

Ask HN: How do I teach myself to be a salesman? - MicahWedemeyer

So we hackers are always saying that we can learn business, but the business guys can't learn to hack.  Now I'm suddenly in a place where I need some salesmanship skills, and I don't know the first thing.<p>I'm trying to recruit initial sellers for my plant marketplace, doleaf.com  On the upside, there are thousands of specialty nurseries all over the country.  A simple Google search turns up dozens, and most of them don't sell online (which is what we provide!)<p>I've sent a few cold-emails trying to generate some interest, but it feels very spammy, and hasn't generated any response.<p>What should I do?  Are there some books I should read?  My guess is that I just need some basic instruction and a little practice, but I don't know where to start.  Recommendations on reading material, blogs to follow, etc.?
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tyohn
If I had to venture a guess - you don't seem to understand your marketplace. I
don't mean you don't understand online sales - I mean you don't understand
small growers (specialty nurseries).

I grew up around small growers (Near Lancaster, PA). Most of the growers I
know don't really use the web for sales (or much of anything) - you might
think that's good since that's what you are offering but that means in order
to sell to them you first need to educate them on the web and then try to make
the sale.

Grower's don't live and breath the internet like we do...by trying to sell
them through email you have cut your chances of a sale to almost nil - you
might want to try snail mail, a phone call or better yet a sales call in
person in this case.

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MicahWedemeyer
Yeah, I'm trying to build up the nerve to do some calling and in-person
talking.

And yes, many of them don't use the web for sales, but we're guessing they
would if we could make it easy. We just need to convince a couple that it's
worth the effort.

Thanks for the tip!

~~~
tyohn
Its not that hard to do cold calls - if you really believe in the product.
Here's a little about how I started if you're interested -
<http://troyyohn.com/?q=node/31> :)

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avdempsey
Try door to door canvassing for a month (or three). After returning from some
travel I picked up a job at greenpeace to tide myself over. Any inhibitions to
putting myself out there and selling were hammered out in the three months I
fund-raised for them. They train you, support you in the field, and most
importantly make you _practice_ selling for 4 hours a day. There's just no
replacement for experience. I needed a little strong-arming to get out and
learn how to sell.

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lacker
Just start calling! If they say no, ask why not. Ask if they could recommend
to you any other people in the nursery business who might be interested. Offer
to do something for someone completely for free if you can use them as a
reference (a Mark Cuban recommendation for getting started in sales).

Make 20 phone calls, and you will learn a lot about your potential users.

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bavcyc
Best book on sales is "The Selling Bible; For People in the Business of
Selling", the summary is know what you are selling, keep track of what you do
and listen.

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beastman82
Pick up the phone and start calling. The questions they ask and ruminating
over your experiences should highlight general ideas that you should "pitch."

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access_denied
What the heck is doleaf.com? "It is just budding at the moment, do some wierd
geek stuff"

Learn to speak the language of your customers.

Also, what is doleaf? Something with plants I guess, what does it do for me? I
couldn't figure this out (by glancing over the homepage).

