
The Beginner's Guide to Sales - andrewdumont
http://strideapp.com/beginners-guide-to-sales/
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mindcrime
I have some concerns about some of the advice they are giving, especially in
"Chapter One". This idea of making compensation for sales people so commission
driven, and having the big "leader-board" and everything, seems so "Glengarry
Glen Ross" and 1990's to me. At least a few firms are starting to experiment
with paying sales people a flat salary, combined with regional and company-
wide bonuses (or something along those lines) to try and align the incentives
the the sales-person with the company as a whole. Because, as we all know, not
every sale is a Good Thing.

That older model also risks creating a situation where your sales people are
competing with each other and not acting in concert as part of a team. I can't
help but wonder if there isn't a better way.

~~~
larrys
"least a few firms are starting to experiment with paying sales people a flat
salary"

An "experiment" is all that will end up being.

I've been involved in selling and dealing with sales people (as a buyer) for a
very very long time.

Simply not going to work at any scale. Goes against the psychological
motivations of people and how they respond to rewards. Why not pay people for
more effort? When you don't (say with a union) you end up with the postal
system. [1]

Even with respect to sports people care about their individual performance
greatly in addition to the team winning obviously.

Back to selling - Not that you aren't going to find a few people who don't fit
the typical mold just not as many as you will need.

There is nothing wrong to tying compensation to performance and it actually
works quite well. One of the things that I notice even when selling things is
that if a customer paid me for 3 years in advance it more or less took the fun
out of things and providing service that you have been paid for that way
becomes much more of a drag than if you are earning it as you go along.

Money is a powerful carrot and for the right reasons.

Don't lump all selling and compensation into the mold of the abusive assholes
portrayed in Glengarry.

[1] I was just at a high quality hotel where I noticed that the maids seemed a
bit surly and uninterested when I asked them to make my room up or for extra
towels. Seemed odd to me. Turned out that there is a room charge daily and
that you don't leave tips.

~~~
mindcrime
_Goes against the psychological motivations of people and how they respond to
rewards. Why not pay people for more effort? When you don't (say with a union)
you end up with the postal system._

I don't have a problem with tying compensation to performance, but I do
question the alignment of interests. When every salesperson has this "it's me
or them, every man for himself" mentality, I doubt that's best for everyone in
the long-run. A commission heavy structure also seems like it will encourage
short-term thinking - that is, the classic "get the sale at any cost, no
matter what downstream damage ti does" mentality. Now maybe the commission
based structure can be tweaked to account for that... I'm just saying that I
think there may be room for some new models here.

Anyway, if you do multiple levels of bonuses, tied to the performance of the
company as a whole, you are still hooking compensation to performance, albeit
with a bit of indirection.

Also, there has been plenty of psychology research that suggest that not all
people are motivated mainly by extrinsic rewards (ie, money). Maybe
compensating sales-people differently just means hiring a different kind of
sales-person? Just food for thought...

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robbiemitchell
Really wish this were on a single page so I could Instapaper it.

~~~
blairbeckwith
I'm not sure about Instapaper (haven't used it for a long time), but Pocket
has great support for multi-page stuff, and handled this like a champ.

Full disclosure: I'm a big Pocket fan, and a big Instapaper anti-fan.

~~~
3825
I know this question is going a little off-topic but what do you dislike about
Instapaper? Is there something they can do something to that will help you
change your mind?

~~~
blairbeckwith
I much prefer Pocket's abilities to handle multiple media types.

I like how Pocket is a first-class citizen on all of the platforms I use, not
just iOS. I know Instapaper has an Android app, but it sucks.

I prefer the design of Pocket over Instapaper. I'm not a designer, so I can't
comment on which is actually "better", only which I prefer.

I do prefer Instapaper's business model. I would like a chance to pay for
Pocket.

Finally, I am not a huge fan of Marco Arment, and would rather support Pocket
than him.

~~~
3825
Thank you for your honesty. The final point means that Pocket (never fully
understood the name change from Read It Later, perhaps because like you said
it supports different media types not just text?)

I've never tried instapaper. At some point I got lazy and stopped marking
stories as read on Pocket/RIL and now I have this ginormous (almost 2 GB) of
things to read. So what did I do instead of reading? I uninstalled the app and
the bookmarklet.

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na85
Ugh, I hate the attitude on display in this article.

The idea that everybody will benefit from your product, and that you just have
to help them see the light is false and patronizing.

I would not benefit from a new iphone because my current phone does everything
I want my smartphone to do.

"Uncovering problems for your customers" is newspeak for "selling a solution
in search of a problem"

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manishsharan
As an engineer, the most soul crushing aspect of sales process is when people
simply ignore your calls and emails. I hesitate to follow up because I do not
want to seen spamming people and eventually all hope inside of me just
shrivels up and just dies.I find rejections to be emotionally devastating.

I would gladly pay for a sales guru/therapist who would listen to what I have
been upto and tell me what I am doing wrong , what I am doing right and what I
should be doing more.

~~~
analyst74
If you are devastated by rejection, you are not getting enough of it.

It's very hard to get devastated by rejections when you follow 20~30 leads any
given moment and getting rejected every day.

~~~
manishsharan
Upvoted you because that was a very good advice. I will keep that in mind.

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jonaldomo
This reminds me of Daniel Pink's To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About
Moving Others. Worth a read if you like this.

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acomms
Nice! Thanks for sharing this. You should include some more sales anecdotes if
you have any to add. They're a really useful way of communicating a sales
strategy being applied to a unique scenario.

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dpolaske
Great post, alot of good stuff here. Its all about understanding your customer
and bringing them True Value!

