

Ask HN: Are you in IT? How would you like to be sold to? - reductions

I am a co-founder of a startup that sells directly to IT departments in the audio&#x2F;video conference room controls space.<p>There isn&#x27;t a whole lot of love for us technical sales guys out there. Between email open tracking, sending multiple emails, and calling you, I can understand.<p>So, I&#x27;d like to ask directly. Assuming I am contacting you directly, how would you like to be sold to? How do I remain respectful AND effective?
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gesman
Do NOT sell me directly unless we already know each other.

NO, you _can 't_ have 10 minutes of my time.

If your site requires me to fill-in the form with my personal information
(even if it's email only) just to view your prices - you automatically go to
the very bottom of my list.

DO publish educational, How-to and interesting solution-oriented blog.

I don't care who your _important_ customers are (although it does work as a
marketing tool).

I DO care how easy it is to find answers on my questions on your site. So,
just like google says, publish unique, interesting, relevant, easy-to-search
content on your site.

------
matt_s
Regarding emails, I get a large amount of inbound email for IT stuff that has
absolutely nothing to do with my role. They all look the same. Our email
system blocks downloads of content from external so all those fancy images
people put in are just empty boxes.

Here are some things that don't impress me:

1\. "Free" tickets to some event in a city I'm not in

2\. Random invitations to hour long webinars with "so-and-so" from Gartner,
Forrester or other "review" places. I've attended some before and the fact
that XYZ company reviewed it or its some magic quadrant crap is useless info
for me. Most of those have bylines that the "study" was funded by the
companies. This is why you never see open source software in any reviews
because those companies can't make any money from open source projects.

3\. Raffles or prizes. Sort of goes against ethics to accept anything if I am
a decision maker on awarding work to your company.

Things that might make more sense:

1\. 100% educational content about the industry you are in. If the company has
a ton of experience, share it freely. Include tiny or no info about your
product. If I'm interested and have learned something from you then your
company will have a higher amount of respect than the
webinar/tickets/raffle/prize companies.

2\. Before adding people to your email list, really ensure that they are in
your target market. Just because I work in the IT department doesn't mean I
know anyone that does A/V - it could even be outsourced for all I know.

3\. I hope your product sells itself. There are definitely painful and
wasteful moments every day using the web conference and conference room
equipment. Literally 10 minutes of an hour long meeting is wasted getting
stuff setup sometimes.

------
runjake
OK, something I am intimately familiar with. A few things:

1.) The A/V conference room controls space bores customers and is full of
competitors. We are generally not excited about your products. I go to
conferences full of A/V vendor booths and they are always the least busy
booths.

2.) Publish practical, genuinely interesting, buzzword free articles/blogs
about how your product can fulfill our needs, but somehow there's a dozen of
you.

3.) Develop genuine customer advocates. If your product is legitimately
useful, you should not have problems finding them.

For ideas on how to go about this, look at how Aerohive[1] does their
publicity and their relationships with customers like Bradley Chambers[2].
Develop the edge over all your competitors by mastering practical applications
and social media.

1\. [http://www.aerohive.com](http://www.aerohive.com)

2\. [http://chambersdaily.com](http://chambersdaily.com)

------
JSeymourATL
> How would you like to be sold to?

Nobody likes to be sold to...but people do like to buy things/services that
will solve problems, capture opportunities, and achieve results. You might
imagine the Croc Brain of your target prospects is primed to say NO. We've all
got limited time & bandwidth. 'No' is easy. But if your premise is to 'help',
that's interesting. If you can get referred in from a trusted connection,
that's social proof. Please don't bore me with another White Paper or Power
Point Presentation.

If your role is to Sell, you're going to need multiple weapons. Suggest
reading New Sales, Simplified >
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-
simpli...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simplified)

------
stray
Make yourself findable.

When I need something I'll look for it.

I actively avoid any product or business whose ads keep following me. To me
that is even more annoying than a persistent telemarketer.

hope this helps

~~~
Jeremy1026
What about a product/service that would greatly influence your workflow, that
you don't know about? How would you ever search that out?

~~~
dmak
Out of curiosity, how do you know it would greatly influence their workflow?

~~~
Jeremy1026
I don't, I don't have a product. But, if I as an IT person had a problem that
I was able to solve/make easier, and built a product based on that solution.
Thats how I would know. Because I had the pains, but have since eased them.

~~~
dragonwriter
That's how you know it improves _your_ workflow. Unless you have knowledge of
my preexisting workflow and the constraints that shape it (and even if my
workflow looks like yours did, that doesn't mean the constraints are the
same), it _doesn 't_ mean you know it improves _my_ workflow.

Don't confuse the two things.

