
Getting to No: The Key to Startup Selling - rmorrison
http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/quuj/getting-to-no-the-key-to-startup-selling
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akbar501
An alternative approach is to properly qualify prospects up front once you get
them on the phone. This helps you identify a non-customer early in the
conversation so that you can end it if there is no fit, or aggressively pursue
if there is.

Also, a good sales call needs to have some structure. For example, a good
portion of the qualifying questions should focus on customer pain.

Does the prospect have the pain you solve?

Does the prospect already solve/address the pain? If so, how? With whom? What
is good about the current solution? What's wrong with it?

Does the prospect have budget to solve the pain? How much? How is budget
allocated and when? What is the budget process?

Who makes decisions about this pain? Who decides which solution to use? Who
approves the budget, and who can influence a purchase decision?

And so on.

With regard to endlessly calling people...if it works then stick with it. I've
been amazed over the years at what works for different sales people. There are
definitely practices that work for one person's personality that would be
horrific with a different sales person.

However, I think the OP's advice is to remember your ABCs of selling (Always
Be C/Selling).

~~~
pdq
I thought the "ABC" of selling is "Always Be Closing", from Glengarry Glen
Ross.

~~~
spo81rty
I prefer always be coding.

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waterside81
The guy who the movie the Wolf of Wall Street is based on was on Piers Morgan
a few weeks back and he said his approach to sales was basically the same
thing. You ask someone if they're interested in buying X right now, if they
say "no", you ask "OK when will you be looking to buy X" and just move on to
someone who wants to buy "X" now. It all sounds so obvious, but like the OP
states, to us engineers, it can feel a bit slimy, pushy etc. Not how we want
to be sold things if the roles were reversed.

I've definitely found the transition to salesperson from developer one of the
hardest things about running a company.

~~~
semigeek
Best advice I ever received when I transitioned into sales 15 years ago was a
fast no is 100x better than a slow maybe.

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mindcrime
I'm a little iffy on the whole "super persistence" thing, but there's a reason
the old saw "persistence overcomes resistance" comes up. That said, the part I
like about this is the advice about "get to no", regardless of how you get
there.

I'm a fan of Jeff Thull's "Diagnostic Business Development" approach, and in
his book _Mastering The Complex Sale_ he makes a similar point. And think
about it: If this customer is _not_ going to buy your product (because they
don't need it, don't like you, or because of your skin color, whatever) the
sooner you find out, the better... because now you can divert that energy and
attention to a different prospect who may be more likely to buy.

I'm still trying to learn to be a salesman after 20 some odd years of being a
coder first and foremost, so a lot of this still feels foreign to me, but at
least some of it is starting to make sense. Hopefully salesmen can be "made"
and don't have to be "born".

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brianmcdonough
This advice may have been based off a long time best selling book that the
author fails to mention, either because he doesn't know about the book
(ignorance) or because he knows about the book, but he forgot to mention it
(forgetfulness).

The name of the book is: Go For No [http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Destination-How-
You-There/dp/09663...](http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Destination-How-You-
There/dp/0966398130)

It's a great book.

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kartikkumar
I'm wondering if no one says no in the face of this persistence on the simple
basis of saying "you're annoying". If someone was to call me every hour I
don't think I'd really even care what it is that they're offering me. Maybe
I'm wrong about this, but I would think that there are only a few people who
will actually then offer you insights into why they don't want your product.

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fleitz
Reminds me so much of boiler room: And there is no such thing as a no sale
call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some
stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only
question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that's it, I'm
done.

That said it's a technique that works really well.

~~~
jacquesm
I always just say 'no' and refuse to give a reason. I don't feel like I'm
obliged to give a reason.

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mikeg8
I like this advice a lot. We have been wasting way too much time with maybes
instead of pressuring them into a yes/no. People are worried that the pressure
is harmful to the brand/relationship but its not as harmful as wasting a lot
of time on a maybe which ends up as a no. Great post.

~~~
eigenvector
I worked at a startup where the CEO and CTO burned literally millions of
engineers' time running around in circles trying to get to 'yes' with
potential leads (I'm an electrical engineer and this was an energy storage
company).

Leads would throw out lots of vague reasons why they couldn't say 'yes'
(usually because they were too polite / guarded to say the real reason),
CEO/CTO would promise to resolve all of them, and then send the engineering
team on a wild goose chase of trying to develop new features or new products
that didn't make any sense. But really, it was usually a regulatory problem
and they couldn't buy the product even if it sprouted golden unicorns from its
AC bus because their regulator just wouldn't authorize non-essential
equipment.

So I like this advice a lot. If someone is not going to buy the product I want
to know as soon as possible. Your product direction shouldn't consist of the
last 5 things potential leads told you while giving you a soft 'no',
especially when you're building a product that takes months to years of
testing and validation and failure analysis and certification before it can go
to market.

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joedevon
Can't believe that there are no negative comments yet. So ridiculous. No
wonder so many people are sending endless sales emails. No reply after several
attempts is a NO. DOH.

Now thousands of people reading this ridiculous blog post will copycat.
FACEPALM.

Please. Stop. this. nonsense.

~~~
peteretep

        > No reply after several attempts is a NO
    

If that was true, people wouldn't do it. It's not, though.

~~~
joedevon
I would be able to give you a long list of people for whom I've said no by
ignoring, except their emails are deleted. The only trace left of them are
entries in my spam filter.

This entire story is about selfish people spamming prospects with no respect
for anyone else's time but their own.

Disgraceful.

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jmtame
Reminds me of something I wrote similar to this, learned it from another
founder who went to Stanford and did his MBA there:
[http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/hacking-the-system-how-
to-...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/16/hacking-the-system-how-to-land-
meetings-with-anyone-you-want/)

Context: I was writing a book and needed it finished before final exams my
senior year. I had to get people to say yes or no, but no responses were just
wasting time. Not a single person was offended when I used this trick.

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soneca
An important tip missing on the OP is: be persistent, fully knowing that you
might be annoying, but never, under any circunstance admit that you are
annoying, or act as you knew you were being annoying. You must sound totally
naivee, act as all you want is your prospect to better and completely
convinced that using your product would make him a better person/professional.
Act surprised when the prospect act irritated. And always use the argument
that the prospect himself kept that door open with you by not saying he didn't
want your product.

This was a great read to me, because now I know that I've been doing it right
for the last few years. Before my "2013 startup year" I worked on a
philanthropy advisory non-profit. 80% of my job was _selling_ to wealthy
individuals our service of being a guide to better donations. So I was
basically a salesperson selling a service that almost nobody in Brazil
consider a real need or problem - btw that's one difference between cause
driven non-profits and market driven startups, you don't pivot if the market
doesn't need your service, you persist. Mainly because the people you are
solving a problem and the people giving you money are two separate
stakeholders usually. That's kind of inevitable, because the social problem
wouldn't be there to begin with if the market/society were really bothered by
it. I can't imagine Watsi pivoting because people do not want to pay for
medical anymore, but they would be willing to pay for a exotic tourism service
to where the people they aid are from. They might get more money this way, but
social tourism is another cause, solves another problem (maybe). It is not an
acceptable pivot for a non-profit.

Back on topic, I learned to be persistent to get to a no. People hate saying
no to something that the society consider the right thing to do, even if they
have no intention of actually doing it, so this was crutial to my job - get a
"no" was always my objective.

But I disagree with a reason to do it is getting feedback. I never got real
feedback for why people were saying no - maybe because of what I was selling,
there is a stigma in saying _" I won't donate because I earned it by myself
and I am antitled to spend on whatever I want, and giving them away to other
people's benefit is not my idea of a money well spent"_.

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BummerCloud
The problem with this type of advice is that you're going to end up
approaching prospects from a very narrow point of view. For example,
enterprise markets typically have excruciatingly long sales cycles with
several layers of decision makers. Those types of deals require longterm
investments in the prospective relationship.

Persistence is an admirable trait of any good salesperson though I would never
recommend irritating an answer out of someone.

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wallflower
I remember a sales book once. Cannot remember the title. But it had an
interesting diagram.

Most people think: Failure --> Success

It is actually: Failure --> Failure --> Failure --> Success

I think most guys (and possibly girls) eventually learn (sometimes through
painful experience) that getting a quick rejection is better than being
friend-zoned. Fail faster! Talk to that interesting person who intrigue you!

~~~
normloman
But what if I just want to be friends?

~~~
wallflower
In that case, you try to hang out doing something they like (and hopefully you
like) as soon as possible. None of this, let's hang out amorphous non-followup

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hkiely
The key thing is to make sure you understand why the customer is saying no, or
why they are saying yes. If you don't get a firm no you can never actually ask
the questions that will let you understand where there is a mismatch between
the potential customer and product. After understanding you can better alter
the product or customer you go after.

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m52go
They don't show me any content until I give them my email address? Am I
missing something?

~~~
fizzbar
It's broken in Chrome. Use Firefox to view.

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camkego
Great post, it is high value business stuff like this that I read HN for.

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rhizome
Can someone shed some light on what he means by "prospect" "product" and so
on? This is all highly abstract, bordering on generic sales advice.

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ggreenbe
From my understanding... > Prospect - A potential customer. Someone who may be
interested in your service. > Product - The service you are pitching to said
prospect.

Pretty sure I understood what he is getting at but I'm not sure this advice
will work or is recommended for all industries.

~~~
rhizome
..but it's written by a VC, no?

~~~
ugwigr
it's written by entrepreneurs that the VC backed not VCs themselves. cross-
branding

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d4rti
There's a similar idea in Sandler Selling, where in your voice mail you invite
them to say that it's over, and just to let you know that it is.

