6 ms·

Is there a sales 101 for nerds?

bumpkinjunkie 6y ago
my $.02 - Sales is similar to finding product-market fit. Exhaust your network doing pain discovery interviews. Ask lots of good questions. You can't pitch a solution until you really know what their problem is. Circle back to prospect 1 after you've talked to prospect 100. Hack value for the customer before you hack growth for yourself (ie branding). Do a great job for one client and ask for referrals to others who have similar problems. Repeat customer pain discovery.
- kaybe 6y ago
  How do you do the customer pain point discovery?
goatherders 6y ago
Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips. 1. Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales orgs for almost 20 years and my advice is to walk up and hit the ball. 2. Sales is about people and it's about problem solving. It is not about solutions or technology or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people and it's about solving problems. 3. People buy 4 things and 4 things only. Ever. Those 4 things are time, money, sex, and approval/peace of mind. If you try selling something other than those 4 things you will fail. 4. People buy aspirin always. They buy vitamins only occassionally and at unpredictable times. Sell aspirin. 5. I say in every talk I give: "all things being equal people buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends." 6. Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. 7. No one cares about your quota, your payroll, your opex, your burn rate, etc. No one. They care about the problem you are solving for them. There is more than 100 trillion dollars in the global economy just waiting for you to breathe it in. Good luck.
- factorialboy 6y ago
  One of the best posts I've read on HN ever. Thanks Colin.
- iameoghan 6y ago
  > Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips. This is a great post!
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  > 4. People buy aspirin always. They buy vitamins only occasionally and at unpredictable times. Sell aspirin. This one is strange to me. I've bought vitamins regularly for 20 of the past 25 years and haven't bought Aspirin (or Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, etc) even once during that same time period.
  - goatherders 6y ago
    Its metaphor for "people buy solutions to problems they have much more than they buy preventative care."
  - wenc 6y ago
    Illustration purposes aside, I've interestingly never bought or taken aspirin in my life, and I'm middle aged. Aspirin seems to be a generational marker -- people under a certain age have likely never encountered aspirin. It's like the 3.5" floppy disk Save icon -- most people of the current generation know what it means but they've never seen the real thing.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. This doesn't fit my experience at all. People just expect me to do things for them for free out of the goodness of my heart, and expected that even when I was literally homeless. I've never entirely figured out why that is. If people just found ways to give me money because I do useful stuff, I think I would have long ago stopped being poor. But I'm still poor and I routinely get treated like I'm some kind of beggar for trying to find some way to monetize my work. So I think there's probably a bit more to it than that.
galfarragem 6y ago
Parent comment is pure gold and condenses more theory on sales than you'll ever need. Embracing it is the hard part: How many of us are willing to pay the price of making sales our first (or the only) priority?

my $.02 - Sales is similar to finding product-market fit. Exhaust your network doing pain discovery interviews. Ask lots of good questions. You can't pitch a solution until you really know what their problem is. Circle back to prospect 1 after you've talked to prospect 100. Hack value for the customer before you hack growth for yourself (ie branding). Do a great job for one client and ask for referrals to others who have similar problems. Repeat customer pain discovery.

kaybe 6y ago
How do you do the customer pain point discovery?

goatherders 6y ago

Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips. 1. Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales orgs for almost 20 years and my advice is to walk up and hit the ball. 2. Sales is about people and it's about problem solving. It is not about solutions or technology or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people and it's about solving problems. 3. People buy 4 things and 4 things only. Ever. Those 4 things are time, money, sex, and approval/peace of mind. If you try selling something other than those 4 things you will fail. 4. People buy aspirin always. They buy vitamins only occassionally and at unpredictable times. Sell aspirin. 5. I say in every talk I give: "all things being equal people buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends." 6. Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. 7. No one cares about your quota, your payroll, your opex, your burn rate, etc. No one. They care about the problem you are solving for them. There is more than 100 trillion dollars in the global economy just waiting for you to breathe it in. Good luck.

factorialboy 6y ago
One of the best posts I've read on HN ever. Thanks Colin.
iameoghan 6y ago
> Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips. This is a great post!
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
> 4. People buy aspirin always. They buy vitamins only occasionally and at unpredictable times. Sell aspirin. This one is strange to me. I've bought vitamins regularly for 20 of the past 25 years and haven't bought Aspirin (or Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, etc) even once during that same time period.
- goatherders 6y ago
  Its metaphor for "people buy solutions to problems they have much more than they buy preventative care."
- wenc 6y ago
  Illustration purposes aside, I've interestingly never bought or taken aspirin in my life, and I'm middle aged. Aspirin seems to be a generational marker -- people under a certain age have likely never encountered aspirin. It's like the 3.5" floppy disk Save icon -- most people of the current generation know what it means but they've never seen the real thing.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. This doesn't fit my experience at all. People just expect me to do things for them for free out of the goodness of my heart, and expected that even when I was literally homeless. I've never entirely figured out why that is. If people just found ways to give me money because I do useful stuff, I think I would have long ago stopped being poor. But I'm still poor and I routinely get treated like I'm some kind of beggar for trying to find some way to monetize my work. So I think there's probably a bit more to it than that.

galfarragem 6y ago

Parent comment is pure gold and condenses more theory on sales than you'll ever need. Embracing it is the hard part: How many of us are willing to pay the price of making sales our first (or the only) priority?