I can reccomend finding a great salesperson in your network and ask if he would teach/coach you on your sale.
I did this and in a few days I improved my sales skills dramatically.
Remember that selling is a proccess and a skill that can be learned, just like programming, and if you have a great teacher you can learn the basics really fast.
Too me the hardest lesson was that the more annoying and hard questions a person asks, the more interested in your product they are and the more they see how they could use the product. Not because they did not like it as I thought!
That's a pretty limited view of things. It's possible that that's the case, but there's a lot of places where I've met people who are great at sales:
- Past startups that I've worked at. Unless someone has only worked at massive companies where they were completely isolated from the sales cycle, there's a pretty good chance they've had at least some interactions with sales.
- Barcamp (http://barcamp.org/w/page/402984/FrontPage) there's usually one of these in town on at least a semi-annual basis. It's not just "coders" that come out to these, people involved in all aspects of the business of software show up.
- Past clients. While doing freelance work, most of my clients were people who ran businesses, had a little to no tech background, and had an idea for a tech project that they thought could improve their business.
- Other "coders" in my network who have struck out on their own. Even if none of the above applies to you, there's a pretty good chance that there's only 2 degrees of separation between you and someone who could help.
I did this and in a few days I improved my sales skills dramatically.
Remember that selling is a proccess and a skill that can be learned, just like programming, and if you have a great teacher you can learn the basics really fast.
Too me the hardest lesson was that the more annoying and hard questions a person asks, the more interested in your product they are and the more they see how they could use the product. Not because they did not like it as I thought!