
Learn to sell - ntang
http://blairreeves.me/2017/12/06/learn-to-sell/
======
gumby
This is really important. I love programming and am somewhat introverted, but
being newlywed with a wife who couldn't work (visa), a mortgage, and a
commission plan really made me learn to sell. The really good salespeople
aren't deceptive, and I luckily learned from them.

Also: if you're at a good company the engineers don't scorn the sales people
(instead: "you guys bring in the money that pays our salaries") and the sales
folks actually sell the product to people who will benefit from it.

~~~
hardtke
I've always tried to sit in on a few sales calls at any place I've worked and
have encouraged people working for me to do the same. It's valuable to see
your products from the Sales team and customer perspective. The surprising
thing I've observed is how great sales people spend most of the call listening
to problems, not offering solutions.

~~~
gumby
I always have every member of the exec team attend a sales call per quarter.
Yep, even the CFO. Amazing the impact it has on the staff meetings, much less
the decisions made.

~~~
ethbro
Amen. If everyone at the org can't describe at least one type of customer for
the product, _in detail_ , then there's something wrong.

And this _definitely_ includes software engineers.

------
shams93
The life of an engineer is a life if sacrifice and 7 days a week work for five
days pay. Often you never have a partner so you're the most highly taxed
people in the country especially in California. While you often work triple
time you're rarely if ever paid for overtime it's taken for granted that
you're not ever compensated for 3/4 of the hours you work. Nothing can happen
without you but sales people get a piece if the business they get normal
business hours and can have a life and a family don't learn to code learn to
sell this is terrific advice. At least you get commission and not worthless
options in exchange for living off half the sleep a normal worker gets and
continuous change and upheaval so you never get to have a life outside of
work. Also continual layoffs and churn and then extra taxation when you are
unemployed all told the life of an engineer is like the life of the slaves who
row the cars on the Viking ship lol.

~~~
bluGill
Why don't you leave then? There are jobs everywhere.

Even in the smallest town in middle on nowhere (say Montana) you can find a
job. It might not be a perfect fit for your skills, but you can find one.
There are thousands of small towns scattered across the US with some little
company that makes something obscure but essential to society. Example: you
probably never think about sewage pumps (not the treatment plant, just the
pumps by the side of the road) - they are essential to society though and
somebody needs to write the software that controls them. Why not you?

Of course moving implys a lot of changes. You can't go to a Broadway show (you
live in California so you can't anyway - which is why I use this example), the
community musical in the next town it pretty good though and the fact that
they are not on the level of Broadway makes them fun in a different way. Or
maybe you can find a different activity to fill your life with once you limit
yourself to 9-5 plus the 15 minute walk each way to the other side of town to
get home.

Of course there is nothing wrong with Montreal that the other poster
mentioned. It is a nice city if you decide that a city life is for you. Of
course it is in Canada which might be a negative for you, but you can still
choose from any of several hundred cities scattered around the country.
Nothing wrong with any of them either. All have specific advantages and
disadvantages.

~~~
chasedehan
>(say Montana)

While most of what you say is true - that there really are jobs everywhere -
Montana is actually tough. I really want to move to Montana and have seriously
struggled finding something to fit my skills.

The alternative plan is to figure out a remote gig and then truly live
wherever you want

~~~
Jgrubb
sofi.com - they’re hiring a lot of technical roles in Helena.

------
vadimberman
When I cofounded my first startup, I had to participate in the sales calls
(most of them). It was a very illuminating experience. Now, in my second one,
I often lead the charge.

As an engineer, you start to understand why sales people overcommit, oversell,
and overpromise. Why they can't produce a sale. It's not always their fault.
But the good ones normally know what works and what doesn't. A good sales
person:

* knows or takes time to learn the product to the point of a junior techie

* tries hard to work in tandem with the techies

* is NOT a frat boy / girl, but knows to talk to people of all walks of life, and in today's globalised world, of all backgrounds

* has the character to say "no" when it's better to walk away

* is at least in their late 30s or older

* a great listener trying to solve the customer's problem, not push a new shiny toy

* mature enough to lead a company.

While over-selling, "make-a-buck-now-lose-everything-later" idiots prevail,
sales jobs are tough. It is hard for us engineers to grasp sometimes what is
means to have your compensation ALWAYS be tied to some figures - so-called
"performance", which is a combination of your ability to convince, the market,
and the products you are selling. Imagine that, as an engineer, you'd get a
deduction for every bug the customer discovers; feels different, doesn't it?

For a great fictional portrayal of a (pre-tech but enterprise) sales person's
life, watch "The Big Kahuna".

------
siliconc0w
One of my first jobs out of college was software sales. Really opened my eyes
to the absurdity of that industry.

Very wolf of wallstreeet-esque. The tech was mostly repackaged opensource
software with a nicer UI and the senior sales guys were doing copious drugs
and bringing down like six figure commissions on multi-million dollar
contracts. They hired an army of associates to generate leads and then swooped
in to grab the commission. The play was to cold call the shit of company,
weasel you way into a decision maker's schedule, and basically roll the dice
they might buy your software because they needed to check a box - it barely
mattered what the thing actually did and beyond a well rehearsed script no one
understood even the basics of the technology/problem space. It was also very
feast or famine - a few made absurd cash but most lived on a precarious edge
where they felt they might be fired at any moment.

Understanding this is how the world actually works was a valuable education. I
do feel with the rise of 'big tech' things have improved a bit and there is a
renewed interest in approaching business problems with data and something that
approximates a pseudo objective science-like process. But barely.

~~~
nostrademons
The rise of big tech is basically a market response to decision-makers who
acted like you observed. When you've got a bunch of executives who will drop
millions of dollars on open-source software because they needed to check a
box, that's a huge economic inefficiency waiting to be arbitraged away. What
"big tech" founder/CEOs did was say "Well, I understand the technology, I can
learn the domain knowledge more easily than these buffoons can learn the
technology, how would I build a company from the ground up to compete directly
with them and steal all their customers rather than playing the sales game?"

And with a suitably driven, intelligent, and business-savvy founder, it works
[1]. The whole "software is eating the world" philosophy is based on the idea
that it's better to go radically vertical and bring technology straight to the
consumer rather than deal with the inefficiencies of enterprise sales.

[1] Kind of. The key here is "suitably driven, intelligent, and business savvy
founder." Most technologists are not such - they not only don't know the
domain, they don't care enough about it to learn. So there's been a bit of a
pullback to traditional enterprise sales for SaaS businesses in the last
couple years; many of the consumer markets that have _not_ yet been
revolutionized by big tech have pretty thorny barriers to entry that no
technologist has yet found their way around.

~~~
hateduser2
How do you have such insight? If you can produce such insight so easily,
surely you must be a very successful investor? This is such a strong
perspective it seems.

~~~
nostrademons
I've done okay. :-)

------
tomxor
> It doesn’t matter how brilliant your software engineering is if no one buys
> it.

That goes both ways. The problems arise when sales start dictating how
engineers do their work. The point is you need _both_, and they each need to
respect the others work... unless you want to run a company like orcale and
milk products into destruction, but then as we know - oracle doesn't invest in
the future of their products.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Not a perfect metaphor, because the tasks are so different, but it's kind of
like a coach and a GM in football. If they're not on the same page, they make
each other look worse.

~~~
tomxor
perhaps not but:

> If they're not on the same page, they make each other look worse

This is right, engineers need to understand the problems that their end users
have and of those problems those that severely affect sales should be
considered carefully...

however what seems to happen more often is sales or management end up
dictating the solution to a problem... but software solutions are software
engineers jobs.

This happens to me so commonly but thankfully I do not work in a company with
a rigid hierarchy, which means rather than being forced to blindly follow a
request I go and find out the context that this request originated from,
understand the problem and then propose a suitable solution - everyone is
_always_ happier. But this requires autonomy and respect from all members,
something that rigid hierarchies appear to sometimes oppress (but then I've
only ever been a lucky observer of such institutions so maybe i'm wrong).

~~~
grasshopperpurp
That sounds very annoying, and I infer that some people have it even worse.
What efforts do you see upper management making to bring the two sides
together? I notice that as I get to know someone better, I can understand our
differences by understanding the ways in which we process information
differently. Of course there will be exceptions, but sales people and
engineers (beyond their tasks/goals being different) have different strengths
and weaknesses as people and processors; sometimes the differences aren't
better or worse - just different. Day-to-day, how often do sales people and
engineers problem solve together?

~~~
tomxor
> I notice that as I get to know someone better, I can understand our
> differences by understanding the ways in which we process information
> differently. Of course there will be exceptions, but sales people and
> engineers (beyond their tasks/goals being different) have different
> strengths and weaknesses as people and processors...]

In my small experience I actually find the "role" to be the overriding factor
in determining how an individual processes information, because their
"problem" defines their perspective.

> how often do sales people and engineers problem solve together?

I'm breaking definitions here a bit because in the context I am drawing upon
sales are not a generic salesman, but someone who has a deep understanding of
the fairly niche and complex activity the customers are doing, actually they
are scientists, but not coders, so I suppose that is quite unlike the ordinary
salesman to be fair ... but In this context I find that first recognising our
quite different perspectives and then trying to make each other understand our
different perspective allows us to extract the relevant understanding from
each other to converge on a reasonable solution (or not, sometimes once you
both understand the problem better from both ends you realise it's actually
something else entirely, or that attempting a solution would be a fools
errand).

I find this extra step invaluable because I have more empathy with the real
problem using their expert knowledge of the customer and activity, and they
have empathy with the potential technical challenges at hand, and as a result
are more willing to accept alternatives in the knowledge of the real technical
cost. I can't say how applicable it would be to collaborating with a more
generic sales department though.

It doesn't really matter who instigates that mixing of perspectives, but I
find as a coder I have a tendency to zoom in and out of contexts more to
better understand a problem... it's not much of a step to keep zooming out /
panning until you can start digging into the perspectives of your peers.

------
potta_coffee
Just don't be one of the salespeople that promises the client a feature that
doesn't exist, then returns to the team after making the sale and says "You
have to build this now." F--- that noise.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I literally just did exactly that half an hour ago.

Of course, it's my company and I'm both the salesperson and engineer, but
sometimes you have to sell shit that doesn't exist yet.

~~~
EKLM-ZK88
I think the issue he's talking about is more along the lines of "hey we
promised X _and_ that we could deliver it in Y" when Y is an unreasonable
amount of time. Situations like that almost always lead to death marches in my
experience.

~~~
convolvatron
hopefully you will never see the the salesperson charging into the engineer
meeting yelling "I promised the customer 6 months ago that we would ship this
feature in 3 months, where the hell is it" at a sea of faces that had clearly
never heard of any such thing.

------
markfer
As a sales leader and consultant, I kept being asked to offer weekly
personalized sales coaching for technical founders. I launched it a few weeks
ago and so far it's been pretty great for both parties.

Being able to sit down on a weekly basis to game plan the sales approach, go
over calls, and hold them accountable has been immeasurable.

p.s. if anyone is interested - I'm in the process of launching a "Selling 101"
online course for founders to cover the fundamentals of sales (finding leads,
cold calling, performing demonstrations, closing deals, etc).

~~~
moflome
Not sure you saw the 2017 First Round State of Venture survey [6] results, but
anxiety over hiring sales staff has become the No. 1 priority for startup
founders (was tech staff). I think you're on to something... assuming you
focus on startups, maybe Pre-A round?

[6]
[http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2017/#introduction](http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2017/#introduction)

~~~
markfer
Yeah, was definitely interesting to see that. That's exactly the intended
focus. Essentially a crash course for tech founders to start selling in their
early days.

------
madamelic
Does anyone have any book suggestions for an engineer who wants to learn sales
/ convincing people?

Do you recommend doing trial by fire and getting a sales job?

I've realized that I am good at the technicals but terrible at selling why
people should do what I say.

~~~
yodon
First, read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people.” Don’t
let the cheesy title turn you off. The book is tremendous and a fun read and
has been a literal best seller continuously since it was written more than 50
years ago.

~~~
madamelic
>First, read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people.”

Already done. I am currently reading "7 Habits of Highly Effective People".
How to Win Friends majorly influenced me already.

Do you believe the methods explained in How to Win Friends are sufficient?
They have absolutely helped already but I am not sure if it is just a matter
continuing to apply or if there is another that could help level me up more.

EDIT: Also on the reading list is Purple Cow by Seth Godin. I've heard good
things about it and the first ~20 pages were pretty good.

~~~
yodon
After starting with Dale Carnegie’s book I’d move to something more about the
storytelling aspects so you can construct your pitches well in addition to
interacting well.

I don’t have a “great” book to recommend there, but an example that pops to
mind might be Say it in six[0]. This sort of book tends to be more formulaic,
less universal, and every book advocates a completely different formula so you
need to find the approach and style that works for you. That said,
understanding that a pitch is a structured story and thinking about how to
structure them is incredibly valuable.

Simon Sinek’s Ted talk[1] is also really fun and well worth watching (and
worth deconstructing how he makes his pitch about how to make pitches), but
it’s more about high level consumer brand design than the inside the company
project pitching like I think you’re asking about.

[0]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1629833.Say_It_in_Six](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1629833.Say_It_in_Six)

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...](https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action/up-
next)

------
abhiyerra
As an engineer coming into sales I found the thing I love about sales is that
it is problem solving. If you can get in the door the main thing is you are
solving a problem for your prospective client. That is no different from
engineering you are interfacing with people instead of computers.

There are some great books on sales and why sales gets a bad rap is most sales
people don’t seem to have read those books. I now have a critical eye for
sales stuff like you can have for code and just see how bad most sales are
done.

~~~
pitt1980
Love to hear which sales books you consider great

~~~
abhiyerra
\- The challenger sale \- Snap selling \- Little red book of selling \- Spin
selling \- thinking fast and slow

All of these are of the mindset of help your customer first and foremost, the
sale is a secondary effect of the helping. And given my nature that has made
sales a lot easier since I’m not an extroverted manipulator, I’m an
introverted problem solver.

~~~
pitt1980
thanks

------
nickjj
If anyone is interested I did a recent interview on CEO Library[0] where I
dropped a bunch of book recommendations on selling products, services and
yourself.

I personally sell online video training courses for developers so it's
something I've been hyper focused on for the last 2 years. During that time
about 20,000 people have signed up to at least 1 of my paid courses.

I think becoming slightly better at selling has also made me a much better
programmer, because your mindset shifts entirely. It's not just about naming
things too. It's easier to see the bigger picture on something. It helps scope
the entire project.

[0]: [https://www.theceolibrary.com/nick-
janetakis-2771.html](https://www.theceolibrary.com/nick-janetakis-2771.html)

------
syntaxing
I agree with the author of the article that sales is important to any
organization. It's a chicken and egg game between engineering and sales. No
sales means no customer but no engineer means no product. I feel like sales
gets a bad rep from engineering because whenever we do projects, it feels like
we do the work and they get the glory and money (which may or may not be
true). The worse is when a company cuts out engineers from the decision
process for project requirements. We end up being liable to lucrative claims
that other make.

That being said, I absolutely DISAGREE that everyone should get some hands-on
sales experience. Just like how not everyone is suited for engineering, not
everyone is suited for sales. The author comes from a product management role
so I would guess s/he is more extroverted than most engineers. I have met many
design engineers that are ridiculously introverted. However, that's the
beautiful thing about engineering. It doesn't matter. If you can design
something that solves the customers problem, then you are doing a good job. A
good manager would make sure a good design engineer get's shielded from the
political bs. Unfortunately, the engineering culture is turning into a culture
where we promote those with charisma rather than a good designing skillset.

~~~
dreamfactored
Many of the best sales people are introverted. It can be a very strong
advantage when you need to ask insightful questions, actively listen, and
project integrity. Strong extroverts can be very weak in those areas and many
would kill for that last superpower in particular. Having done both roles I
have no doubt that every engineer would benefit from learning about sales and
having some practise in it. Regardless of whether they pursue it as a career,
it is incredibly widely applicable in many areas of life, from selling your
ideas, to getting jobs, to dating. If someone really sucks at it, they will
benefit immeasurably throughout their life from being slightly less bad. They
are basically handicapped without being aware of it.

------
joshwcomeau
> It doesn’t matter how brilliant your software engineering is if no one buys
> it.

Right, because so many people buy Facebook products, or Twitter, or Google...

Many, if not most, software products don't sell anything. While there are tons
of problems with getting 100% of your revenue from ads, the fact remains that
many companies don't have anything to sell to their consumers.

Of course, you have to make a good, sticky product, and so there is marketing
involved... just not the sort of 1930s handshake-and-a-smile that this article
seems to be describing.

That said, my own experience is biased (I currently work for a non-profit!),
and so the snarkiness of this reply probably isn't warranted. Surely for many
places, sales experience is valuable... but I certainly wouldn't rank it
higher over software development, at least not with the places I've worked at.

~~~
notquitesure
Google revenue: 89b in 2016

Facebook revenue: 28b in 2016

More than 30k of Google's 80k employees on LinkedIn have titles including
either "Sales" or "Account" (Account Executive, Account Manager, etc.). For
Facebook it's 9k out of 26k.

Facebook and google both sell user attention to advertisers. Exxon deploys
vast engineering resources to extract and collect oil, but it would be weird
to say that because they don't receive payment from their wells and refineries
that they don't make sales

~~~
goialoq
Yes, ad sales finance the products. But most of the products are not sold. A
product/content creator doesn't need to do sales, if they are willing sign up
for whatever the ad business is offering ($X CPI, user activity data, etc).
Only one side of a transaction needs to sell. The other can simply choose to
accept an offer.

------
jlengrand
On a side note, do people have good resources on how to learn 'sales' as a
software engineer?

I know how to sell myself and concepts pretty well inside the organization.
Getting money from customers is a while different ball game

------
1_2__4
My counter argument is I’ve tried to take this advice multiple times in my
life and each time came to the (re)conclusion that I will never be able to
think of it as anything but lying and manufactured conflict. Some of us just
don’t have brains that allow for that kind of thinking, at least not without
severe anxiety and discomfort.

I can’t sell. I’ll never be able to sell. I think that makes me feel like a
more honest person. I’m okay with that trade off.

~~~
dreamfactored
Sales is about discovering what people's real problems are and helping them
find a solution. It's the polar opposite of inauthenticity, but there are an
awful lot of clueless salespeople who are trying to live up to the stereotype
they've seen in movies and which you are talking about. It's a strange job
because in some ways it's like being a counsellor, but at the same time a
ruthless numbers game (for the salesperson) and therefore very stressful for
them.

------
PhilipA
Outbound sales is a very good way to gain insights into the needs of your
potential customers (What are you missing, are messing bad etc.). I can really
recommend creating a culture where the Sales team has a good way to report
their findings. They are the first line of (new) customer interactions.

------
imiric
The article makes some valid points, but sales/marketing is just not for me.

I understand how important it is for my product, but I just don't enjoy it,
and would rather pay someone else to do it for me.

Essentially, I would need a Jobs for my Woz, if I can ever aspire to be a Woz.
:)

~~~
dreamfactored
I used to have this same idea. I changed it when I looked into the costs of
outsourcing sales vs outsourcing dev. Market rates are around 80:20 sales vs
dev when outsourcing. That should tell you something about where money is made
and where you may not want to limit your involvement. Funny you mention Jobs
and Woz...

------
sekou
> Casting a wide net is simply part of the game, of course, but wasting your
> prospect’s time is bad selling. Every good sales professional knows this,
> which is why the best ones put in the time, effort and attention to detail
> to make their pitches – even the opening ones – as tailored and relevant as
> possible.

The book "High Probability Selling" by Jacques Werth offers some good
solutions to approaching sales with the intent of quickly connecting your
product to the customers who want or need it most.

------
chrisreichel
That's pretty good. Unfortunately, the word 'salesman' is source of shivers
for most of engineers. I had to develop some of those skills, and I've got say
that was difficult but since you are required to improve your soft skills,
that might become leverage even on your technical day-to-day tasks: it makes
you more empathetic to other people.

------
welder
> I find it remarkable how little the tech world talks about software sales,
> given how central it is to everything we do. Sales is the whole reason we
> build anything; it’s how we assign value to what we do.

Nope, not for consumer products. SF doesn't talk about sales because consumer
products don't need sales at first.

~~~
sogen
> consumer products don't need sales

UH!?

Sales(money) is the blood of Any business. (Here I include Anything i.e.
charities).

------
egfx
This sounds interesting in theory. As an engineer starting out, where would
you specifically go to start on a sales career? I just looked at Craigslist
and the ads look really sketchy. I'm thinking to come in and interview for am
engineering role and then say, you know I was thinking..

------
jcoffland
> Sales is the whole reason we build anything; it’s how we assign value to
> what we do.

What a sad sad statement.

~~~
TomMarius
Why?

------
danschumann
I'm curious how the author thinks of marketing vs sales. And is sales as
important in companies where the product is cheaper, like a $10-$20/month
subscription, or is marketing more important in that scenario.

------
Jerry2
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book or an audio/video course on
sales for beginners? I'd like to learn this skill in 2018...

~~~
markfer
I'll be launching mine shortly - I can let you know when it's live if you'd
like.

~~~
Jerry2
Sure!

------
supertiger
s/sales/marketing every point stays valid

------
peterburkimsher
tl;dr - Most of the article tries to justify why it's important to Learn to
sell.

Actionable guidance:

"cold calling, sending tons of emails, doing prospect/company research and
developing cold leads into warm ones"

and get a job in sales ("role", "experience", "career").

My personal project is a Chinese learning page.

[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

I tried sending hundreds of emails, researching all the Chinese language
centres in Taiwan to find contact email addresses for the department, and
sometimes even the direct email addresses for the tutors. I wrote a short
email explaining what my program does, and how it's helping me learn.

Nobody replied.

I made a YouTube video as an example of what it can do. I posted on Facebook,
where my 3900 friends (who I all met face to face) mostly ignored it (29
likes).

I submitted it as a Show HN. Nobody up-voted it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14907618)

Can anybody give more helpful instructions?

I'm using Pingtype to read the Bible and song lyrics all the time, and my
Chinese is improving - after failing with 9 other methods before.

[https://pingtype.github.io/docs/blog.html#failing](https://pingtype.github.io/docs/blog.html#failing)

I really get discouraged by the lack of interest though, and the "trial by
fire" of being ignored by the world is really depressing. For me there's no
"uncertainty being on a quota compensation plan" \- I would certainly be
broke.

~~~
sogen
Hi Peter, this might sound harsh, but first of all

1.- Get a domain.com to look more professional otherwise if I see "GitHub.io"
looks like a code repository Pick a better name for your product. Right now it
doesn't mean anything (i.e. dropbox reminds people of storage, submittable.com
also sounds like form management, hope you get the idea)

2.- Look at well designed websites (i.e Invision, xero.com, mint.com.
stripe.com) and notice the difference.

3.- Copy. There's zero copy. Check mailchimp.com for great voice and tone.

4.- No Pricing info, policy, FAQ, etc.

5.- A short 1-2 minutes explainer Video (optional)

6.- Look at well done explainer videos

7.- The landing page doesn't necessarily have to be all flashy, check this one
for a simple one: [https://visualping.io](https://visualping.io)

8.- Important: Get feedback from people, I've used this:
[https://userinput.io/](https://userinput.io/)

9.- Also, forget HN, PH, etc., go after offline people or try more creative
ways to reach people directly.

~~~
peterburkimsher
1., 4., and 8. - it's free. There is no pricing, no income to pay for a domain
or paid feedback.

2\. It will load slower, and not work on all platforms.

3\. You're supposed to copy-paste. There's lots of examples in the blog or
other links from the headings.

5\. and 6. Example video to inspire me?

7\. That's useful, thank you. What if the landing page is a subpage? e.g. The
blog.

9\. My girlfriend already told me I talk too much about it in real life that
it's making people not want to talk to me.

~~~
knight17
By copy, I think he meant the writing of the page, copywriting. Please pursue
the below links, you may find them helpful. I also recommend redesigning the
site to be little more visually appealing.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11469889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11469889)

[https://medium.com/@InVisionApp/10-ux-copywriting-tips-
for-d...](https://medium.com/@InVisionApp/10-ux-copywriting-tips-for-
designers-966fd3e4f932)

[https://medium.com/talking-microcopy-writing-ux/go-to-
guide-...](https://medium.com/talking-microcopy-writing-ux/go-to-guide-for-ux-
writers-copywriters-and-content-strategists-3f216e0a0aa0)

~~~
peterburkimsher
I know what copy is. Google Translate doesn't have any copy either, and they
serve 200 million people daily.

This is a tool, not a cover letter for a business.

~~~
mlevental
man you're destined for failure. you ask for advice and someone actually takes
time to give you very good advice and you not only once but twice behave
defensively. I'm in the same position as you and I'm going to implement
literally every single thing sogen recommended because I don't care about
being wrong I care about succeeding.

~~~
sogen
10.- validate first (ie Buffer, Zapier)

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snow_mac
This is really good stuff.

~~~
_sdegutis
This.

