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Sales Advice
- tomelders 12y ago"Paying a bonus, not a commission... because people leave at the end of the quarter and you can save a ton of cash" I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that kind of policy. A fair days pay for a fair days work.
- sogen 12y agoThat's not comfortable, but a reality. i.e.: see point 23: "fire quickly" "You have to fire a decent amount of people in this business" "Looking across the 600 sales hires he’s worked with" (point 13) Sounds like a lot of firings.
- ianhawes 12y agoCompletely agree, especially when it comes to commission. The best salespeople will quickly sniff out the optimal commission/bonus structure, and I'd wager that they'd perform better under a commission versus a bonus.
- notahacker 12y agoEverything about this article is geared towards hiring fresh first-jobbers and hoping at least 25% of them won't be shit[1]. The best salespeople would run a mile rather than work for him. That said, the best salespeople would probably be happy with their commission being paid quarterly provided it was high enough. [1]For some markets this volume-based approach actually works; for others it'll make you a laughing stock.
- goombastic 12y agoI agree. That's just heartless.
- TheBiv 12y agoAwesome list! One thing I would've loved for him to explain more of, was how he crafted his sales script in the beginning. Basically how he did his guess and check work and what sort of revelations/things he learned while crafting the sales script. He really just mentions that it's hard to create a script. :(
- soneca 12y agoI have a trick for creating a sales script. After every sales pitch/conversation/call/meeting write down the tough questions the prospect asked. Do this for your first 10, 50, 100 sales. Along the way you will find out the best answers, the ones who move the process forward. After a lot of experience, you will have a fairly good sales script adressing the most important common points. But also create a complete FAQ for the tough questions, with all the best answers written, print it and read all of it before leaving for each sales meeting. This will help a lot.
- btrautsc 12y agoGreat advice
- free2rhyme214 12y ago8 ways to success. 6 traits of effective leaders. 5 key habits of billionaires. These articles get old. Good advice here and there but old.
- mindcrime 12y agoSome of this sounds pretty good, but a lot of it sounds like it's geared towards a Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room style environment, and towards selling low-value, high volume commodity products. What I mean is, there doesn't seem to be anything about diagnosing customer needs, researching the customer, creating a tailored value hypothesis, and/or helping the customer understand the value you'll be delivering. There are the kinds of things I've been taught to do in terms of selling complex, high-value B2B solutions. Maybe the "have a script, make the script perfect, and call enough people" approach is right in some environments, but I wouldn't expect it to be universally applicable.
- louwrentius 12y agoI was reading this advice and it really sounded like you are advised to create a horrible, horrible place to work.
- dang 12y agoIt's sometimes amusing what you're left with when you strip the various linkbait devices out of a title.