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I'd refine that slightly: marketing is telling an interesting enough story to get an enquiry, sales is telling a relevant enough story to get the action. Commu

I'd refine that slightly: marketing is telling an interesting enough story to get an enquiry, sales is telling a relevant enough story to get the action. Communicating the complexity of the product is only part of that. It's the "so based on what you've told me about needing to replace x that takes y hours per week, this z minute process I'm walking you through will generate u more v". For simple, universal value propositions you might be able to turn that into a calculator on a product page, but a lot of value propositions involving salespeople aren't simple or universal. (Also there's the navigating large organizations bit and the outbound bit, but they aren't competing with or complimenting this product) Ironically one of pclark's comments elsewhere about Journey's value proposition being "so meta" makes me think that's exactly the bit a good salesperson solves for you: figuring out the gap in the specific client's marketing capabilities that Journey can fill

pclark 5y ago
Great comment! I don't think Journey is gonna replace humans for selling all software, I just think some interactions are better async. A friend of mine, Sahil (CEO of Gumroad) once told me that "live meetings should be used for closing" and that maps to how I feel too. For example I believe over time discovery can actually be made superior async than live, since with async we can do all kinds of crazy personalisation - rather than expecting a sales person to know all the questions to ask on a live meandering phone call. BTW we actually sell Journey by simply building a custom Journey for the prospect we're selling to. For example for calixa.com (a killer new CRM) I sent them a Journey of me "selling" Calixa so they could imagine how Journey could be used to sell Calixa to prospects. IMHO this is how selling should be, not generic materials or even sales speak — real world use cases!
- notahacker 5y ago
  Oh yeah, I'm not saying there isn't a use case for this sort of thing. I think you'd need human level AGI to do the sort of real world use case personalization I did on sales demos, but there's definitely plenty of sales processes and parts of sales process where the generic product copy/video isn't enough and yet another demo/call isn't good time management. Not to mention jazzing up final proposals with reminders of things clients should have already seen.
  - pclark 5y ago
    Yeah - for mature sales teams, sales follow up is actually more of a use case for us than cold outreach. Bit different for founder sales though.
- KajMagnus 5y ago
  (I think you meant `calixa .io` not `.com` — the latter gives a Chrome security warning.)
  - bweitz 5y ago
    Indeed - calixa.io is correct

pclark 5y ago

Great comment! I don't think Journey is gonna replace humans for selling all software, I just think some interactions are better async. A friend of mine, Sahil (CEO of Gumroad) once told me that "live meetings should be used for closing" and that maps to how I feel too. For example I believe over time discovery can actually be made superior async than live, since with async we can do all kinds of crazy personalisation - rather than expecting a sales person to know all the questions to ask on a live meandering phone call. BTW we actually sell Journey by simply building a custom Journey for the prospect we're selling to. For example for calixa.com (a killer new CRM) I sent them a Journey of me "selling" Calixa so they could imagine how Journey could be used to sell Calixa to prospects. IMHO this is how selling should be, not generic materials or even sales speak — real world use cases!

notahacker 5y ago
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there isn't a use case for this sort of thing. I think you'd need human level AGI to do the sort of real world use case personalization I did on sales demos, but there's definitely plenty of sales processes and parts of sales process where the generic product copy/video isn't enough and yet another demo/call isn't good time management. Not to mention jazzing up final proposals with reminders of things clients should have already seen.
- pclark 5y ago
  Yeah - for mature sales teams, sales follow up is actually more of a use case for us than cold outreach. Bit different for founder sales though.
KajMagnus 5y ago
(I think you meant `calixa .io` not `.com` — the latter gives a Chrome security warning.)
- bweitz 5y ago
  Indeed - calixa.io is correct