7 ms·

The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all. They built an intimate knowledge of their custome

The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all. They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on the customer/industry/client. These folks would also often deliver very difficult messages to their clients, which often resulted in more business not less. The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.

dstroot 2y ago
This. This is elite sales.
reaperman 2y ago
How does a salesperson deliver exceptional work? In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work.
- selcuka 2y ago
  > In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work. Because they were not "elite salespeople"? Jokes aside, I guess the best salesperson is the one whose title is not "Sales".
- Spooky23 2y ago
  A lot of places skate with shitty salespeople. If nobody is moving the product, that trench is a grave.
- myself248 2y ago
  By meticulously, accurately, and skeptically gathering ALL the requirements from the customer and bringing them to the engineers. It sounds inane, but it's appalling how often that doesn't happen, and how it irretrievably dooms a project before it starts.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    This is software sales, which has long cycles, ongoing relationships and is a tiny sliver of the "hires salesmen" industry. For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples You’re describing low value, low recurrence sales. Those are numbers, not relationship, games, with high churn at that.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        I think low recurrence is the bigger factor for sleaziness: roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman They’re low value, comparatively speaking. High-value sales starts where your client can afford to do their own diligence and retaliate if you screw them; that’s typically around the $10+ million level.
- lojack 2y ago
  > In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work. Have you ever worked at a place where the sales people promised features that didn't exist? A bad sales person can ensure you're in the trenches doing work that is urgent but not important. A good sales person anticipates requirements, identifies when they're not currently available, and proactively works with the right people to get the important features prioritized strategically. The sales people talk to the customers, so from a certain perspective they're the ones in the trenches and talking to customers while you're in the back office plugging away at a keyboard.
- amscanne 2y ago
  My archetype of a good sales person is the successful realtor. Realtors tend to “eat what they can kill”, so you can see the skills power law clearly. They are selling themselves more than houses, but there’s a lot to learn from that. Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like any sales person, they generally have an interest in the transaction closing but they are only trusted if they come off as acting in your interest. That trust can ultimately help the transaction close — this is the line that I think good sales people walk.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    > although they do very little for their outlandish commissions Realtors exist because buyers and sellers usually don't trust each other enough to talk directly. It's stupid and inefficient, but here we are.
    - davidcalloway 2y ago
      I think you value their work too little. I worked as a realtor for a time and admittedly not a good one. A good realtor has knowledge of current values in the local market, issues to look for throughout the transaction, which services will be needed and who can be trusted to provide those services. There is often an element of buffering communication between buyer and seller, but it's not just a trust problem. Due to their different interests and perspectives, they will tend to communicate in ways that could offend the other party inadvertantly. A good realtor is skilled in smoothing this over and being more objective. As an aside, the term realtor is trademarked and is something on top of real estate agent, but for the American public the realtor association has been so successful that almost every agent joins. At the time I did this work, the requirements for licensing were indeed too lax in my state and therefore a commensurate number of lower quality agents. Which of course feeds the impression that agents are useless, because it was more true. My understanding is that licensing the has since tightened. None of that detracts from the fact that a good agent does quite a bit of work to build up knowledge, and to assist through a huge transaction that most people will seldom make and therefore more likely mess up. Unfortunately this work is also often spent doing things that never lead to a transaction, such as multiple showings to buyers prior to finding a fit, or preparing listings that ultimately fail to sell for whatever reason. These costs need to be accounted for somehow, so we end up thinking only of the services rendered in our dealings. I realize I have even more to say but I gotta stop sometime...
- liontwist 2y ago
  By finding people who will actually benefit from the product and setting their expectations appropriately.
  - 6510 2y ago
    Precisely! Rather than sell a lot my nr 1 priority was to have enjoyable conversations. nr 2 is to explain the company. I aced it but at the time it didn't seem like elite sales, not to anyone, not even to me. I just felt this is how it should be done. Then I ran into a manager 3 years after I quit. He said, I don't know how you've done it but we still get clients from your work, a lot of them. Apparently, when people [actually] need something they look at some business directory. If they then see a name they know and remember having an enjoyable conversation where they've learned all the ins and outs from someone who didn't even try to sell them anything... who do you think they are going to call? I was able to do thousands of calls per day because I wasn't trying to force anything and the process was enjoyable. If there is one trick to share here: Make people talk, listen to them, pay close attention to the speed at which they talk and the duration of their pauses then gradually try to match it. If someone is super energetic and talks really fast I unload the material on them slightly faster, make a joke and thank them for their time. If they talk slow feed them one sentence at a time and have them confirm they got it. I'm pretty sure people were quite confused by my not trying to sell them anything. this is what we do, this is what we offer, thanks for listening, enjoy your day I already know they aren't buying. I could definitely add a 3 minute grind to the end but why? Waste energy annoying people? Better get to the next customer.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  We had a sales guy that the rest of the office hated, but whom I absolutely loved. He'd sell the craziest shit. E.g. him and I attempted to replace a customers Kubernetes stack with Azure websites and CosmosDB, saving them two years of hosting the first month (We failed because the client didn't feel like we where being serious). At one point he sold a project that would lead to his termination and it was the most brilliant sale I've ever seen. A customer wanted monitoring and a 24/7 "operation center", but one which didn't have access to any systems. We'd channel alerts from the customer into our on-call, which would then phone the customers staff and tell them that "YO! X is broken" and hang up. The price was insane, is was free money, but the customer was excited and felt like they got a great deal.
  - DavidPeiffer 2y ago
    What lead to his termination? Was the on-call team not thrilled with having to (even minimally) deal with issues from the systems of another company?
    - mrweasel 2y ago
      That was a major part of it. I never completely understood why, but for some reason the majority of the staff really hated that project. I though it was a brilliant move. The problem may have been that people attempted to over-engineer the project and handle scenarios that wasn't in scope, setting unrealistic goal resulting in a lot of pretty dumb and boring work. Another part was that was yet another service which we technically didn't offer, which he sold. He was always very upfront about the fact that he knew that a lot of the stuff he sold was not actually something we offered or necessarily knew how to do. That pissed of a lot of people, but in hindsight, five years later: He sold the right things and we should embraced those sales/potential sale, because the local market has moved in the direction he was going.
      - kayodelycaon 2y ago
        > a lot of the stuff he sold was not actually something we offered or necessarily knew how to do This may not be the situation but I’m willing to bet he created an insane amount of chaos for everyone else by doing this. Existing projects constantly getting delayed or cancelled because he sold something that wasn’t planned for. At my last job, we had a department who delegated all of their quarterly goals to the development team. They made us responsible for accomplishing their goals on top of everything else we were doing. They delayed critical projects for years for marginal gains.
- eitally 2y ago
  I've worked adjacent to technical consultants for a decade, and in tech sales leadership for the past few, and there's a lot of misleading information in this thread. For one, there's a huge gulf between product sales and services sales. In product sales roles you'll almost never find people who are strategic advisors to their clients. Why would they be -- they'll selling products? On the other hand, in roles responsible for selling services (which may also include products, from a single or multiple vendors), you'll be far more likely to see strategic thinkers focused on business transformation or business outcomes. That said, there are also very good reasons why even at big consulting shops (Deloitte, Accenture, BCG, EY, etc) the roles of Client Partner or Client Account Lead (the person on the hook for client revenue) is the one responsible for client relationships and client contracting, but is usually not the one providing strategy or technology advice. That comes cross-functionally. In small tech product companies -- especially where the product isn't just plug & play -- my experience is that the sales rep is responsible for contracting and business relationships, but it's the technical pre-sales architects & the post-sales service delivery manager + architects who are providing the most value. It's exceptionally difficult to hire rockstars senior architects and always will be. It's one of the most in-demand roles in tech.
- edgarvaldes 2y ago
  I once worked for a company that sold industry cleaning supplies in the food processing vertical. The amount of industry knowledge that salespeople required to simply be able to offer one product over another was staggering. The best salespeople knew the industry, the end products, the supply chain, the internal processes, the potential improvements, and could present it in a way that was clear to operators, technical to supervisors, and commercially viable to decision makers.
ajb 2y ago
Okay, I've worked at a company that had that kind of sales. It is indeed very impressive to see. But I think that worked because there were only a small number of vendors who could potentially deliver for these (giant) customers in the first place. Otherwise the immense investment to attempt to land one of these customers would have too low a chance of paying off. Although they have the same title I think it's a different job to when there are a lot of options for the customer.
- bushbaba 2y ago
  Generally done for large deal sizes. there can be 100 vendors but when you spend 50 mil+/year on a vendor the strategy matters.
re5i5tor 2y ago
This. The elite salesperson is great at understanding and solving problems, not BS.
batushka5 2y ago
No no no, endulging in fancy diners with industry, running around with gifts and selling from gorrila size vendor catalog is job well done, but not ELITE. Cold sales are KING.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  New leads are where it's at
netcan 2y ago
Yeah... "elite" tends to mean different things at different levels. There are definitely "salesmen" with long term industry credibility, relationships and such. Probably reads as more of a "businessman" than salesman, regardless of how the bread is buttered. That said, I think this is fundamentally different from a Salesman who can join, start or lead a sales team and start putting up sales numbers. It's inglorious work, ultimately. Not a tone of respect for the salesman. That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially. Also, worse salesmen in trashier sectors tend to be more visible. A lame pressure sales guy will just seem more salesman. They'll also work colder pipelines and leads, annoy more people. That bias makes salesmen's reputation even worse.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  > That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially. Absolutely. Used to do Sales Engineering, and the different Account Execs were light years apart, even when you looked at the top performers. Definite 80/20 rule here.
PaulHoule 2y ago
Sales are maligned. There is the guy at the car dealership who specializes in adding an extended service contract for your new car. Then there's the guy who sells a software development project that lands a well qualified customer (joy to work with) and a good specification which was well estimated and price so you can complete the work profitably. Maybe you know nothing about formalwear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in.
- jjulius 2y ago
  Sales are maligned for good reason. I'd wager I've experienced the "you know nothing about formal wear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in" salesperson a handful of times. Now, the number of times I've had someone try to sell me something while clearly not listening to what I have to say and getting uncomfortably pushy about it, well... yikes.
  - danabrams 2y ago
    Two types of sales philosophies: 1. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it's about the sales technique. 2. Develop deep domain and customer expertise. The former is the scammy type, the latter is the type we love to work with. But the same is true in any industry. Too many of us in technology are doing the technology equivalent of 1--becoming experts in C++ or React--instead of becoming deep domain and user experts.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      In software I like the person knows C++ or React in and out and I like the person who understands the domain, UX and such. I want both on the team. I despise the guy who sells extended service contracts at the car dealership. I sure as hell don't want that guy selling software work because I won't be able to complete the work profitably and I'll be dealing with angry customers who don't trust me.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Engineers are awful too. The number of times I have been subjected to needlessly bad product designs far exceeds my negative interactions with sales people. And then there are the products that fail at their one function.
seventytwo 2y ago
That only works as a sales strategy with savvy customers. If you’re cold-selling people on a shitty widget they don’t need, you’re going to have to be a sleazeball.
bonestamp2 2y ago
> The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'. Absolutely. I have had the pleasure of working with a few elite sales people and none of them were sleazy. They were all extremely confident on the inside, but present as humble and even a little vulnerable on the outside. This is strategic as it builds trust, but I think it was also genuine for the most part -- they really wanted their customers to be happy and they wanted their customers to know that. They dress nicely, but again in a humble way. They're not quite as polished looking as the "slick" sales people, and this too is part of their strategy. They can pull out a post it note or notebook and sketch a rudimentary diagram they've drawn a thousand times, and every time it looks like they just thought of this idea and are drawing it with wavy lines for the first time. I'm not sure if this one is intentional, but they all do it, and it always looks like they don't know how to draw straight lines. I actually ran into someone like this at lens crafters recently. They were quite young, early to mid 20s I'd say, but after a few minutes of them telling me about the various lens options, I stopped and said, "You're the top salesperson here aren't you?" They gave me a funny look, and asked how I knew. "Just a guess" I said -- but in reality, I had seen all of their human dark-patterns before. Most people wouldn't even know they were being sold to, in fact, they would probably think the opposite... that the salesperson didn't care if they bought anything from them as long as they got the right solution from somebody in the end. Some of them will literally even say that. Of course, this only works when it is 100% believable and you don't identify it as part of their sales strategy.
walrus01 2y ago
In the telecom industry/ISP infrastructure business, the very best sales people are much more like business intelligence/market research people. They know where everyone's infrastructure is in a given region, for fiber cable routes, right of way, POPs, and what carrier is riding on top of which one. Knowing who owns and operates the underlying dark fiber route, DWDM systems, regen huts and similar on a multi state region is what gives them the power to be so effective. Being able to operate from a position of confidence and assurance on "who has what, where" is a very powerful tool. Then, when communicating with potential customers (particularly where it's one ISP entering into a relationship with another ISP), they can offer the correct product for what the customer is looking for. Or, if they can't, they can quickly say "sorry no we can't do that, we don't have any of our own stuff there, and we can't get there by an NNI".

dstroot 2y ago

This. This is elite sales.

reaperman 2y ago

How does a salesperson deliver exceptional work? In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work.

selcuka 2y ago
> In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work. Because they were not "elite salespeople"? Jokes aside, I guess the best salesperson is the one whose title is not "Sales".
Spooky23 2y ago
A lot of places skate with shitty salespeople. If nobody is moving the product, that trench is a grave.
myself248 2y ago
By meticulously, accurately, and skeptically gathering ALL the requirements from the customer and bringing them to the engineers. It sounds inane, but it's appalling how often that doesn't happen, and how it irretrievably dooms a project before it starts.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  This is software sales, which has long cycles, ongoing relationships and is a tiny sliver of the "hires salesmen" industry. For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples You’re describing low value, low recurrence sales. Those are numbers, not relationship, games, with high churn at that.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      I think low recurrence is the bigger factor for sleaziness: roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman They’re low value, comparatively speaking. High-value sales starts where your client can afford to do their own diligence and retaliate if you screw them; that’s typically around the $10+ million level.
lojack 2y ago
> In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work. Have you ever worked at a place where the sales people promised features that didn't exist? A bad sales person can ensure you're in the trenches doing work that is urgent but not important. A good sales person anticipates requirements, identifies when they're not currently available, and proactively works with the right people to get the important features prioritized strategically. The sales people talk to the customers, so from a certain perspective they're the ones in the trenches and talking to customers while you're in the back office plugging away at a keyboard.
amscanne 2y ago
My archetype of a good sales person is the successful realtor. Realtors tend to “eat what they can kill”, so you can see the skills power law clearly. They are selling themselves more than houses, but there’s a lot to learn from that. Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like any sales person, they generally have an interest in the transaction closing but they are only trusted if they come off as acting in your interest. That trust can ultimately help the transaction close — this is the line that I think good sales people walk.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  > although they do very little for their outlandish commissions Realtors exist because buyers and sellers usually don't trust each other enough to talk directly. It's stupid and inefficient, but here we are.
  - davidcalloway 2y ago
    I think you value their work too little. I worked as a realtor for a time and admittedly not a good one. A good realtor has knowledge of current values in the local market, issues to look for throughout the transaction, which services will be needed and who can be trusted to provide those services. There is often an element of buffering communication between buyer and seller, but it's not just a trust problem. Due to their different interests and perspectives, they will tend to communicate in ways that could offend the other party inadvertantly. A good realtor is skilled in smoothing this over and being more objective. As an aside, the term realtor is trademarked and is something on top of real estate agent, but for the American public the realtor association has been so successful that almost every agent joins. At the time I did this work, the requirements for licensing were indeed too lax in my state and therefore a commensurate number of lower quality agents. Which of course feeds the impression that agents are useless, because it was more true. My understanding is that licensing the has since tightened. None of that detracts from the fact that a good agent does quite a bit of work to build up knowledge, and to assist through a huge transaction that most people will seldom make and therefore more likely mess up. Unfortunately this work is also often spent doing things that never lead to a transaction, such as multiple showings to buyers prior to finding a fit, or preparing listings that ultimately fail to sell for whatever reason. These costs need to be accounted for somehow, so we end up thinking only of the services rendered in our dealings. I realize I have even more to say but I gotta stop sometime...
liontwist 2y ago
By finding people who will actually benefit from the product and setting their expectations appropriately.
- 6510 2y ago
  Precisely! Rather than sell a lot my nr 1 priority was to have enjoyable conversations. nr 2 is to explain the company. I aced it but at the time it didn't seem like elite sales, not to anyone, not even to me. I just felt this is how it should be done. Then I ran into a manager 3 years after I quit. He said, I don't know how you've done it but we still get clients from your work, a lot of them. Apparently, when people [actually] need something they look at some business directory. If they then see a name they know and remember having an enjoyable conversation where they've learned all the ins and outs from someone who didn't even try to sell them anything... who do you think they are going to call? I was able to do thousands of calls per day because I wasn't trying to force anything and the process was enjoyable. If there is one trick to share here: Make people talk, listen to them, pay close attention to the speed at which they talk and the duration of their pauses then gradually try to match it. If someone is super energetic and talks really fast I unload the material on them slightly faster, make a joke and thank them for their time. If they talk slow feed them one sentence at a time and have them confirm they got it. I'm pretty sure people were quite confused by my not trying to sell them anything. this is what we do, this is what we offer, thanks for listening, enjoy your day I already know they aren't buying. I could definitely add a 3 minute grind to the end but why? Waste energy annoying people? Better get to the next customer.
mrweasel 2y ago
We had a sales guy that the rest of the office hated, but whom I absolutely loved. He'd sell the craziest shit. E.g. him and I attempted to replace a customers Kubernetes stack with Azure websites and CosmosDB, saving them two years of hosting the first month (We failed because the client didn't feel like we where being serious). At one point he sold a project that would lead to his termination and it was the most brilliant sale I've ever seen. A customer wanted monitoring and a 24/7 "operation center", but one which didn't have access to any systems. We'd channel alerts from the customer into our on-call, which would then phone the customers staff and tell them that "YO! X is broken" and hang up. The price was insane, is was free money, but the customer was excited and felt like they got a great deal.
- DavidPeiffer 2y ago
  What lead to his termination? Was the on-call team not thrilled with having to (even minimally) deal with issues from the systems of another company?
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    That was a major part of it. I never completely understood why, but for some reason the majority of the staff really hated that project. I though it was a brilliant move. The problem may have been that people attempted to over-engineer the project and handle scenarios that wasn't in scope, setting unrealistic goal resulting in a lot of pretty dumb and boring work. Another part was that was yet another service which we technically didn't offer, which he sold. He was always very upfront about the fact that he knew that a lot of the stuff he sold was not actually something we offered or necessarily knew how to do. That pissed of a lot of people, but in hindsight, five years later: He sold the right things and we should embraced those sales/potential sale, because the local market has moved in the direction he was going.
    - kayodelycaon 2y ago
      > a lot of the stuff he sold was not actually something we offered or necessarily knew how to do This may not be the situation but I’m willing to bet he created an insane amount of chaos for everyone else by doing this. Existing projects constantly getting delayed or cancelled because he sold something that wasn’t planned for. At my last job, we had a department who delegated all of their quarterly goals to the development team. They made us responsible for accomplishing their goals on top of everything else we were doing. They delayed critical projects for years for marginal gains.
eitally 2y ago
I've worked adjacent to technical consultants for a decade, and in tech sales leadership for the past few, and there's a lot of misleading information in this thread. For one, there's a huge gulf between product sales and services sales. In product sales roles you'll almost never find people who are strategic advisors to their clients. Why would they be -- they'll selling products? On the other hand, in roles responsible for selling services (which may also include products, from a single or multiple vendors), you'll be far more likely to see strategic thinkers focused on business transformation or business outcomes. That said, there are also very good reasons why even at big consulting shops (Deloitte, Accenture, BCG, EY, etc) the roles of Client Partner or Client Account Lead (the person on the hook for client revenue) is the one responsible for client relationships and client contracting, but is usually not the one providing strategy or technology advice. That comes cross-functionally. In small tech product companies -- especially where the product isn't just plug & play -- my experience is that the sales rep is responsible for contracting and business relationships, but it's the technical pre-sales architects & the post-sales service delivery manager + architects who are providing the most value. It's exceptionally difficult to hire rockstars senior architects and always will be. It's one of the most in-demand roles in tech.
edgarvaldes 2y ago
I once worked for a company that sold industry cleaning supplies in the food processing vertical. The amount of industry knowledge that salespeople required to simply be able to offer one product over another was staggering. The best salespeople knew the industry, the end products, the supply chain, the internal processes, the potential improvements, and could present it in a way that was clear to operators, technical to supervisors, and commercially viable to decision makers.

ajb 2y ago

Okay, I've worked at a company that had that kind of sales. It is indeed very impressive to see. But I think that worked because there were only a small number of vendors who could potentially deliver for these (giant) customers in the first place. Otherwise the immense investment to attempt to land one of these customers would have too low a chance of paying off. Although they have the same title I think it's a different job to when there are a lot of options for the customer.

bushbaba 2y ago
Generally done for large deal sizes. there can be 100 vendors but when you spend 50 mil+/year on a vendor the strategy matters.

re5i5tor 2y ago

This. The elite salesperson is great at understanding and solving problems, not BS.

batushka5 2y ago

No no no, endulging in fancy diners with industry, running around with gifts and selling from gorrila size vendor catalog is job well done, but not ELITE. Cold sales are KING.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
New leads are where it's at

netcan 2y ago

Yeah... "elite" tends to mean different things at different levels. There are definitely "salesmen" with long term industry credibility, relationships and such. Probably reads as more of a "businessman" than salesman, regardless of how the bread is buttered. That said, I think this is fundamentally different from a Salesman who can join, start or lead a sales team and start putting up sales numbers. It's inglorious work, ultimately. Not a tone of respect for the salesman. That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially. Also, worse salesmen in trashier sectors tend to be more visible. A lame pressure sales guy will just seem more salesman. They'll also work colder pipelines and leads, annoy more people. That bias makes salesmen's reputation even worse.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
> That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially. Absolutely. Used to do Sales Engineering, and the different Account Execs were light years apart, even when you looked at the top performers. Definite 80/20 rule here.

PaulHoule 2y ago

Sales are maligned. There is the guy at the car dealership who specializes in adding an extended service contract for your new car. Then there's the guy who sells a software development project that lands a well qualified customer (joy to work with) and a good specification which was well estimated and price so you can complete the work profitably. Maybe you know nothing about formalwear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in.

jjulius 2y ago
Sales are maligned for good reason. I'd wager I've experienced the "you know nothing about formal wear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in" salesperson a handful of times. Now, the number of times I've had someone try to sell me something while clearly not listening to what I have to say and getting uncomfortably pushy about it, well... yikes.
- danabrams 2y ago
  Two types of sales philosophies: 1. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it's about the sales technique. 2. Develop deep domain and customer expertise. The former is the scammy type, the latter is the type we love to work with. But the same is true in any industry. Too many of us in technology are doing the technology equivalent of 1--becoming experts in C++ or React--instead of becoming deep domain and user experts.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    In software I like the person knows C++ or React in and out and I like the person who understands the domain, UX and such. I want both on the team. I despise the guy who sells extended service contracts at the car dealership. I sure as hell don't want that guy selling software work because I won't be able to complete the work profitably and I'll be dealing with angry customers who don't trust me.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Engineers are awful too. The number of times I have been subjected to needlessly bad product designs far exceeds my negative interactions with sales people. And then there are the products that fail at their one function.

seventytwo 2y ago

That only works as a sales strategy with savvy customers. If you’re cold-selling people on a shitty widget they don’t need, you’re going to have to be a sleazeball.

bonestamp2 2y ago

> The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'. Absolutely. I have had the pleasure of working with a few elite sales people and none of them were sleazy. They were all extremely confident on the inside, but present as humble and even a little vulnerable on the outside. This is strategic as it builds trust, but I think it was also genuine for the most part -- they really wanted their customers to be happy and they wanted their customers to know that. They dress nicely, but again in a humble way. They're not quite as polished looking as the "slick" sales people, and this too is part of their strategy. They can pull out a post it note or notebook and sketch a rudimentary diagram they've drawn a thousand times, and every time it looks like they just thought of this idea and are drawing it with wavy lines for the first time. I'm not sure if this one is intentional, but they all do it, and it always looks like they don't know how to draw straight lines. I actually ran into someone like this at lens crafters recently. They were quite young, early to mid 20s I'd say, but after a few minutes of them telling me about the various lens options, I stopped and said, "You're the top salesperson here aren't you?" They gave me a funny look, and asked how I knew. "Just a guess" I said -- but in reality, I had seen all of their human dark-patterns before. Most people wouldn't even know they were being sold to, in fact, they would probably think the opposite... that the salesperson didn't care if they bought anything from them as long as they got the right solution from somebody in the end. Some of them will literally even say that. Of course, this only works when it is 100% believable and you don't identify it as part of their sales strategy.

walrus01 2y ago

In the telecom industry/ISP infrastructure business, the very best sales people are much more like business intelligence/market research people. They know where everyone's infrastructure is in a given region, for fiber cable routes, right of way, POPs, and what carrier is riding on top of which one. Knowing who owns and operates the underlying dark fiber route, DWDM systems, regen huts and similar on a multi state region is what gives them the power to be so effective. Being able to operate from a position of confidence and assurance on "who has what, where" is a very powerful tool. Then, when communicating with potential customers (particularly where it's one ISP entering into a relationship with another ISP), they can offer the correct product for what the customer is looking for. Or, if they can't, they can quickly say "sorry no we can't do that, we don't have any of our own stuff there, and we can't get there by an NNI".