
Ask HN: How to Get Good at Sales? - AndrewHart
In Sam Altman&#x27;s recent blog post, &quot;How To Be Successful&quot;, he talks about &quot;Getting good at sales&quot;:<p><i>Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.</i><p><i>All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc...</i><p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.samaltman.com&#x2F;how-to-be-successful<p>Other parts of the post resonated with me, and this one does too, as something I want to work towards as I build my company.<p>Looking online, all advice on &quot;sales&quot; is centered around actual sales scenarios, rather than what Sam is referring to. I was wondering if anyone came across any books etc. or had good advice on where to start with &quot;getting good at sales&quot;.
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slovette
This is one of those things that HN may not be great at overall. Most answers
here are brainy: “read this book” or “follow these principles” type
suggestions, but this is really something that isn’t solved by reading about
it. Don’t get me wrong it helps to have an intellectual basis, but in reality
you just need to be embarrassed and rejected a lot to get good at sales.

Sales isn’t about your product, it’s about the person your speaking with and
picking up on queues and verbiages that help you cater the conversation to
them.

There isn’t a magic algorithm here. Get out among people and learn how to hold
an artificial conversation for longer than 1 minute with a complete stranger
without making it feel artificial. Once you can do that and walk away _feeing_
good about it, you can start to figure out how to convert that artificial-ness
into something that’s hard to distinguish from comfortable conversation with
someone you’ve known for 10 years. That’s sales. It’s being able to interact
with people at a comfort level that enables them to feel relaxed and safe.

I push a lot of CS students to get jobs as servers at local restaurants and
bars. The pure experience of interacting with a group of new strangers every
5-10 minutes is hugely beneficial to sales development. It’s also easy to
practice selling stuff (convince a bud light drinker to try a local microbrew,
or up sell the nachos to the nachos grande because it’s the freakin weekend
and what’s life without a little adventure). The bonus is that you can obtain
a huge amount of experience with very little commitment as serving can be a
4-6 hour /week deal if you need it to be.

In the end it’s not about sales. It’s all about how comfortable you are in
your own skin and how comfortable you make them. That takes a bit of time and
discomfort to achieve and a book won’t give you that by itself.

Go get experience.

~~~
paulcole
Yep, if you wanted to learn to ride a bike, you wouldn't talk about riding
bikes online or read a book by someone who has won the Tour de France. You'd
go ride a bike.

~~~
Konnstann
I think the question is more like "I have ridden a bike before, but I'm not
very good at it. How can I improve?" in which case you could definitely
suggest reading a book or watching videos on proper form, training exercises,
etc. because just riding a bike will not be good enough past a certain point,
and even getting to that point takes a long time that can be shortened by
targeted practice instead of just "riding".

------
gumby
If your business is already running, take the time to take a sales course (I
did Dale Carnegie many years ago). When I did this years ago I was in a class
with people who sold chip mfg equipment (ASP in the tens of millions, 2+ year
sales cycle), someone who sold ADT security systems, a couple of guys who
started a T-shirt shack, and learned from all of them.

Then a few years later I was 30 with a wife who couldn’t legally work, a
mortgage, and two cats and sold on commission. I _had_ to execute or I
couldn’t make it.

This is how I learned.

------
1337shadow
I have a program like this that my dad passed on to me, which I often re-start
when I feel I'm loosing it:

0\. "How to win friends and influence others" by Carnergie

1\. "Zig Ziglar on Selling"

2\. "Unlimited Power" by Tony Robbins

3\. "Secrets of closing the sale" by Zig Ziglar

4\. "Influence psychology of persuasion" by Caldini

Really made the difference for me when feeding the kids became a challenge.

~~~
deanalevitt
Zig Zigler's books helped me during college when I'd have to do cold sales,
but the lessons were amazing outside of sales.

------
kgiddens1
One of the most important aspects of sales is a great thing - connecting with
people. If you want to build a company, work on a product, or anything in
between your new job is: "Talk to everyone and anyone about everything and
anything".

From there you will see points of commonalities with anyone and will one day
a) enjoy speaking to strangers b) learn from others c) most likely get better
at sales as a result because sales at the end of the day is people connecting
to people.

Good luck Andrew!

------
CyberFonic
"Influence -- The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini is excellent
background reading. Any reasonable bookshop has 100s of books on sales. Best
to browse and pick one that resonates with you.

The best way to start learning is to watch and listen to a good salesperson
doing their bit. For example, visit a prestige car dealership after you have
read "Influence" and see how they apply the various aspects. Ideally get a job
as a junior salesperson working for a great salesperson. Your learning will go
much better under expert guidance. You just can't learn enough just be reading
books, watching videos.

From your question you appear to have conflated marketing, public relations,
negotiating, etc as being sales. They are all distinct functional areas that
support sales, but are not "selling" as such.

~~~
maltelandwehr
I absolutely agree on „The Psychology of Persuosion“. There are some really
helpful principles in there.

------
tixocloud
Like most things, getting good at sales is about practicing, learning and
practicing again.

Books and advice are great to get started but eventually there is no
substitute to actually doing it yourself.

That being said, we are all actually “selling” in our day to day lives without
formally defining it as sales. From convincing your parents to buy you a toy
all the way to landing the first job involves similar techniques.

For a really simple sales weekend task, try buying a pack of bottled water and
see how many you sell.

------
arthev
My actual sales experience is limited to the one summer job of direct sales
experience I had a couple of years back, so I'm not an expert. It was a very
interesting experience, however.

If you can, it'd probably be pretty effective to get some "actual sales"
experience and treat it as a sandbox for experimenting. The alternative seems
to be vacuuming a set of sales training materials and then start applying them
directly to other scenarios. Anecdote: A friend started reading up on sales
and applying to his dating life and expressed positive surprise - but he
recently started work as a door-to-door salesman, and has been talking about
new sales-related observations at a higher frequency.

AFAIK (haven't read yet) "How to win friends and influence people" is good for
the non-actual sales. Supposedly early editions are better than later, as
later ones are written by committee? I can - on the basis of my tiny
experience - recommend Zig Ziglar's books.

~~~
1337shadow
Zig Ziglar's books on sales are really great and can have fast effect, it made
the difference for me back in the days I was 22 or so and had to wardrive by
foot to get work done for customers that would pay me very few or not at all -
to the point i had to choose between paying for child food or the internet
bill.

I __highly __recommend Zig Ziglar books on sales and Dale Carnergie 's book
"how to win friends" which should indeed probably be the first one to read for
anybody - despite the phony title that will put most people off.

------
qhoang09
It's one thing to read material around sales and another to practice it. That
being said, one book I'd recommend is Daniel Pink's "To Sell Is Human"

In general, sales is something you need to practice every day. Like Sam
mentions, it's about being able to convince other people of what you believe
and you have an opportunity to do this in your every day life, from convincing
your kids to clean their rooms to convincing your reports to adopt a new
process.

The first step is to look for opportunities in every interaction to practice
sales. Sales starts by listening, so try to understand the other person's
point of view and why it's different from yours. Really step into their shoes
and see things from their lens.

Once you identify where the difference is, ask questions to learn more. Why do
they think that way? Why do they prefer the current process? Why are they
hesitant to change?

Again, they key here is to listen. Once they list the reasons why they believe
differently, summarize what they said. Then start to work through each
difference together.

This is important. You're not competing with them. You need to work together
to arrive at a common solution. If they say adopting a new process is a waste
of time, then calculate with them how much time it will take and then work to
reduce that time by offering help in some area.

In the end, you should both walk away having achieved something together
without one person browbeating the other into it.

------
EGreg
Here is my list of advice:

1\. Think from their point of view. What are the biggest pain points they can
identify with? What are you solving for them?

2\. Show as much as you can upfront. Bring an app with their logo and name on
it. Maybe mockups if you don’t have app. Their “customizing and correcting”
instict kicks in an the conversation becomes about what to change.

3\. Don’t charge anything serious upfront, just take their credit card for a
“retainer fee” and have them authorize charges as you go.

4\. Use a website for them to choose from predefined choices, like JS
libraries used to let you choose what you wanted. Then they leave their email
to get a quote.

5\. Use your website or app in order to set up a portal for them, including
their choices and initial product, and invite others to manage this portal.
Make it as easy as possible for them to invite MORE stakeholders in their
organization. Build onboarding for the stakeholders where they get to see the
work in progress, choices, video, until some stakeholde enters the credit
card.

7\. Break things down into milestones and deliverables. Put as much as you can
on a website to create a feeling that you have lots of customers vying for
your tome so they don’t feel they can haggle.

7\. Finally, reward your existing customers for adding testimonials, sharing
good results, and bringing more customers, with some internal credit system,
that can be used to reduce the amount they pay. Make onboarding process for
inbound sales, which includes the social proof from the customers.

8\. Oh yeah, and consider doing PR and bringing people to your landing page
from 7.

------
m33k44
I am an software engineer and an introvert. Have been sitting at my desk
coding all my career. Once I got a job at a technology company, but the office
I was sitting in had very few engineers and most of it was filled with sales
and marketing personnel. I was surrounded by all sales and marketing people.
The sales and marketing department at that company ran a one month programme
open for everyone at the company to sell company products on weekends at
multiple brick and mortar retail stores prior to Christmas season. I thought,
hell why not I should participate and give it a go; what could go wrong? So I
enlisted in the programme. On the first day I was sent back home from the
entrance of one of the retail stores because I was wearing jeans pant which
was against the retail store's policy. So I went back home and dressed
accordingly and returned back. For the next 4 weekends over the month I spent
selling company products at 4 different retail stores directly to consumers.
What I experienced was that people started coming to me with their
requirements and asking what product they should buy! I am not even a native
english speaker and I was selling in an english speaking country. I went on to
win an award for selling most products in that programme in that year.

So what did an introvert, non-english speaker with no experience of selling do
to sell successfully and what did I learn? Here is what I learned, and it is
really very simple:

The first rule of selling is don't sell; rather learn, inform and help i.e.
genuinely learn about the customer's requirements/problems, genuinely inform
the customers about the solution you have or anyone else who could provide the
solution and genuinely help the customer with the decision making process.
That's it. And your customers then become your recommender and help you "sell"
more!

------
fillskills
Speak with the customer. Or in fact listen to your customer. If you can do
that and your product is good, you will be fine.

Stay away from books/blogs that teach you into manipulating your customer to
sell them something. That usually leads to them regretting the buy later and
you not finding product market fit .

------
dangerface
Sam Alterman's advice is bad, people want to buy not to be sold, you will
never convince them otherwise.

If you want to be good at sales you need to turn the question on its head.
It's not how to sell but how do people buy?

There is a pain point that creates a want. Research is done into how to
satisfy this want. Evaluate the possible solutions. Purchase.

Now you know what your customers will do regardless of you, you just funnel
them to you at every step of their buying process. The earlier in the process
the more work is required to get to conversion but the easier it is to build
reputation with them.

Targeting before the pain point is a waste of time no one will spend money on
a backup system until their system fails and they realise they needed it all
along.

The information gathering point is the easiest place to target, the customer
knows little and will look industry experts like you, to inform them what they
should believe.

Don't sell to them, give them all the detailed unbiased information they need
to get to the evaluation stage. The more information they get from you the
more they will favour you at the evaluation stage as all they know is what you
taught them. If you can control what some one hears and sees it stands to
reason that you can control what they think and say.

At the evaluation stage, if you are not in their short list at this point you
missed your chance. They will have already decided who to go with and are
looking for reasons remove the rest from the list. If all their reasoning
comes from your advice and you follow your own advice you have won. At this
point they are already convinced they just need some reassurance from you to
take the leap to purchase.

Purchase This is called the close, its easy Smile, Nod ask a few questions
they will answer yes to, then ask them "Are you happy with that?" they will
respond with a smile nod and say yes and think to them selves, you know what I
am happy, let's do it. If they answer no ask them specifically why not, whats
holding them back? Satisfy this concern.

------
iamgopal
The actual good idea of learning anything / or achieving anything comes down
to good amount of homework and experience with introspection and improvising.
This seems like too repeated and conventional advise, but it works.

------
foreigner
When I was at university every week my roommates and I would invent a new
student organisation and spend a few hours pitching it to passersby on campus.
The organizations were ridiculous, things like "Students for the exploration
of space" or "The Student Potato Advocate". Sometimes we would solicit money
but always we would have a mailing list where you could sign up for more
information.

We just did it for silly fun but in retrospect it was a great experience.
Learning how to promote something, having the self-confidence to talk to
strangers and sell something is really useful.

------
mntmoss
Take improv acting. You learn two highly relevant things:

1\. Loosening up creatively(which helps you develop the pitch)

2\. Playing a character appropriate to the scene. e.g. during the job
interview both parties can play characters that represent themselves/the
company in their best light.

Playing a character isn't about lying - it's in the word: play. Every
conversation involves some performative aspects, and these skills simply give
you additional ways to conduct conversation in business and in life.

------
JSeymourATL
> You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the
> press, investors, etc...

Listening is the new prospecting.

On this subject, John Jantsch is masterful >
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21847226-duct-tape-
selli...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21847226-duct-tape-selling)

------
andrei_says_
There are surely many resources for sales theory. You can use these to
_inform_ yourself.

To get good, you’d need to practice and train your mental and emotional
intelligence to the task.

Sales is a very human process and carries a lot of discomfort which you need
to learn to work with.

Sell 10 things and you’ll get better. Sell a thousand things and you’ll get
good. No shortcut.

------
kaycebasques
I’m finding this “How To Sell” Startup School lecture by Tyler Bosmeny
helpful: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-by-y-
comb...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-by-y-
combinator/id1436083034?mt=2&i=1000420506910)

------
gadders
Fog Creek published some good articles before, but it looks like it's been
affected by link-rot:

[http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-very-most-basic-things-your-
com...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-very-most-basic-things-your-company-
needs-to-know-about-sales-part-1-of-4/)

~~~
SyneRyder
Here's a copy on Archive.org:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161202094244/http://blog.fogcr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161202094244/http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-
very-most-basic-things-your-company-needs-to-know-about-sales-part-1-of-4/)

A snippet I liked:

 _" I used to work as a waiter, and we were supposed to up-sell various things
like top-shelf margaritas and seasoned sour cream for the french fries. I
sucked at it..._

 _One day the manager wanted to know what was up, and I said something like,
“Man, if they want top-shelf margaritas they’ll ask. I don’t need to push it
on them.”_

 _My manager said, “That’s true, they are likely to ask if they want
something. But what if they don’t know we have it?” "_

~~~
gadders
Thanks - that's the article I was thinking of.

Off Topic: I hope the whole Fog Creek blog hasn't gone away.

~~~
SyneRyder
I think it has. Fog Creek renamed itself to Glitch [1], sold off FogBugz
(which then rebranded as Manuscript, then rebranded back to FogBugz). The last
Fog Creek blog post was Feb 14 2018 (about becoming Glitch), and it looks like
the blog was turned off in November 2018.

It's a bit of a miracle that the Joel On Software forums [2] are still
accessible.

[1] [https://glitch.com/about/fog-creek-is-now-
glitch/](https://glitch.com/about/fog-creek-is-now-glitch/)

[2] [https://discuss.fogcreek.com/](https://discuss.fogcreek.com/)

~~~
anildash
We do still have the archives, and are thinking of how to bring back the
pieces that are still relevant. A lot of the technical content rotted long
before the links did, and the more human stuff was due for an update.

~~~
gadders
That's good to hear.

------
pryelluw
Depends on the type of selling. Face to face? Online? Direct? Narrow it down
and go sell.

But how do you start? You just do. There is no tutorial. The one thing that
helps is selling things you know about and can provide an educated opinion on
the subject.

------
operakadabra
Plenty of people have suggested books, etc., and have given you advice. Get
the books. Test the advice.

If you want to get good at sales, go back and read Altman's post again
([http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-
successful](http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful)). Start with the
section you asked about:

4\. Get good at "sales"

Notice Altman puts the word "sales" in quotation marks. That means there are
other words and terms that you could put in there to increase your
understanding. Here are some that he uses: Convincing others, evangelizing,
communicating, and believing in what you're selling. Can you come up with some
more?

Now ask yourself, for example, "How can I get better at convincing others of
what I believe?" What way could you practice convincing someone of something
you believed? What would it feel like to convince someone of something you
believed? Can you picture what it would look like to be in that situation?
What would you need to hear from someone to know they were convinced? Is there
any time in your life that you have convinced someone of something that you
believed? (Imagine a small child convincing an adult that they believed
someone they knew was in danger and you'll realize that a child in this
situation knows everything they need to know about "selling.")

Repeat this process with each term. "How can I get better at evangelizing?"
"How can I get better at communicating?" (Here he provides some more tips: "Is
my thinking clear?" "Am I using plain, concise language?") "How can I get
better at believing in what I'm selling?" (Would you buy what you're selling?
Have you? Take your reward out of the picture, and find someone who needs what
you are selling, and give it to them.) Try with some other terms that you come
up with, e.g. connecting with others, understanding the customer's needs,
serving the customer, etc..

Brainstorm every answer. The most important thing is that you take Altman's
advice and "Show up in person." Test each idea in person, face to face.
Engineer situations where you can test your ideas, collect data, and determine
what works.

Your problem is not a lack of information. Reading another book is another way
to avoid taking action. What you need is imagination, commitment, and a
willingness to try everything until you find something that works.

Be patient with yourself. This is a process. It could be a lifetime journey.
Enjoy it.

------
deanalevitt
Zig Zigler was one of the early sales gurus and he frames a lot of his sales
training around being thoughtful, caring and kind. His books are worth reading
for the non-salesman.

------
codpiece
There's a book called "The Accidental Salesperson" by Chris Lytle that is a
very good read.

------
antoineMoPa
I learned to code by coding. I guess I could learn to sell by selling.

------
briancl
My reply is probably too late, but I'll post anyway for people referencing
this later.

My own journey over the last 20 years has been a slow migration from a
technical contributor (About 10-12 years of systems engineering, infosec
consultant, pentester) to a full blown quota-carrying, territory-running sales
guy. Surprisingly, I enjoy the work. My personal view of sales started
negative based on my interactions with the last generation of salespeople, but
I've seen a generational shift in Enterprise Sales recently, and there are a
lot more people like me than 10-20 years ago when I started in the industry.

It turns out, sales and running a territory is like engineering to me. Like
any good engineer, I enjoy building things. I built out a customer base that
can contribute to local chapter events to be where I can't. The job is also
highly measureable. I can't think of another role where performance is so
easily measured day-to-day and forecasted into the future. It's also a
critically important function of the company. Bringing in revenue is a top
priority and receives a lot of benefits. One driving force that got me to
where I am is that I always took steps of becoming more important.

Back to the question.. how to get good at sales? Easy. Take a sales job. A
good place to start would be Sales Engineering or Sales Overlay (SME with
sales responsibilities). I'd look for a field that is highly technical and
complex. Something hard where real technical chops are required and respected.
Customers value your output because they genuinely don't have the expertise
that you offer. Nothing commoditized.. look for smaller, fast growing
segments.

As for specific skills to succeed in sales in these environments, it's mostly
about understanding the customer's business problems and objectives. Once you
have a firm understanding and agreement with the customer on the desired
business outcomes, then dig deeper into making the individuals at the customer
successful. Make your customer a hero. Help them overachieve on their goals.
Financial reward comes quickly after you reach this point.

Also important: good communication, systems-thinking (ability to navigate
complex organizational decision making processes), and understanding
people/empathizing with your customers. Over time you'll develop good
instincts to know when to push or when to say no. So much of sales can be
subjective, so try to use repeatable processes where possible. Your pricing
strategy should be defensible and systematic. Don't make shit up.

To get the above to work for you, you must have strong communication skills.
Sales is still about talking to other humans. You get small windows of time
with influencers, decision makers, and buyers. You have to have good
presentation skills and be able to convey value to a customer with clarity. To
distill complex ideas down to simple, meaningful value and tie that to the
customer's desired outcomes. The customer needs to be able to answer the
question of "why choose these guys instead of those guys?" with confidence and
expertise. Most of the real selling happens without you in the room, so you
need to build them up to be your champion. When you are in the room, you need
them to be your coach.. every meeting should be an open book test. Your coach
should tell you in advance who cares about what so you can craft your
messaging around things that matter to these decision makers or influencers.

The idea that there is some magical persuasion element in sales seems dated to
me. Enterprise sales campaigns are complex. 6-18 month sales cycles with
dozens of influencers, decision makers, users, buyers, and so on. You don't
take someone out to a steak dinner and close a deal. Does charisma and charm
help? Sure.. in a few marginal ways. But you don't have to be a cliche
salesperson to be successful. You have to understand how the organization
makes a decision, and then work backwards to provide the right information to
the right people. Explain the technical value to the people who care about
technical aspects. Explain how the license model scales to the person running
the budget. Explain how your added services will help the guy in charge of
operations scale up the program and over achieve on his goals.

Also, the best sales people pick great products in growing markets. That's
where the money is. Mediocre products in stable markets do not attract
talented sales people.

