Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales? - englishmaninnyc
======
josephmosby
Think less about pushing your product, and more about aligning your product to
a stated need.

Instead of "how do I get Product X into Company Y," ask "how can I help
Company Y accomplish their mission with my product in a way they are currently
unable to do?" The flipside of this question is "if I were CEO of Company Y,
why should I want to buy Product X?"

Instead of "how do I convince Buyer Z to go with Product X," ask yourself
"what are Buyer Z's incentives? Do they need to lower costs/increase their
revenue/help their team communicate/etc?" Buyer Z has incentives - some of
them corporate-wide, some of them specific to her/his day job, some of them
very personal. Try to learn what those are.

Also remember that sometimes it's not a good fit, and that's okay. Preserve
relationships. Sometimes you catch Buyer Z working for Company Y, and she says
"right now, we're really not focused on $THINGYOUDO, and your price would be
prohibitive anyway." Fast forward three months and she might have changed jobs
into something that is very much $THINGYOUDO, and she now has a vastly
increased budget. Much better for both of you if you have preserved the
relationship.

Sales becomes a much easier road to walk if you remember "this person is a
person just like me, and they've got things they're trying to accomplish in
their day job. Let's see if I can help them out."

~~~
adpirz
Along this note, one of the best quick tips I've heard about sales
conversations is that you should be doing much more listening than talking,
and always start not by talking about your product, but by asking good probing
questions about their experience. In many cases, you'll catch something that
will directly let you say "oh you have problem X and $THINGYOUDO makes that so
much easier by..."

------
mindcrime
"Always Be Leaving" ~ Jeff Thull

I'm a big fan of Jeff Thull's approach to sales, as laid out in his books
_Mastering The Complex Sale_ , _Exceptional Selling_ , and _The Prime
Solution_. It really goes against the grain of the old school "grab 'em by the
throat and don't let go until they buy" mentality. He rejects the kind of
stuff you might associate with the sales guys in "Glengarry Glenn Ross" and
advocates a much more respectful and honest approach, where the goal is to
serve a role closer to that of a doctor or a private detective, than the
stereotypical "used car salesman" type.

I couldn't do it justice trying to explain it here, but if this all sounds
interesting, I really recommend reading at least _Mastering The Complex Sale_
to get the idea straight from the source.

I also recommend reading _How To Measure Anything_ by Douglas Hubbard. It has
nothing to do with sales, at least on the surface. But in terms of
understanding customer problems, I think the approach Hubbard espouses can be
tremendously useful at a certain point in the process. And I think it can tie
back to Thull's idea that if you work closely with the customer to actually
jointly develop a solution and explain the value it creates, then there won't
be any of the typical "closing" issues, since there won't be any question
about the value of the solution.

~~~
lozaning
Back in my VAR days the money was always in moving to that trusted advisor
role. You move from quoting parts to actually helping design and architect
solutions, also helps that when you're involved at projects at that stage the
deal reg is almost guaranteed.

------
Daktest
Would definitely suggest checking out these series of videos from a16z:
[https://a16z.com/2018/09/02/sales-startups-technical-
founder...](https://a16z.com/2018/09/02/sales-startups-technical-founders/)

They're bite-sized sales videos from a partner over there, I found a lot of
value out of them.

For a sales strategy and organizational perspective, "Predictable Revenue" is
a useful book.

The hardest thing for me to get right was empathizing with my prospects and
their challenges. Putting yourselves into their day-to-day problems can be
incredibly difficult to do correctly, but improving that skill really helped
me in all aspects of the sales process.

~~~
yread
+1 these are great. I'm taking part in the Startup School and feel like they
should just point people to these videos instead of their own

------
acconrad
I'm a technical consultant so the business isn't the same but I do have to do
a ton of sales and I've done multiple six-figure deals and generated multiple
six figures in revenue per year, so I am able to sell to some regard.

I'd recommend just reading a ton of books. There's a formula to sales that is
well documented, you just have to adapt the pieces that work with your
personality. The ones I'd recommend reading are:

* SPIN Selling

* Never Split the Difference

* Getting to Yes

* To Sell is Human

* Read any free information online about SPIN/NEAT/Sandler

I read all of those cover-to-cover right before I started my consulting
business and it made a marked impact on my ability to sell. Like anything,
it's a combination of study and practice. Read a book, figure out the nuggets
that are important, then practice those tactics. Learn, rinse, repeat.

~~~
vram22
>so I am able to sell to some regard

Not clear to me what that means. Means sell well?

~~~
beaconstudios
it means they are able to sell but are being humble about it because they are
not explicitly a salesperson.

~~~
vram22
Thanks.

------
wmab
Not sure what you're selling, but if it's B2B SaaS at all, then Entrepid
Partners have a great 40 pager on the sales cycle.

You have to sign up for their mailing list to get it, but here's the static
file:

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd400b/t/5b0b4dc68a922dbfa263b389/1527467516482/Entrepid_How+To+Sell.pdf)

------
danenania
One thing I've learned: talking to users and potential users is crucial, like
everyone says, but it's also crucial to talk to the _right_ users, and to
iterate on how you find them.

In the beginning, most people are probably going to dismiss what you've built.
That's normal--people have a bias against adding yet another tool to the pile
(for good reason). So unless your product is an exact bullseye for solving
their problem, _and_ has no real drawbacks, they won't be seriously
interested. That's actually fine. You can have an extremely low conversion
rate in the beginning. As long as you can find _someone_ who is enthusiastic
about what you're doing (and ideally wants to pay you for it), they will show
you the path forward.

------
awad
I've always liked this image from UserOnboard

[https://www.useronboard.com/imgs/posts/mario-
water.png](https://www.useronboard.com/imgs/posts/mario-water.png)

Source: [https://www.useronboard.com/features-vs-
benefits/](https://www.useronboard.com/features-vs-benefits/)

One of the most important part about sales IMO is to remember that you're
dealing with humans on the other side who have their own personal and
professional incentives. Think about how you can make your customer look like
a genius, get promoted, help make some process better/cheaper or get to a
business goal quicker. Do you have a solution to help achieve one of those
outcomes? This requires listening far more than speaking and will always
result in selling solutions to problems...product feature/functionality is
just the way to get there. You may be very proud of everything you've built,
and rightly so, but the customer only cares about their own outcomes and
whether you can help them achieve it.

------
welder
I liked patio11's video training:

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-
wh...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who-would-
rather-be-building-stuff/)

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/](https://training.kalzumeus.com/)

~~~
welder
Also this:

[https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/ama-steli-
efti](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/ama-steli-efti)

------
tranchms
I sell industrial automation technology for a living. I could write a book on
this subject. Really difficult to put into words in a few paragraphs.

I’d just say this: Know your customers, know the market, know their needs,
know their challenges.

Ask yourself: what are you solving for?

The answer is your value proposition.

Your value proposition depends on the customer, but you should be targeting a
market with similar needs.

“SPIN selling” is a good framework.

You must establish “common ground” with customers. It’s how you build rapport
and show you understand their needs and demonstrate your competency and
expertise.

Technical sales is all about problem solving. It’s idenitfying problems (known
or unknown to your customers) and introducing solutions that add value to
their organization, the product, or the person. Understanding your customer,
their environment and needs, and establishing common ground is essential for
identifying and introduction technical solutions.

Feel free to email if you’d like to discuss the philosophy of technical sales
in more depth: tranchms@icloud.com

------
tpae
Identify your core issues clearly. Sometimes, when your customer reaches the
sales process, doesn't understand what you are selling, it's a _marketing_
problem.

Process is everything. If you can map out the entire sales process in
sequences, you can find ways to optimize it.

I started my sales funnel with mostly manual touch points, and gradually
started adding automation (automated cadences, automated scheduling, and etc)
and we were able to increase our efficiency by 200%.

Track EVERYTHING. Each metric matters a lot, and if you don't have a dashboard
of all the metrics, you are going to make some bad decisions (learned it
through trial and error)

Also read this book: [https://www.amazon.com/Way-Wolf-Straight-Persuasion-
Influenc...](https://www.amazon.com/Way-Wolf-Straight-Persuasion-
Influence/dp/1501164287)

~~~
philip1209
Suhail from Mixpanel did a great talk about this a few weeks ago at Startup
School:
[https://www.startupschool.org/videos/39](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/39)

His 9th slide here basically outlines how to quantitatively identify what your
core problem is:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/a75lejeqli1rmrs/Suhail%20Doshi%20-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/a75lejeqli1rmrs/Suhail%20Doshi%20-%20How%20to%20Measure%20Your%20Product.pdf?dl=0)

------
machinecontrol
Instead of trying to fight your analytical tech brain, reframe the sales
process as a technical optimization problem.

That comes down to looking for bugs that “crash” the sales process(objections)
and optimizing performance of the sales cycle by decreasing the time it takes
to close.

After every sales call, log objections as well as ideas the prospect seemed to
respond to positively in a spreadsheet or CRM. Over time, patterns will emerge
and you will naturally optimize for being better at sales.

------
JamesBarney
I'd recommend the reddit sales community [0] as a good place to start, and
specifically the best of thread.

They'll go over everything you need to know about sales. The first thing to
learn is that sales is an umbrella term for a lot of different activities many
of which won't be relevant to the type of sales you do.

The first two questions you should answer is what type of sale are you making
and to who. Selling a $5/month consumer product is very different from selling
$300,000/yr product to the CFO of a fortune 500.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/3y1jb9/the_best_thre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sales/comments/3y1jb9/the_best_threads_of_rsales/)

------
ada1981
Learn to develop a deeply secure emotional attachment style.

Once I unlocked this, my close rate and inbound referrals went through the
roof.

Literally closing 95% of leads and 100% of leads are from referrals.

Granted, this is in person 1 on 1 work but isn’t sense is that will translate
into the other work you do.

~~~
gomox
Can you expand on what you mean by that?

~~~
jmalicki
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory)

------
threeseed
There's a great video from Clever CEO about How to Sell:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZi4kTJG-
LE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZi4kTJG-LE)

Basically he can tell if a sales conversation went well by how much each
person is talking. If the customer is talking 80% of the time it went well.
Vice versa not so well.

------
btilly
Read the book _Pitch Anything_. It will help you come up with ways to reach
people based on what works for you. It will also avoid the extremely common
problem that you're providing logical reasoning to someone whose brain has
routed what you're saying to /dev/null.

My wife's natural tendency is to help solve problems for people. Before that
book, she'd talk to someone, noticed that the most urgent problem that they
wanted solved is her bothering them, and the obvious solution would leave her
with no sale.

Now she is able to playfully get their interest and attention. She gets them
to talk through a real problem that they have, it doesn't matter what. She
helps them work through how to solve it. She doesn't try to sell them
anything. It is up to them to decide whether the experience was enjoyable and
valuable enough that they wish to work with
[https://www.leanst.com/](https://www.leanst.com/) more. Enough do that sales
is fun for her, and has not been a bottleneck to growth.

You're not selling consulting and aren't her, so her exact approach probably
won't work for you. But I'd still bet that that book will help you.

------
johnorourke
Don't learn sales, learn people. Reading recs: * the social triggers podcasts
by Derek Halpern * Start with No by Jim Camp * Demonstrating to Win (super
cheesy title but amazing content)

------
chiefalchemist
Listen to them the way you listen to yourself. That is, there's friction
(i.e., their's), how can your brand / product mmitigate it? As well as, what
new opportunities might you be able to create?

Then, it's communication. My fave (Frank Luntz) line is "it's not what you
say, it's what thry hear." Put another way, clarity and understanding is the
responsibility of the sender. For example, if tbe buyer isn't aware of a
benefit, that's oon you / your marketing.

Speaking of benefits, features are nice to list - especially if I'm looking
for something in particular - but benefits are what move the needle. Doing X
is not the same as Saving me Y or allowing me to do Z.

Finally, it's uusually a numbers game. You'll have to kiss frogs. That's how
it is. Mitigate that but also listen. Perhaps they have a need as well?

------
rsweeney21
My advice: Don't expect to master sales by reading a few books or watching a
few videos. Definitely do those things, but becoming a good salesperson takes
just as long as becoming a great programmer. It takes a ton of practice and
learning. Just trying to set your expectations.

Okay, one more piece of advice: One of the most important skills in sales is
follow-up. Don't assume someone is not interested if they don't respond. That
might be the reason...but it also might be because they were busy and they
forgot to respond to your email. Keep following up with them until they tell
you to stop. I've closed deals after sending emails and making phone calls
every week for months.

Oh, and thick skin. You need really thick skin because people treat
salespeople like s __*.

------
dpenny
You have one mouth and two ears. Use them in proportion.

------
joseakle
Don Tempelton's Sales Ready Product concept [1] (adopted by Sequoia),
especially the ideas around MVP vs. SRP [2] were very useful to me.

Summary

To transform your product into a Sales Ready Product, you need:

\- Unified Engineering, Product, Design and Sales teams

\- First-hand customer research

\- An inventory of customer objections

\- Understanding of what matters most to customers (and what you can ignore)

\- A qualification list (and the right initial customers)

\- A demo that uses data from the prospect and includes a light switch moment

\- Standardized and unified sales training and materials

[1]
[https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/srp/](https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/srp/)

[2] [https://www.inkling.com/sequoia/](https://www.inkling.com/sequoia/)

------
dopeboy
* It is a numbers game. You will fail more than you succeed. But the few successes will be material.

* Train yourself to equate the dopamine hit you get with running a new piece of code you made with the act (not necessarily success) of performing a sales activity. For example, by the end of today, do 10 cold emails and 10 cold calls. Then, feel good about it. Don't worry about the outcomes just yet; get into the groove of performing the act.

* Get out of the room. Always be getting coffee, going to meetups, connecting with groups you part of, etc. The more people know who you are, the more people can help you.

------
adpirz
Great YC talk about this here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHAh6WKBgiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHAh6WKBgiE)

------
rock_hard
Sales is like dating. You will get rejected, a lot! Keep at it anyways! You'll
get better over time.

Good luck!

------
paulsutter
Most of all, don't hire a VP of Sales in hopes they'll solve the problem for
you. Hire an organized and experienced midlevel person who will accompany you
on calls and take care of follow up and closing.

And pay up for a top-quality mentor. An experienced sales exec can coach you
and help you navigate the process. Have a call at least once every two weeks,
and pay a lawyer-like rate. Who knows, they may become the VP of Sales as the
company grows.

------
paulie_a
First and most importantly is a shift in mentality. You are not a technical
cofounder. You are a sales person. It is a pretty big change, one that I
didn't adapt well to.

But basically sales is making lots of calls, and asking questions. You will
not be doing a lot of talking, but asking questions about their problems. Then
you talk and specifically outline why your solution fits their needs. Let them
digest it, then ask for the sale. Surprisingly sales people are afraid to ask
for that because they don't want to be seen as pushy.

But again you don't need to talk all that much. I've listened to a business
partner land a 100k deal and probably did 10 percent of the conversation.

Also practice and expect to be uncomfortable for hundreds of calls.

Edit: if you have a good source of leads and make a lot of calls, get a
service like phone burner. It automatically leaves a voicemail for the 95
percent of people you don't get a hold of on the first try. I had a boss that
refused to use that service, was making at minimum a quarter million a year
and would spend an hour+ every day leaving the same message. Apparently 50
bucks a month was too expensive.

------
lsc
As a former technical founder? The advice I would give my past self is "get a
business co-founder." \- reading business books and business advice is all
well and good, but you actually need someone who is good at that sort of thing
if you want your company to do well.

I don't know how you evaluate a business co-founder when you don't have those
skills yourself. Because of that? When I was a founder, I avoided getting a
business co-founder, even turned down several that would probably have been
great. But that's the thing, without that side of the house, it's really hard
to get the company to go anywhere, even when everything else lines up.

I mean, evaluating people who provide skills you don't have is hard; that's
why companies without a technical person on their founding team have such a
hard time. So it's really hard to pick a good business co-founder. It's one of
those decisions that will almost certainly kill the company if you choose
poorly.

But... there are a lot of decisions that will kill the company (or worse) if
you choose poorly.

------
tschellenbach
Take 100 calls with in-bound leads. I hated it at first but over time got the
hang of it. That initial customer feedback is essential. So this is not
something you can outsource, you just need to bite the bullet and do it
yourself.

One the plus side you'll close more deals because of your status as a founder.
It makes customers feel confident that any issues they have will be addressed.
So you have it easier than an AE which will pick this up after you.

I also like standardizing a few things: \- customer intake doc (which
questions to ask). really a lot of the sales process is listening to the
customer and capturing their problem \- explainer presentation. just some
slides that you can send after the call. \- setup hubspot, clearbit,
fullcontact to make sure you know who your inbound leads are

I also enjoy reading SaaStr, most of the advice is for a bit later stage
though. IE how to build your sales team.

------
mmcconnell1618
Listen more than you speak. The customer will tell you their pain points which
is your chance to see if you have a solution.

Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"-Dale Carnegie, to keep empathy
in mind when dealing with different people.

Create a system to track all sales interactions in a pipeline. Potential deals
enter and move through confirmation stages: customer interested, value proven
to customer, customer says they'll buy, purchase order received, check clears
and product delivered. Take the $ amount of the potential deal and value it at
20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% as it progresses.

If you build a pipeline of deals you'll have an idea of how much revenue to
expect from your current prospects. 200% pipeline value to your goal would
give you a lot o confidence that you'll close enough deals to make your
number.

------
WhitneyLand
What would you tell a sales founder who wanted to learn development? Best
option is to be a key part and advocate of the sales process, and getting
someone experienced to help steer biz dev.

If that's not an option second best choice is watch and learn. Find sales
people who are good that will eat lunch with you often and maybe let you go on
a few in person customer calls as a person in the background.

I'll tell you from experience, don't underestimate the skill it takes. I spent
quite a bit of time as CTO working closely with a talented team, you'd be
amazed at the EIQ and nuance required.

It's hard to explain because the skill set is so different than the product
side, and even different from the marketing side.

You'll be visiting a foreign country, but spend enough time there and you'll
become fluent enough in the language.

------
kozikow
Personally, as a technical founder that learned some sales and is still
learning, I would say that the biggest mistake I initially did is picking
wrong sales "role models".

All "role models" for sales I knew were akin to used car salesmen. They try to
push something on you very hard using cheap sales tactics.

This doesn't work in B2B, especially enterprise. Sleaze salesmen are going
extinct. People are getting immune to any "one weird trick to get a sale". You
are there to solve your customer problem, help your sponsor look good inside
their enterprise and only then get paid. Focus on maximizing the value you are
providing to the customer, making this value very clear as early as possible
and only after that getting a fraction of that value back in $.

------
jsm
Some advice that has been helpful for me doing enterprise sales:

"Your job as a sales person is to find the 20 people in this town who have a
$100k problem."

You may meet a lot of people who have a $100 or a $1,000 or a $10,000 problem
along the way. Be honest that it's not the right time to work together and
move on (for now).

It's tempting to want to work with these customers but in the early days, you
want to find people with a really big problem. As you grow you'll be able to
expand your reach.

This is hard advice to follow because leads are so hard to come by at first
and because you want to help everyone if you're passionate about what you're
building.

Keeping prices high helps with this because it will disqualify a lot of people
that would probably waste your time anyway.

------
gamechangr
I will be contrarian on HN. Hire a sales guy. It's worth every $.

"If you build it, they will not come"

~~~
mindcrime
There's no doubt that experienced sales people are valuable, but I would argue
that there is a point in a startup lifecycle where it's too soon to hire one.
For one or both of two reasons:

1\. You're still trying to figure out exactly what it is you're building and
how to best price/sell it. That is, you're still in more of a "customer
development" mode than a pure "push the accelerator on sales for all it's
worth" model.

2\. You don't have any money to hire a sales person, because you're either
bootstrapping or haven't raised a round yet.

~~~
icey
To add to this, if you don't know how your product is sold, your first
salesperson is going to have a much harder time doing it since you won't be
able to share anything about what resonates with customers and what doesn't.
Most of the good salespeople you'd want to hire as your first won't go
anywhere that the founder isn't already doing sales.

------
keithnz
One book that came up recently on another thread ( and probably quite a few
others as it is written by a YC founder) is "The mom test". I just read it
recently, and it is really good! it has an emphasis towards tech people but
the advice is applicable to everyone. It essentially guides you to be very
clear about what what you want to get out of your interactions with people,
avoid people giving you misleading information ( like "wow, great product"
when they aren't really interested but don't want to discourage you ),
recognizing real commitment from people vs niceties, and having a conversation
strategy that leads to good info.

------
loandigger
Don't confuse Sales with Marketing and don't confuse Marketing with
Advertising. If you have correctly defined your market, correctly segmented
your sub-markets, correctly defined your distribution & customer acquisition
channels and correctly priced your products and services, there is no need to
'learn' sales... customers will be calling you.

Disclosure : I'm a 3-time technical founder with 1 abject failure, 1 IPO and 1
private sale exit who wishes somebody had told him this 30 years ago.

------
igolden
Treat sales like learning a new programming language. Become familiar with the
foundational knowledge (prospecting, selling, closing) and then dig into
systems/frameworks (which are really just books about sales) that people use
to sell.

I agree with everyone else here that says "Don't try to master everything".
Instead, learn how to speak the language and do enough so you don't miss
opportunities. A good partner will go a long way.

------
ghostbrainalpha
The hardest thing for me to learn was the million unique aspects of our
product that we spent years creating, while they did make the user happy with
our product once they were a customer, were not influencers in the sales
process.

That's why our Founder/Developers couldn't sell for shit.

But a salesperson could. Because it was blue. Fucking blue.

~~~
gamechangr
Totally agree.

Self awareness is a killer for most developers. They are too close to the
music. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Hopefully you are selling to other technical people, in which case a multitude
of sins are covered if your product is truly needed.

------
virgilp
A smart guy once told me that the easiest sales pitch is "I've got money for
you!".

Think how you convince the buyer that your product will help him earn more
money/ save more money. If you can e.g. get a percentage of the money that
(s)he makes/saves, that's very often an easy sell.

------
paulb81
I feel Heavybit offers some great resources (even if you're not selling to a
technical audience). I really recommend you to check it out
[https://www.heavybit.com/library/](https://www.heavybit.com/library/)

------
mijail
What kind of sales? What's the product? Is it Software? Hardware? B2B? B2C?
Self serve or high touch? Have you found product market fit or are you still
trying to figure it out?

A lot like tech there are tools for every problem and in sales there is a
playbook for every kind of product.

------
geoblack
Think of sales as technique. The method IBM took from NCR provides a framework
for understanding where you are and what you need to do next. "Prospect,
survey, demo, proposal, close" Contains psychological truth upon which you can
build a machine that pumps money.

------
rb808
Classic marketing theory is great. Esp analyzing buyer behaviour
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_behaviour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_behaviour).

------
SKILNER
I don't see that anyone has mentioned the obvious - Sandler Sales Training

[https://www.sandler.com/](https://www.sandler.com/)

Get actual training as opposed to watching videos or reading books.

------
peacetreefrog
I think the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg is really good: tractionbook.com

------
hypnotist
2 books: 1. Spin selling by Neil Rackham 2. Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet
Holmes

and of course ... taking action - making those calls and scheduling meetings.

------
iovrthoughtthis
New things are hard. Don’t be put of by failure. You can do it, I believe in
you.

------
AdrianB1
Don't. I mean it: if you are good on the technical part, focus on it and do it
as good as possible and let someone else to do something that you don't know
enough. You cannot become the master of everything, but it is fairly easy to
become the master of nothing: don't go that way.

------
andrewtbham
Is this a consumer product or business product?

------
espeed
Who are the founders?

What is their background?

What are they selling?

Who are they selling to?

------
RaceWon
If they don't like you, they won't buy. Sure there are exceptions but it's an
excellent rule of thumb.

Look at Trump: hate him or love him virtually every person he meets face to
face comments on how warm, interested and compassionate he comes across as. BS
or not... that's the way most perceive him.

Oh yeah, and this Is a hard and fast rule. The instant that they say yes; Stop
selling. You never know if that one more thing you consider to be a benefit
will backfire and make them decide not to purchase.

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marlowe_
Listen first.

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browsercoin
i recommend two books

SPIN selling is good for technical products that needs lots of explaining.

Challenger sales is advanced and tough to master but the ideal target just
from statistics-those who challenge the prospect with a market insight.
Craziest thing I learned was you introduce your product at the last slide! You
really get into the prospects world and then challenge the old way of
things...thats all i can remember....also marijuana is legal in Canada today
so its kicking in so im in the writing mood.

I'd love to write a bit about my experience as a sales engineer and also
selling SaaS tool ($99~999) over thet phone if anybody is
interested...basically I went from being a coder to hustling.

edit: [https://medium.com/@browsercoin/hustle-code-a-hackers-
guide-...](https://medium.com/@browsercoin/hustle-code-a-hackers-guide-to-
peddling-your-software-online-580e838d10cd)

