
Thinking About Starting a Business? Try a Sales Job - utnick
http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/08/06/thinking-about-starting-a-business-try-a-sales-job/?mod=homeblogmod_independentstreet
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mechanical_fish
This almost sounded like an interesting article until the phrase "Cutco
Cutlery" appeared. Those guys are only slightly less cult-like than Amway.

My ex tried working for them, years ago. Not a fun experience. Cost her money
in the end -- the best salespeople at Cutco are the hiring managers, who begin
by _selling_ their prospective employees an expensive demo kit. Beware,
beware, beware.

And, in case you don't know, I should mention that even _high-quality_
expensive cooking knives are a big ripoff. The first words out of every pro
chef's mouth are "go to a restaurant supply store and buy a basic steel chef's
knife, with sterilizable plastic handle and a brand like 'Global', for about
$19. That's what all the pros use, and they chop more than you'll ever chop."

~~~
hugh
Interesting advice on the knives.

But perhaps a chef's needs are different from an ordinary person's, in that a
chef has a lackey to sharpen his knives every night? For those of us who are
too lazy to sharpen our knives regularly, perhaps a $100 knife is worthwhile?

~~~
jonknee
There's that and the fact that while you do hear this advice a lot, chef's (at
least ones that actually cook) and busy line cooks typically walk into work
with a knife case. It isn't filled with $20 knives. If you're using a tool for
many hours a day, it pays to have a really nice tool. Even if it's only
marginally nicer, that margin adds up. (It may never add up for the home cook,
but that's another debate.)

But if you're making an order to fill out your kitchen, it's no surprise the
cheap but fully functional knives will be ordered. $20 * 10 is a lot easier to
justify than $100 * 10.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Okay, folks, you drove me to the books -- or rather to the _Cooks Illustrated_
website, which no self respecting geek who cooks should fail to subscribe to.
They ran lots of knives through tests and recommended the Forschner Victorinox
Fibrox Chef's Knife, which cost $25.33 in 2005.

So, I lied. You might not want to use a $20 knife. You shouldn't spend a penny
less than $26. ;)

Note that this is a brand-name product. Wouldn't be surprised to see the no-
brand version at a supply store for $19.

Note also that knives are a personal thing. If the cheap one doesn't fit your
hand you'll want a more expensive one. C'est la vie.

It's true that keeping your knife sharp is really important. Unfortunately,
you can dull an expensive knife as easily as a $25 knife. You should get a
steel and try to figure out how to use it. You should get your knife sharpened
when you sense it's getting dull, or you'll injure yourself. You should use
the right cutting board. You should have a knife that's all your own and hide
it from other people, lest they smash the edge into a solid metal object. You
should watch Alton Brown's show about knives to learn these things.

Mr. Brown recommends pro sharpening because he thinks all the homegrown
solutions suck by comparison. _Cook's Illustrated_ , OTOH, recommends the $80
Chef's Choice 110 electric home sharpener, which you can afford with the money
you saved on that $110 chef's knife.

Pro chefs carry more than one knife, in a case. You also need more than one,
but not many more. In his book, Anthony Bourdain (famous pro chef) recommended
a chef's knife, a flexible boning knife, a paring knife, and an offset
serrated knife. Alton Brown (famous geek pro chef) also suggests kitchen
shears and a 4 to 5 inch utility knife. _Cook's Illustrated_ suggests that you
might want a slicing knife if you carve a lot of roasts (alas, I don't; I
married a vegetarian), or a cleaver if you often make homemade chicken stock
(see above).

You'll also need some steak knives if you're not married to a vegetarian like
I am. ;)

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webwright
This is great advice.

I have a blog post I've been meaning to write called "What do you REALLY want
to do for a living, aspiring entrepreneur?" inspired by a comment reply here
where someone effectively said, "I'm not really that into growing a company, I
just want to do a startup 'cause I love to build things and hate stupid
managers". If your startup is successful, you generally grow (at least a bit).
Before long, your job is hiring, BEING the stupid manager everyone gripes
about, customer service, working with vendors and service providers, and doing
sales/bizdev.

~~~
d0mine
As a whole it is not great advice. It has two parts: the good one is
_"Thinking About Starting a Business? Try a Sales Job"_ and the evil one is an
advertising of Cutco Cutlery and similar businesses.

 _"Sales reps may have to buy their own demonstration equipment."_ It is a
signature of a pyramid scheme. Encouraging young adults to participate in such
scheme is evil.

~~~
webwright
The advice I'm referring to is that in the headline. At no point in the
article did it say, "you really ought to work for CutCo"... It was just an
example.

I don't know a damn thing about CutCo, but having people buy their own
equipment isn't just the signature of a pyramid scheme... It's the signature
of franchising as well. Hrm. Is McDonalds a pyramid scheme?

Either way, high commission "eat what you kill and pay your own expenses"
aren't inherently evil.

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IsaacSchlueter
This is fantastic advice.

When I moved to California in the jobless pit of the dot-com bubble burst, my
first two jobs involved knocking on doors. The first was soliciting donations
for the D.A.R.E. program for a Sydcor company called "Synergistic Marketing
Concepts". The second was pushing Electrolux vacuums.

Nothing forces a geek to face their social ineptitude like knocking on a door
and trying to convince an annoyed stranger that they should trust you enough
to give you money. I was never very good at either job, but I managed to keep
from starving. By getting from "terrible" to "barely competent", I learned
some essential communication skills that have helped me greatly as a hacker.

Besides direct sales, another good training is to do technical support for a
terrible company; the worse the product, the better the experience. If it's
related to finances in some way so that your customers don't get paid if it
doesn't work, so much the better. When you hear raw unadulterated panic in the
voice of a customer, and the rage that this panic creates, and learn to
convince them that you're going to make everything alright, it forces you to
have a lot of compassion for users.

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sanj
At my last startup, I spent about a year in sales. It was out of necessity:
after having conceived, designed and built the new product it needed to be
sold. And the stuff that made it really shine was different and subtle. Which
meant the story kept having to change to figure out what mattered and
resonated.

The time on the road w/ the sales team was invaluable. I learned more in that
year then I had in the past five at the company: creating a story, telling it
well, listening to the customer and their pain points, deciding how to
approach a new client, working up a quote, determining the relative value of a
customer and more.

It has paid off handsomely in my current work. And I have much more
appreciation for how sales work and how sales guys think.

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hugh
This is probably good advice.

But if you want to practice your sales skills, instead of getting involved in
an existing door-to-door sales and/or multi-level-marketing racket, why not
start your own door-to-door sales business? Pick a product, buy a trunkload of
it, then try to sell it. You'll not only get the experience in sales, you'll
get experience at choosing products that the consumer wants, and you'll get to
keep all your profit (err, minus taxes) instead of a measly 10% commission.

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mattculbreth
I've known some very good consulting & software sales people who make > $250K
a year. They started selling copiers in college. One guy raised money for a
couple charities, door to door.

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wallflower
My insurance agent who is a top producer told me that the only way to learn
sales is by doing it for at least 6 months. She said that initial half-year
_will_ suck (e.g. make sure you have 6 month living savings to support
yourself) but the experience with rejection and learning the difference
between productivity and activity is worth it. It really doesn't matter what
you try to sell either.

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aneesh
Given that the article talked about knives, I'm surprised no one's mentioned
Vector Marketing yet:
[http://www.collegeotr.com/suny_binghamton/vector_marketing_s...](http://www.collegeotr.com/suny_binghamton/vector_marketing_scam_or_fast_cash_10453).
They basically mass-mail high school students trying to recruit some to sell
knives. A couple of my friends did it back in high school. While it can be a
way to improve your sales ability, this particular scheme (and many others)
was little more than a fancy scam.

I fully agree with the title, but these "independent reseller" schemes seem to
be hit-or-miss at best. It might be a better experience to work in sales at a
big company, rather than as an independent reseller. John Doerr plays up the
fact that he worked in sales at Intel before his VC life. Or even better, sell
something you made.

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brandnewlow
This might be somewhat naive, but isn't the whole conversation on HN centered
around the idea that we should be trying to make stuff that doesn't have to be
sold? Something that people simply want? Where does this article fit in? I've
never seen a facebook commercial on TV, or a youtube commercial. Or a
MetaFilter commercial...

With my startup, I often have people telling me I should invest in radio
outreach, print up business cards etc and do more marketing. This advice is
all well-intentioned, and some of it is very good (like having decent business
cards), but we've been doing a radio thing (free mind, you) for the last 3
months and haven't seen any fruit at all from it. I dunno. I think my time's
better spent making the product better.

Also, as a journalist, that's about the lamest, least informative blog post
I've ever read on a newspaper site.

~~~
SwellJoe
Nothing sells itself. Even if people "simply want" it, you still have to sell
if you want to be the leader in your space (and in some spaces being the
leader is the only position worth having).

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Tichy
I don't think it is good advice. Maybe sales skills are useful, but the thing
is, there are zillions of things one could learn before starting a business
that could be useful (like getting a degree, saving enough money, ...). It is
just one more thing that delays you actually doing what you want, and that is
bad. Why not just learn on the job (starting a business)?

However, if you absolutely think you have to put yourself through that ordeal
of selling crap door-to-door, perhaps collecting money for charities would be
a better choice than selling products of questionable quality.

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noor420
cool. Lets all go work for sales company and then we will millionaires!

