
Hey Startups, I’m calling bullshit. You don’t understand sales - nreece
http://www.shoestring.com.au/2013/01/hey-startups-im-calling-bullshit-you-dont-understand-sales/
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redguava
It turns out that understanding how to make a website handle an influx of
visitors is also important.

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anigbrowl
XD

Still, once you get past the snarky opener there's a lot of good advice in
this one.

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mattmanser
No, there's not. It's b2b specific and all it talks about is pipelines. It's
got _nothing_ to do with startups.

Bad title, bad article, bad server.

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craigvn
So what your saying is, "we're startups, we don't do sales, we get
investment". Well maybe some people are interested in a profitable business.
And anyone who has done any sales would be able to adapt this guys advice to
any startup, not just B2B.

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qznc
Is angel/VC money that much different than the B2B process described in the
article? This pipeline scheme could be translated quite directly.

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ValentineC
Google Cache version (in case anyone else isn't able to access the site):
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.shoestring.com.au%2F2013%2F01%2Fhey-
startups-im-calling-bullshit-you-dont-understand-sales%2F)

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sujeetsr
"2 x $30,000 sales sitting at a probability of 10% to close, 1 x $500 sale
sitting at a probability of 75% to close", and so on. How does one estimate
these probabilities?

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grinnick
I really like the way he adds up the current value of the prospects in his
funnel. I think it's a really great way to keep track of how much value each
activity you could be doing right now will create so that you can more easily
decide what to do next.

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obviouslygreen
This is something any perceptive founder will pick up on very quickly (if they
weren't aware of it, as I wasn't, before their first project).

However, in my experience, learning to do it yourself _is not_ an efficient or
effective solution. You may have no other option at the beginning, but finding
someone who actually does this sort of thing for a living is vastly easier
(which is not to say it's simple).

There are challenges to this as well, including how to afford them, how to pay
them, and how to engage them, but that still costs less time than attempting
to learn a trade that's based very heavily on things technical just don't
usually do much, and the results are far better: If you think you'd make a
fine salesperson, despite never having worked extensively in sales, you are
almost certainly wrong.

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jvanderwal
He's right.. even seasoned sales people don't understand their own pipelines a
lot of the time. Try coming into a sales-person oriented company with the job
of building a marketing/lead gen system for them, and then introducing them to
their first CRM (previously saving all their data in personal Excel
spreadsheets). Then convincing them of the value of a marketing program to
drive them leads, and how giving me their sales data actually helps them in
the long run... It's a common problem in a number of corporations. There's a
funnel to the pipeline and sales people often just focus on chasing their one
or two current hot leads.

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nubela
As a programmer doing sales, this is really informative albeit abit short.
Does anyone have a good book to recommend on sales?

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Hates_
It depends on which part of sales you want to focus on. I've yet to find a
good book which covers the discipline as a whole. Many seem to either focus on
the psychology, prospecting or just closing of sales.

I'm part way through "New Sales. Simplified" which seems heavily based on
"prospecting" which a lot of books seem to neglect. I've also got Dan Pink's
"To Sell is Human" lined up next which is more about the psychological
aspects. Many of the classic sales books by Zig Ziglar or Brian Tracy seem,
IMO, to be more closing focused.

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coopdog
I haven't finished it but "Secrets of Master Closer" seems good and covers the
whole of sales, encouraging the reader to learn sales from first principles
and then apply it in their own domain.

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apapli
Another one that is excellent is called "the challenger sale".

Here it is on amazon, I bought the audible version.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Sale-Customer-
Conversat...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Sale-Customer-
Conversation/dp/1591844355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365156364&sr=8-1&keywords=the+challenger+sale)

A further one to look at is the maverick selling method. Corny name but good
content:

[http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Selling-Method-Simplifying-
Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Selling-Method-Simplifying-
Complex/dp/1441503501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365156483&sr=1-1&keywords=maverick+selling+method)

