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It's actually a very good sales question, I don't find it demeaning at all. If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someo

It's actually a very good sales question, I don't find it demeaning at all. If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation. It could come off as standoffish but when used correctly it's very effective because it gets the person on the other end to open up more and you try to get to the bottom of their objections.

na85 6y ago
>If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation. Assuming that I didn't initiate the call, if I tell some sales punk that I don't need their product and they come back at me with "So you have perfect user retention then?" my answer is going to be "fuck you" followed by ending the call. Arrogance might work in used car sales but it's not a panacea for closing the deal.
- stevewodil 6y ago
  I'm sure that happens occasionally as well. I get it, sales people can be annoying but it really only hurts your business (in this hypothetical case) if you have a user retention problems and are actively fighting against people trying to help you solve that problem with a mutually beneficial business agreement. They will call the next person on their list, I'm sure it won't matter much.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    Incoming spam is unwelcome in general, and I would not assume that this people are trying to help me.
  - na85 6y ago
    >I get it, sales people can be annoying but it really only hurts your business (in this hypothetical case) if you have a user retention problems and are actively fighting against people trying to help you solve that problem with a mutually beneficial business agreement. Oh please. Not every product that's applicable to a given business would necessarily be beneficial to that business. I get it, sales people have to drink the kool aid, but some humility is needed. Your product isn't right for everyone, and the sooner you understand that the sooner you can improve the quality of your lead generation.
    - stevewodil 6y ago
      If you have a vendetta against sales people you can just say that. We are talking about a completely hypothetical situation here, I don't see how you're now implying that the lead generation isn't good enough.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        On HN, people hate cold emails. In real life, I've found that most people will respond or ignore. Like a tiny minority will act like you killed their mother, but that's life. I know you know this, if you're in sales, but I, like many other engineers who read this forum was overly cautious when I first started speaking to people because I anticipated that 99/100 would be upset at having to talk to me. The truth was that 99/100 were willing to speak to me and listening to HN and Reddit set me back farther than I expected until I unlearned that lesson. So I'm saying this for the benefit of all those other engineers like me.
        stevewodil 6y ago
        Makes sense, you're typically not cold calling or emailing engineers which is presumably the majority of hacker news users
        matkoniecz 6y ago
        I guess that it is a selection bias. People hating spam will complain about it, people not hating it will not bother with commenting. And HN may have higher share of people more affected by spam (surveys send to emails scrapped from github and so on) and more likely to be able to find needed services - what makes beneficial cold calling even more rare. And I guess that my reaction is unusual. I moved to another phone service after previous one cold called me offering a loan on bank service operating under their brand - and that was a sole reason.
  - ufmace 6y ago
    We're talking about the context of a cold call here. It's extraordinary unlikely for something that is genuinely beneficial to me to come to my attention via a cold call. Maybe your product is actually good, but there's a wave of pushy salesmen trying to sell snake oil via these types of channels. At best, you've got a very tough job to make a sale to a business under those conditions. I don't know about the typical business, but that kind of talk isn't going to keep me on the line.
- robocat 6y ago
  HN guidelines: “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”. I would presume that sentence is a quickly typed paraphrase. If you presume they are a competent salesperson, you can also presume that they say it less antagonistically in real life. Edit: Or perhaps they have found that antagonism is the most profitable solution for the business to turn around a “no” answer.
  - na85 6y ago
    >HN guidelines The comment to which I'm responding explicitly argues that the phrase, verbatim, is a good sales tactic.
    - jack_pp 6y ago
      People have argued that the tone and context in which it is being said will influence effectiveness. Verbatim has nothing to do with it but you keep ignoring that point.
    - fsckboy 6y ago
      you referred to the caller as a sales punk before he uttered the phrase, exposing your attitude. Just because you are biased against sales people and also have a thin skin when it comes to the slightest challenge in a question does not mean that the product would not be beneficial and worth it to you if you had a more open mind, nor does it mean that the sales technique on average is a failure. i.e. when I read your comment it struck me as much more revealing about you than about the salesman, his technique, or his product.
- 0x1A567BBF 6y ago
  Completely agree, this weird passive-aggressive "negging" strategy just makes me thing the sales-person involved has no clue how to really sell and just relies on these pathetic tactics. It is an easy way to weed out the clueless salespeople though, so for that we should be grateful.
jrochkind1 6y ago
I was ready to agree with you because question in the OP wasn't so bad, but "So you have perfect user retention then?" -- seriously? Yeah, that's being demeaning. Maybe being demeaning is a good sales technique, I dunno, but that's definitely being a jerk. But "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" or something like that maybe.
- stevewodil 6y ago
  It really depends on your tonality when you say it. In either case, saying "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" is just going to be met with another "No, we don't need it" from the other end. "So you have perfect user retention then?" is a better question because you know for a fact that they can't have 100% user retention and they know that as well so it forces further dialogue.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    i guess this is why I'm not a salesperson. If it works it works, but I'm having trouble accepting that it's not demeaning, which was the original contention. Because it's not really a question at all, it's a sarcastic question. Maybe being demeaning gets sales, sure.
    - james1071 6y ago
      Agree with you on that.
    - stevewodil 6y ago
      Think of it more as being a pattern interrupt. They are saying no to you over and over, so by asking the question, "So you have perfect user retention then?" they can either say "No" instinctively which opens your sales pitch because they've now told you they have a user retention problem, or they stop and think about the question in which case you've successfully interrupted the pattern of no's that preceded the question and can further the discussion. There are definitely better examples I could come up with, but now I'm stuck with this one because it's what I quickly typed out earlier.
rawoke083600 6y ago
Arg I HATE that angle ! It's like that sales calls.. "Do you like money ?".. if you say no thank you I"m busy... they like... oh so you don't like free money ?
- konschubert 6y ago
  beep beep beep

na85 6y ago

>If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation. Assuming that I didn't initiate the call, if I tell some sales punk that I don't need their product and they come back at me with "So you have perfect user retention then?" my answer is going to be "fuck you" followed by ending the call. Arrogance might work in used car sales but it's not a panacea for closing the deal.

stevewodil 6y ago
I'm sure that happens occasionally as well. I get it, sales people can be annoying but it really only hurts your business (in this hypothetical case) if you have a user retention problems and are actively fighting against people trying to help you solve that problem with a mutually beneficial business agreement. They will call the next person on their list, I'm sure it won't matter much.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  Incoming spam is unwelcome in general, and I would not assume that this people are trying to help me.
- na85 6y ago
  >I get it, sales people can be annoying but it really only hurts your business (in this hypothetical case) if you have a user retention problems and are actively fighting against people trying to help you solve that problem with a mutually beneficial business agreement. Oh please. Not every product that's applicable to a given business would necessarily be beneficial to that business. I get it, sales people have to drink the kool aid, but some humility is needed. Your product isn't right for everyone, and the sooner you understand that the sooner you can improve the quality of your lead generation.
  - stevewodil 6y ago
    If you have a vendetta against sales people you can just say that. We are talking about a completely hypothetical situation here, I don't see how you're now implying that the lead generation isn't good enough.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      On HN, people hate cold emails. In real life, I've found that most people will respond or ignore. Like a tiny minority will act like you killed their mother, but that's life. I know you know this, if you're in sales, but I, like many other engineers who read this forum was overly cautious when I first started speaking to people because I anticipated that 99/100 would be upset at having to talk to me. The truth was that 99/100 were willing to speak to me and listening to HN and Reddit set me back farther than I expected until I unlearned that lesson. So I'm saying this for the benefit of all those other engineers like me.
      - stevewodil 6y ago
        Makes sense, you're typically not cold calling or emailing engineers which is presumably the majority of hacker news users
      - matkoniecz 6y ago
        I guess that it is a selection bias. People hating spam will complain about it, people not hating it will not bother with commenting. And HN may have higher share of people more affected by spam (surveys send to emails scrapped from github and so on) and more likely to be able to find needed services - what makes beneficial cold calling even more rare. And I guess that my reaction is unusual. I moved to another phone service after previous one cold called me offering a loan on bank service operating under their brand - and that was a sole reason.
- ufmace 6y ago
  We're talking about the context of a cold call here. It's extraordinary unlikely for something that is genuinely beneficial to me to come to my attention via a cold call. Maybe your product is actually good, but there's a wave of pushy salesmen trying to sell snake oil via these types of channels. At best, you've got a very tough job to make a sale to a business under those conditions. I don't know about the typical business, but that kind of talk isn't going to keep me on the line.
robocat 6y ago
HN guidelines: “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”. I would presume that sentence is a quickly typed paraphrase. If you presume they are a competent salesperson, you can also presume that they say it less antagonistically in real life. Edit: Or perhaps they have found that antagonism is the most profitable solution for the business to turn around a “no” answer.
- na85 6y ago
  >HN guidelines The comment to which I'm responding explicitly argues that the phrase, verbatim, is a good sales tactic.
  - jack_pp 6y ago
    People have argued that the tone and context in which it is being said will influence effectiveness. Verbatim has nothing to do with it but you keep ignoring that point.
  - fsckboy 6y ago
    you referred to the caller as a sales punk before he uttered the phrase, exposing your attitude. Just because you are biased against sales people and also have a thin skin when it comes to the slightest challenge in a question does not mean that the product would not be beneficial and worth it to you if you had a more open mind, nor does it mean that the sales technique on average is a failure. i.e. when I read your comment it struck me as much more revealing about you than about the salesman, his technique, or his product.
0x1A567BBF 6y ago
Completely agree, this weird passive-aggressive "negging" strategy just makes me thing the sales-person involved has no clue how to really sell and just relies on these pathetic tactics. It is an easy way to weed out the clueless salespeople though, so for that we should be grateful.

jrochkind1 6y ago

I was ready to agree with you because question in the OP wasn't so bad, but "So you have perfect user retention then?" -- seriously? Yeah, that's being demeaning. Maybe being demeaning is a good sales technique, I dunno, but that's definitely being a jerk. But "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" or something like that maybe.

stevewodil 6y ago
It really depends on your tonality when you say it. In either case, saying "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" is just going to be met with another "No, we don't need it" from the other end. "So you have perfect user retention then?" is a better question because you know for a fact that they can't have 100% user retention and they know that as well so it forces further dialogue.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  i guess this is why I'm not a salesperson. If it works it works, but I'm having trouble accepting that it's not demeaning, which was the original contention. Because it's not really a question at all, it's a sarcastic question. Maybe being demeaning gets sales, sure.
  - james1071 6y ago
    Agree with you on that.
  - stevewodil 6y ago
    Think of it more as being a pattern interrupt. They are saying no to you over and over, so by asking the question, "So you have perfect user retention then?" they can either say "No" instinctively which opens your sales pitch because they've now told you they have a user retention problem, or they stop and think about the question in which case you've successfully interrupted the pattern of no's that preceded the question and can further the discussion. There are definitely better examples I could come up with, but now I'm stuck with this one because it's what I quickly typed out earlier.

rawoke083600 6y ago

Arg I HATE that angle ! It's like that sales calls.. "Do you like money ?".. if you say no thank you I"m busy... they like... oh so you don't like free money ?

konschubert 6y ago
beep beep beep