So, they constantly had a revolving door of 30 high school graduates who would be calling literally random people that the IT guy scraped a list off of random sites. The quality of the data was atrociously bad, but the CEO didn't believe it was bad. He instead blamed the interns and the reporting, fired them all, and brought new, "hungrier" ones in and forced them to use an auto dialer. Out of the 60,000 phone calls this team made, not a single one of them resulted in a sale. The company continues to burn 800k a month in losses. They have tried to pivot to a Youtube presence, but they only have one guy doing it instead of a full team. Additionally, their product is shit and non-differentiated. So, it's only a matter of time until their Founder, who is worth 150M, decides its time to pull the plug on his terrible, disorganized side-project of a company.
- TomMarius 8y agoNot everyone has access to millions of dollars in investment. How am I supposed to keep my startup above the water if we don't sell our product? How are we going to get feedback?
- anoncoward111 8y agoWhy aren't people using your product? Why aren't they banging down your door for more features and support? Until they're doing this, your product isn't good enough.
- zeroxfe 8y agoThese are fantastic. Anyone know of similar resources for marketing or customer acquisition?
- j45 8y agoThat was handy - if you are a Startup "Renaissance" sales rep interested in turbo boosting initiation sales currently happening in the enterprise + academic education space, please get in touch, I'd love to learn more about you and see if I can learn from you or we can work together. :)
- DeanWormer 8y agoI'm a big fan of Fog Creek's "The Most Basic Things Your Company Needs to Know About Sales" (https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-company-needs-to-know-about-sales.pdf https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-co...) It's roughly 25 pages about high level sales strategies. The PDF mentions the book "How You Make the Sale" by Frank McNair (https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Sale-Frank-McNair/dp/1402204353)which https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Sale-Frank-McNair/dp/1402204... was a great 101 level book on sales. It's high level so it could be applied to everything from selling cars and real estate to software. I found these helpful because it was less "here's 10 closing tips and tricks!" and more about the sales process.
- Kagerjay 8y agoI think its worth mentioning that this is for mostly B2B type startups / enterprise applications / companys that rely on VC funding, not necessarily B2C, where sales is not technically necessary. A good readup on B2C from a mostly 1 man successful startup is from peter levels here. https://makebook.io/ https://makebook.io/.