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Thanks for the book rec. Is there anything in this article that isn’t contained in the book apart from the incentive?

• jameslk 2y ago
  The attention grabbing and objection handling pieces are discussed in Never Split the Difference, amongst other ways to negotiate a deal. Basically ask lots of what/how questions until the other party negotiates themselves to your position. The rest of the script is just qualification questions, which you can find written about everywhere if you look up BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and MEDDPICC (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition). I wish I had a good book recommendation for qualifying, but it’s the easier part of the sales process: you’re just asking questions and listening, setting yourself up for the next stage. Once you know whether the prospect has a problem you can solve, then you launch into the real sale, generally a presentation or demo tailored to the prospect’s problems and goals. YC posted a pretty good, compact video on enterprise SaaS sales recently, which explains the typical sales lifecycle at a high level and contains further resources: https://youtu.be/0fKYVl12VTA https://youtu.be/0fKYVl12VTA
  • uncivilized 2y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to give me all these resources. I’ve got a lot of reading and watching to do.
    • jameslk 2y ago
      No problem! As an outsider to sales myself, I only realized after a friend who does this for a living as an account executive explained to me how much of sales is simply asking good questions and being a good listener. Quite opposite of what I thought sales was and much simpler when you think about it that way. Good luck!