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This is one of those things that HN may not be great at overall. Most answers here are brainy: “read this book” or “follow these principles” type suggestions, b

This is one of those things that HN may not be great at overall. Most answers here are brainy: “read this book” or “follow these principles” type suggestions, but this is really something that isn’t solved by reading about it. Don’t get me wrong it helps to have an intellectual basis, but in reality you just need to be embarrassed and rejected a lot to get good at sales. Sales isn’t about your product, it’s about the person your speaking with and picking up on queues and verbiages that help you cater the conversation to them. There isn’t a magic algorithm here. Get out among people and learn how to hold an artificial conversation for longer than 1 minute with a complete stranger without making it feel artificial. Once you can do that and walk away feeing good about it, you can start to figure out how to convert that artificial-ness into something that’s hard to distinguish from comfortable conversation with someone you’ve known for 10 years. That’s sales. It’s being able to interact with people at a comfort level that enables them to feel relaxed and safe. I push a lot of CS students to get jobs as servers at local restaurants and bars. The pure experience of interacting with a group of new strangers every 5-10 minutes is hugely beneficial to sales development. It’s also easy to practice selling stuff (convince a bud light drinker to try a local microbrew, or up sell the nachos to the nachos grande because it’s the freakin weekend and what’s life without a little adventure). The bonus is that you can obtain a huge amount of experience with very little commitment as serving can be a 4-6 hour /week deal if you need it to be. In the end it’s not about sales. It’s all about how comfortable you are in your own skin and how comfortable you make them. That takes a bit of time and discomfort to achieve and a book won’t give you that by itself. Go get experience.

muzani 8y ago
I'm inclined to disagree with you at first. But I think Pareto's Principle applies here - this is the 20% that has 80% of the impact. I've worked with people who run the sales part of things, and even they try to avoid conversations with strangers when possible. It's easy to hide behind "social media marketing". Just be careful not to practice selling "anything" like many people start out. A big part of sales is being able to explain why something is useful to someone else. Sales is simply finding a stranger whose problem you can solve, and explaining to them how you can help.
paulcole 8y ago
Yep, if you wanted to learn to ride a bike, you wouldn't talk about riding bikes online or read a book by someone who has won the Tour de France. You'd go ride a bike.
- Konnstann 8y ago
  I think the question is more like "I have ridden a bike before, but I'm not very good at it. How can I improve?" in which case you could definitely suggest reading a book or watching videos on proper form, training exercises, etc. because just riding a bike will not be good enough past a certain point, and even getting to that point takes a long time that can be shortened by targeted practice instead of just "riding".
Gustomaximus 8y ago
> I push a lot of CS students to get jobs as servers at local restaurants and bars. One summer holidays while at uni I got a job as a door to door salesman selling internet packages. I'm not a small talk kind of guy. But after doing this job for a month or so I noticed I was having all these conversations everywhere I went. I'd order a drink and be having a chat with the barman etc. I seemed to connect with people everywhere I went. I'm a small sample in the world, but at the time I decided if I was struggling to get a job I'd do door to door (or some kind of similar commissions sales job) again while I was looking, not for the money, but for the interpersonal skills it seemed to bring out.

muzani 8y ago

I'm inclined to disagree with you at first. But I think Pareto's Principle applies here - this is the 20% that has 80% of the impact. I've worked with people who run the sales part of things, and even they try to avoid conversations with strangers when possible. It's easy to hide behind "social media marketing". Just be careful not to practice selling "anything" like many people start out. A big part of sales is being able to explain why something is useful to someone else. Sales is simply finding a stranger whose problem you can solve, and explaining to them how you can help.

paulcole 8y ago

Yep, if you wanted to learn to ride a bike, you wouldn't talk about riding bikes online or read a book by someone who has won the Tour de France. You'd go ride a bike.

Konnstann 8y ago
I think the question is more like "I have ridden a bike before, but I'm not very good at it. How can I improve?" in which case you could definitely suggest reading a book or watching videos on proper form, training exercises, etc. because just riding a bike will not be good enough past a certain point, and even getting to that point takes a long time that can be shortened by targeted practice instead of just "riding".

Gustomaximus 8y ago

> I push a lot of CS students to get jobs as servers at local restaurants and bars. One summer holidays while at uni I got a job as a door to door salesman selling internet packages. I'm not a small talk kind of guy. But after doing this job for a month or so I noticed I was having all these conversations everywhere I went. I'd order a drink and be having a chat with the barman etc. I seemed to connect with people everywhere I went. I'm a small sample in the world, but at the time I decided if I was struggling to get a job I'd do door to door (or some kind of similar commissions sales job) again while I was looking, not for the money, but for the interpersonal skills it seemed to bring out.