5 ms·

The real secret to having a successful sales career is to work at a company that sells a market leading product. This trumps 99% of anything you can do as an in

The real secret to having a successful sales career is to work at a company that sells a market leading product. This trumps 99% of anything you can do as an individual. I have seen complete noobs have good sales careers at AWS

pro14 2y ago
[dead]
- eitally 2y ago
  It still works this way. If you're a seller and don't work this way or don't know the game, you'll probably find yourself looking for a new job every year.
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
That's the difference between being a great salesman and having great sales. Any idiot can sell something that's in demand. It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. It's better to be the idiot.
- nik282000 2y ago
  > It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. Or just a regular crook.
  - jfengel 2y ago
    Not just any crook. A great crook.
- marcus0x62 2y ago
  I worked (in sales engineering) at such a company with a market-leading product. For a few years there, at the height of the market/mindshare dominance for their main product, I observed a recurring theme: We'd hire a new manager from outside the company. This new manager would go around and meet some sales teams, meet some customers, then a month or two in, end up at a meeting where they gave a speech. At this speech, they would opine that customers loved our product, that it "practically sold itself" and our job was at least 90% execution. Translation: a trained circus monkey could do your job. Just show up, answer your emails, and the product will do all the heavy lifting. Don't come complaining to me about how your quota is too high, product isn't taking your feature requests seriously, etc. Those are just excuses for poor performance. I saw this happen a half dozen times, at least. In every case -- every case -- those people were singing a very different tune after they had been around for six months and saw what the job was really like. Now, having good traction in the market, and analysts saying good things about you, and customers excited to be references? All that is really important. But in large enterprise sales, nothing "sells itself." And, for the record, we had plenty of people who weren't idiots, who nonetheless couldn't sell a product that was in very high demand. At least, not enough to keep their job.
  - CobrastanJorji 2y ago
    That's fair. I should amend my comment. Even stuff that's highly in demand often has competitors with equivalent products, and often the products are complex and business relationships need to be maintained and there are a thousand and one complexities to understanding and executing the business. I apologize for the "any idiot" line. But I do believe that the job is fundamentally different when it's about selling a product that's needed compared to selling worthless crap.
    - marcus0x62 2y ago
      > But I do believe that the job is fundamentally different when it's about selling a product that's needed compared to selling worthless crap. Definitely. Another big driver is recurring relationships, either with customers or a larger peer selling community[0]. Most people won't buy more than once from someone unreliable, and ethical people generally don't want to work alongside or be associated with unethical people. Sales people that have options will gravitate towards products/companies they think they can sell more of and most won't consider working for companies that make useless crap or companies that can't or won't support what they make. 0 - think multi-tier tech sales, where you might have an OEM that makes a product, a distributor that either holds stock on the product or handles receivables for the OEM, and a VAR who might directly sell the product to an end-user, all with sales reps that work together on most (or all) deals.
- draw_down 2y ago
  [dead]
- gitaarik 2y ago
  Even a genius can't keep up selling stuff nobody wants. If you're a genius, you won't be so foolish attempting that.
jweatherby 2y ago
The better the marketing, the easier the sales.
imhoguy 2y ago
Then you don't need salespeople as it sells itself. You need on-boarding support people.
- iterance 2y ago
  Huh? You absolutely still need sales people even with a market leading product. It sells itself, sure, but someone needs to work with the client and close the best possible deal.
- nappsec 2y ago
  I'm guessing you've never worked in sales. Even well-known product lead companies like Atlassian employ sales reps, especially at the enterprise and strategic levels, because demonstrating value to the end user is only a part of the sales process. There's lots of additional work that's closer to project management that's required to close a deal. It's identifying and aligning stakeholders, helping to justify budget by putting together a business case for leadership and finance teams who won't directly interface with the product and need to be sold on it's value. This is the sort of thing high level business to business sales reps spend a ton of time doing.
  - imhoguy 2y ago
    You are right, I haven't done that level of B2B sales ever. Thanks for explaining.
liontwist 2y ago
This is backwards. How do you get a market leading product? Years of good work in marketing and selling.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wslh 2y ago
You should separate between inbound and outbound sales. If you work at AWS you are receiving a lot of inbound inquiries which make sales much easier than doing outbound work. In the case of top companies such as AWS, their marketing team performed a big part of the work while in small companies marketing cannot move the needle with a minimal budget, so they should be smarter, lucky, etc.
crowcroft 2y ago
I saw this when I worked for a SaaS that was incredibly dominant in some countries, and almost non-existent in others (where an incumbent player was dominant). Every year or so top performing sales and marketing folks from the dominant countries would be tapped on the shoulder and tasked with growing the company in our less dominant markets. Everyone failed.
bluGill 2y ago
The non market leading company sometimes do very well if/where they have good sales. The easy mode is work for the market leading company while the others don't have great sales staff. But if the others have great sales staff your job as the market leader becomes much harder - your market leading position ensures you are invited to the table when something is bought, but it doesn't ensure you have the sale. (the non-market leaders sometimes are not even invited to the table even when their offering is clearly better)
jpadkins 2y ago
I was talking to a sales person at Research in Motion back when Blackberry and mobile enterprise email were hot; asked him how things are. He replied it was like selling oxygen, he would walk in and take an order for how many they wanted. Every RIM salesperson looked like an amazing sales person based on sales metrics. Also the inverse is true. A great sales team can disguise a mediocre product team.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

pro14 2y ago

[dead]

eitally 2y ago
It still works this way. If you're a seller and don't work this way or don't know the game, you'll probably find yourself looking for a new job every year.

CobrastanJorji 2y ago

That's the difference between being a great salesman and having great sales. Any idiot can sell something that's in demand. It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. It's better to be the idiot.

nik282000 2y ago
> It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. Or just a regular crook.
- jfengel 2y ago
  Not just any crook. A great crook.
marcus0x62 2y ago
I worked (in sales engineering) at such a company with a market-leading product. For a few years there, at the height of the market/mindshare dominance for their main product, I observed a recurring theme: We'd hire a new manager from outside the company. This new manager would go around and meet some sales teams, meet some customers, then a month or two in, end up at a meeting where they gave a speech. At this speech, they would opine that customers loved our product, that it "practically sold itself" and our job was at least 90% execution. Translation: a trained circus monkey could do your job. Just show up, answer your emails, and the product will do all the heavy lifting. Don't come complaining to me about how your quota is too high, product isn't taking your feature requests seriously, etc. Those are just excuses for poor performance. I saw this happen a half dozen times, at least. In every case -- every case -- those people were singing a very different tune after they had been around for six months and saw what the job was really like. Now, having good traction in the market, and analysts saying good things about you, and customers excited to be references? All that is really important. But in large enterprise sales, nothing "sells itself." And, for the record, we had plenty of people who weren't idiots, who nonetheless couldn't sell a product that was in very high demand. At least, not enough to keep their job.
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  That's fair. I should amend my comment. Even stuff that's highly in demand often has competitors with equivalent products, and often the products are complex and business relationships need to be maintained and there are a thousand and one complexities to understanding and executing the business. I apologize for the "any idiot" line. But I do believe that the job is fundamentally different when it's about selling a product that's needed compared to selling worthless crap.
  - marcus0x62 2y ago
    > But I do believe that the job is fundamentally different when it's about selling a product that's needed compared to selling worthless crap. Definitely. Another big driver is recurring relationships, either with customers or a larger peer selling community[0]. Most people won't buy more than once from someone unreliable, and ethical people generally don't want to work alongside or be associated with unethical people. Sales people that have options will gravitate towards products/companies they think they can sell more of and most won't consider working for companies that make useless crap or companies that can't or won't support what they make. 0 - think multi-tier tech sales, where you might have an OEM that makes a product, a distributor that either holds stock on the product or handles receivables for the OEM, and a VAR who might directly sell the product to an end-user, all with sales reps that work together on most (or all) deals.
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]
gitaarik 2y ago
Even a genius can't keep up selling stuff nobody wants. If you're a genius, you won't be so foolish attempting that.

jweatherby 2y ago

The better the marketing, the easier the sales.

imhoguy 2y ago

Then you don't need salespeople as it sells itself. You need on-boarding support people.

iterance 2y ago
Huh? You absolutely still need sales people even with a market leading product. It sells itself, sure, but someone needs to work with the client and close the best possible deal.
nappsec 2y ago
I'm guessing you've never worked in sales. Even well-known product lead companies like Atlassian employ sales reps, especially at the enterprise and strategic levels, because demonstrating value to the end user is only a part of the sales process. There's lots of additional work that's closer to project management that's required to close a deal. It's identifying and aligning stakeholders, helping to justify budget by putting together a business case for leadership and finance teams who won't directly interface with the product and need to be sold on it's value. This is the sort of thing high level business to business sales reps spend a ton of time doing.
- imhoguy 2y ago
  You are right, I haven't done that level of B2B sales ever. Thanks for explaining.

liontwist 2y ago

This is backwards. How do you get a market leading product? Years of good work in marketing and selling.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

wslh 2y ago

You should separate between inbound and outbound sales. If you work at AWS you are receiving a lot of inbound inquiries which make sales much easier than doing outbound work. In the case of top companies such as AWS, their marketing team performed a big part of the work while in small companies marketing cannot move the needle with a minimal budget, so they should be smarter, lucky, etc.

crowcroft 2y ago

I saw this when I worked for a SaaS that was incredibly dominant in some countries, and almost non-existent in others (where an incumbent player was dominant). Every year or so top performing sales and marketing folks from the dominant countries would be tapped on the shoulder and tasked with growing the company in our less dominant markets. Everyone failed.

bluGill 2y ago

The non market leading company sometimes do very well if/where they have good sales. The easy mode is work for the market leading company while the others don't have great sales staff. But if the others have great sales staff your job as the market leader becomes much harder - your market leading position ensures you are invited to the table when something is bought, but it doesn't ensure you have the sale. (the non-market leaders sometimes are not even invited to the table even when their offering is clearly better)

jpadkins 2y ago

I was talking to a sales person at Research in Motion back when Blackberry and mobile enterprise email were hot; asked him how things are. He replied it was like selling oxygen, he would walk in and take an order for how many they wanted. Every RIM salesperson looked like an amazing sales person based on sales metrics. Also the inverse is true. A great sales team can disguise a mediocre product team.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]