[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to Learn How to Sell?
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Ask HN: How to Learn How to Sell?
I've become convinced that "sales" is a pivotal skill that everyone
should learn. You constantly have to sell: sell yourself, sell your
ideas, sell your product, sell your vision. However I see no easy
way to learn how to sell. For sure the direct way seems preferable
(learning by doing), but having a job already + living abroad makes
it a bit hard. Any tips would appreciated.
Author : giansegato
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-06-27 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
| rewgs wrote:
| I'm a freelance composer, so selling is just part of my job
| description. However, I kind of accidentally stumbled upon a good
| way to get your sales skills up to snuff:
|
| Craigslist.
|
| I really enjoying flipping instruments or anything else I know I
| can make a profit off of. It allows me to "rent" something I want
| to check out for a while, but still probably make a profit off
| of. Take a topic you know about or enjoy, find cheaper-than-usual
| examples of that thing (especially lightly-broken things that
| just need a bit of TLC), and then flip for a profit. You'll deal
| with all sorts of weird personalities, as is tradition with
| Craigslist, but doing just doing it on a regular basis really
| pushes you quite quickly to get your sales skills up to snuff.
| It's hard for me to even point to specific aspects of those
| skills in particular -- it's more a general mindset, an
| understanding of people's psychology, etc. You just get a feel
| for it -- or at least I did.
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| This would be an amazing premise for an online course.
| rewgs wrote:
| Really? I'm very interested in hearing why you think that.
| rmah wrote:
| Selling is mostly about communications. So, in the context of
| sales, it requires you:
|
| 1) Understand what you're trying to communicate. What are you
| selling, what are the benefits? Why should the audience care?
|
| 2) Understand who you're communicating with. Their desires, their
| constraints, their knowledge level, do they trust you, how much
| do they care?
|
| One thing I've learned over the years is that any single
| particular sales approach/tactic/strategy will not be suitable
| across all markets and situations. Sometimes it's best to coldly
| list features. Other times it's best to develop a personal
| rapport. And yet other times it's best to focus on customer
| problems/product benefits. Pay attention to your audience and
| adjust how you approach them based on who they are.
|
| TLDR: to learn how to sell better, learn how to communicate more
| effectively.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| A gross oversimplification is:
|
| - have customers to sell to
|
| - remember that you don't sell, customers buy
|
| - it's easier to sell something people both need & want
|
| Personally I find cost effective lead generation is the harder
| problem to solve. So get good at lead generation (aka having
| customers to talk to) & then you can practice converting them
| into paying customers. Trying practice selling to customers you
| don't have is like trying to be good at washing a car you haven't
| purchased yet.
| moflome wrote:
| I think your question might be too broad. Segment your query into
| quadrants, deal type (transactional sales vs. strategic) and
| customer type (retail, smb vs. enterprise). Strategic enterprise
| selling is very different than transactional smb.
| berkeshire wrote:
| Benefits first, features later. A narrative rather than a list.
|
| How will your product help the buyer? Why is your vision superior
| to others'? Where do your ideas plug into the prospect's work?
| How would you make that difference in the new employer's setup?
|
| Or: Focus on the "why". Why should someone buy whatever you are
| selling. Not the "what" - as in, dont focus initially on "what
| are the features".
|
| Why first, what later. And when talking about the "what" - more
| of a couple of key Unique Selling Propositions and then the
| checklist of features.
|
| [Exceptions will apply where it is purely technical sales and
| features / standards / compliance carry more weight than the
| 'story'. The narrative then shifts to "being compliant"]
| [deleted]
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| The book Founding Sales is an excellent read.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| I would suggest reading Grant cardones Sell or Be sold. Don't
| like the guy but the book is really good.
|
| The number 1 thing I learned from this book was you have to learn
| that selling is basically helping people and #2 that your product
| is the best thing for your customer, i.e. you should be convinced
| that there is nothing better in the world at the moment to help
| your customer.
|
| When you truly and honestly believe that selling becomes easy.
| flax wrote:
| So lie to yourself and others. Yeah that's why we don't like
| sales.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Yet you rely on other people selling your work.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| Sorry I don't follow. When did I or the book say anything
| about lying to people?
|
| Could it be not possible that a product can actually help a
| person get what s/he wants? Or be the best thing to suit
| their needs. Do you have an objection to that statement?
|
| I actually believe my product is the best fit for my target
| (not everybody but a _very_ small niche of few thousand
| people in this world). When I find those persons it indeed
| feels very easy to sell my product to them and also get
| repeat business.
| candyman wrote:
| There are different types of selling. I worked for IBM from 1984
| to 1992 and they had an entire training process for their
| customer-facing people that included a two week sales school for
| reps at the end. It was tailored to enterprise sales which are
| specialized but many of the techniques apply to other types of
| selling, especially high ticket items. There is an older book out
| there called How to Master the Art of Selling by a guy (Hopkins?)
| that is pretty close. It covers the cycle including skills like
| objection handling. It's very effective.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Volunteer for a fundraiser. Firefighters, or whatever.
|
| Low pressure. Fast past. You'll get used to rejection quickly.
|
| Rich dad poor dad book had a whole chapter on it.
| zahrc wrote:
| Quoting a comment I posted on here some time ago
|
| You can learn about the theory of sales, I'll leave the others to
| post it. Long time sales specialist here: Sales is situational
| and hard to generalise. There is an important social aspect to
| sales. You need to know your customer and be able to read their
| reactions. All individual customers are, well, individuals. They
| react differently, have different expectations and bring
| different experience and behaviour to the table. You need to
| adjust during conversation and be prepared for the worst case
| scenarios.
| taylortrusty wrote:
| I'm a big proponent of Sandler's methodology. The book is cheap
| and an excellent read. I use the things I learned in it every
| day:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Teach-Ride-Bike-Seminar/dp/09671...
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| I recommend Kathy Sierra's Badass, making users awesome.
|
| The gist is, no one cares about the thing you're trying to sell.
|
| anyone considering your offering is trying to get something done.
| Help them get their job done so well that they feel awesome about
| it.
|
| The book is not fluff. Highly recommended.
|
| Also look into the job at o be done framework.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| I suppose this framing may be generally true, but there's
| nuance that has very little to do with their nominal job in
| many cases. For instance, if you're selling a solution to
| certain ecosystems of software engineers, then you're not
| selling them a thing for the job they have. You're selling them
| a thing for the next job they want, that they want an excuse to
| play with at the job they're at.
|
| All of which is to say, it's not always enough to look at a
| person's tasks and work to find high-value "pain points". Often
| you need to look more closely and a bit obliquely what their
| actual ambitions might be, and sell to that.
| hargup wrote:
| Skimmed the through the book, I felt the book is great about
| how to build a product, but selling is an orthogonal art.
| Unless you belive "Build and they will come".
|
| Selling is especially important if you are in any kind of B2B
| business where the user doesn't necessarily make the buying
| decision. For example, if a company is buying a Customer
| Support software, the executive making the decision won't
| probably be using the software on day to day basis.
| mathattack wrote:
| You can start by practicing selling ideas in your current
| employer or situation or non-profit.
|
| My observation is Sales success is about understanding someone's
| needs, more than pushing a product. As such, listening is much
| more important than speaking.
| awillen wrote:
| This is the way.
|
| Selling is about solving someone else's problem.
|
| Some of the answers here say to start with benefits, not
| features. Those are missing the first step. If someone comes
| into a car dealership and the salesperson starts selling them
| on the benefits of a sportscar (you'll feel young and will get
| places quickly), they're going to lose the customer who came in
| with a problem of having six kids and four dogs and no way to
| get them all places. The salesperson who finds that out will be
| able to help get them into a minivan or SUV that's a good fit.
|
| The same is true of selling yourself - it's not about showing
| them you're great, it's about showing them how you can solve
| their problem. Find out why they're hiring for this position as
| well as what they expect the person they hire to do when they
| start. Once you know those things, you can explain how you'll
| be able to get in and do what they need, as opposed to just
| telling them that you're a great employee.
| allyourhorses wrote:
| Selling is a horrible misnomer, the process is entirely about
| understanding that you have something the other party might want,
| and communicating this effectively. You could take a shit hot
| salesperson and give them a garbage product, and force them to
| work an idiotic market segment and they'll sell nothing. On the
| other hand, you could take a person (like me!) with almost no
| interpersonal skills whatsoever with a solution to a very
| specific issue faced by people they're already in contact with,
| and they'll sell like champions.
|
| So the whole framing of product and market, and communication
| media is way more interesting (IMHO) than 'selling' as an
| explicit skill. (And yes, I do "sell", but I'm not "good at
| selling", because my skillset is tied to a tiny handful of niches
| where I have this framing figured out)
|
| edit: there's another bit that annoyed me about this post, and
| it's the idea of explicit 'selling' before having a solution to
| sell. It's something akin to putting the cart before the horse.
| Any selling opportunities I've discovered have always been in the
| pursuit of solving some other problem. I suppose basically if you
| have a genuinely good solution to any problem, selling is barely
| a skill worth worrying about. This is as true in interviews as in
| product marketing
| mellosouls wrote:
| While this answer points out there can be various factors
| involved in the success of a sale, it completely underestimates
| the skills of selling and persuasion which many books have been
| written about and certain character types have a natural
| affinity for.
| jldl805 wrote:
| I have years of experience in high-end retail sales and a
| subsequent decade of experience in high-dollar niche sales.
| In all of my jobs my entire life I've worked 100% commission.
|
| Here's the thing both your and the parent's comment are
| missing: sales isn't about persuasion or communication, it's
| about listening.
| mellosouls wrote:
| My comment had no need to drill down into the various
| factors involved in the process, so it was no more
| "missing" than any other of them; the point was clearly to
| counter the idea it's not an actual talent or skill; you
| would have picked that up if you'd "listened" :).
| jldl805 wrote:
| Nah. My point is that most people off the street assume
| salesmanship is about touting your product effectively.
| Anyone can talk a big game.
|
| Making people feel heard, and then specifically
| responding to their pain is the real answer. Yours and
| many other comments on this page make the same mistake,
| which is based on a widely-prevalent flawed assumption
| that is almost universal among the general population.
| solatic wrote:
| > the process is entirely about understanding that you have
| something the other party might want, and communicating this
| effectively.
|
| More to the point, it's also about listening to what your sales
| prospect is actually looking for and helping explain to them
| how what you're selling fits their needs or wants, so that
| they'll make a decision to commit to the solution you're
| offering.
|
| If you have no sales prospects, then you have a marketing
| problem, not a sales problem. Marketing is about explaining why
| your solution is desirable to as many people in the first
| place, ideally people who the arcane-black-magic-practicioners
| tell you are _totally_ going to become sales prospects, if only
| they knew you existed. But leave aside reaching your audience -
| if you can 't explain why you're hot stuff to somebody who is
| naturally inclined to want what you're selling, then you have a
| confidence problem, not a marketing problem.
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| Marketing moves all deals forward. Sales moves specific ones
| forward.
| rpeden wrote:
| It's worth noting this can vary a lot depending on target
| market and deal size.
|
| I've had the fortune of being in a tech role where I got to
| join plenty of sales calls. And I've observed that when selling
| large deal to large companies, selling is both a skill and a
| process and the difference between a good salesperson and a
| mediocre one is literally millions of dollars a year.
|
| If you're looking to close large deals with good clients who
| you _aren 't_ currently in contact with (but who really, truly
| have a need for what you offer), it's worth looking at selling
| as a discrete set of skills including prospecting, nurturing
| leads, getting meetings, and closing deals. Closing can be an
| adventure even after a prospect said they want to buy.
| Shepherding a deal through an enterprise onboarding and
| procurement process is no walk in the park.
|
| A lot of people see this kind of formal selling process as
| distasteful. I used to feel that way, too. But when I observed
| it in action it didn't seem like enterprise decision makers
| viewed the process negatively. They expected to be sold to and
| were generally receptive to it because the product met a need.
|
| So as I mentioned, it's highly dependent on what you sell and
| who you're selling it to, but I think a wholesale dismissal of
| selling as a useful skill would be a mistake.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> It 's worth noting this can vary a lot depending on target
| market and deal size._
|
| I'd go so far as to say that once you hit a certain deal
| size, it's impossible to compete without treating sales as
| its own specialized field just like you would management in a
| large organization. The number of independent variables and
| people involved grows superlinearly with the amount of money
| involved and managing that process is its own skill, one
| that's extremely valuable because it can only learned in a
| trial by fire. As they grow bigger, they get even more
| specialized - a friend of mine who was the rockstar salesman
| at a big CRO that made 8-9 figure deals to run clinical
| trials for pharma had a lot of trouble moving into commercial
| jet sales, for example, which might see 10-11 figure deals
| delivered over a decade.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Agreed. If your product just works, "sales" is a piece of cake.
| If it doesn't and you find yourself hiring a fancy expensive
| charismatic sales team just to convince people to buy your
| product then that's borderline fraud imo.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Perhaps in some segments. BigCo b2b not so much IMHO :/
|
| I've had trouble getting big companies to buy startup product
| because a) nobody wants to be the first big name and b)
| they're worried you'll be out of business in 2 years and
| integration effort will have been for nothing.
|
| Of course these are self-fulfilling prophesies unless you can
| get the "engine" running.
|
| Also if your product overlaps with features or products of a
| large vendor who already has a relationship with your
| customer (this is common) you have to fight the incumbent -
| and they have home team advantage even if their product
| sucks.
| megameter wrote:
| With every market there's a timing element and a large part
| of it revolves around exactly those kinds of marketing
| considerations. The right product at the wrong time won't
| get traction because they're taking a space already
| occupied by some incumbent - but offering when there's hype
| and interest around your category and a lot of first-time
| customer potential gets you in the door unchallenged, hence
| why there are distinct "generational waves" of startups
| that find a growth segment and sink their teeth in it at
| the right moment.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I disagree. Some of the wealthiest and most successful ppl such
| as Zuckerberg and Larry Page never sold anything . They started
| by creating a service that was superior to competitors and that
| everyone wanted. Start with that instead. Sales come later.
| Selling is not also really hard but margins are thin. Facebook,
| Apple, and Google by creating the platform, where able to command
| the price they wanted.
| dlvktrsh wrote:
| this makes sense to me too.
|
| it's easier to sell whatever you're trying to sell if it's of
| high quality
| rfrey wrote:
| They both sold themselves and their vision to investors. I
| guess that might seem pedantic but I don't think it is.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Related but ten years ago I got a lot of value out of this
| "Pitching Hacks" document from Venture Hacks.
|
| https://venturehacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Pitching...
| bordercases wrote:
| Negotiation + Persuasion + Valuables = Selling
| punkspider wrote:
| I liked this 5 video playlist by Louis Rossmann
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI9Z_fJ38lM&list=PLkVbIsAWN2...
|
| He is an independent repair technician/youtuber/right to repair
| activist, and not a guru of some sort, and he's speaking from his
| experience here.
|
| -
|
| Salesmanship part 1 - Don't present without knowing the
| priorities of the customer
|
| Salesmanship part 2 - Don't be NEEDY just because you're a
| salesman!
|
| Salesmanship part 3 - Focus on the PAIN & MISERY of your
| customer!
|
| Salesmanship part 4 - Give people MULTIPLE CHANCES to SAY NO to
| what you are offering.
|
| Salesmanship part 5 - The customer is rarely RIGHT, but ARGUING
| always makes you WRONG!
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I learned from Tom Hopkins. He breaks the sales cycle down into a
| process that anyone can follow. It's been years since I listened
| to his cassette tapes in my car. You can find more current
| materials at tomhopkins.com.
|
| His process applies to more than just sales. Some of his
| techniques are great for persuasion and negotiation. Everyone
| should learn some sales techniques. You are smart to do this.
| dave_sullivan wrote:
| Read SPIN Selling and The Challenger Sale. Only 2 good sales
| books, takes a reasonably sophisticated approach of interviewing
| salespeople and then doing PCA on their responses to generate
| clusters of sales behavior and then noting "the challengers" are
| most successful.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Find a problem the customer is having, and show the solution.
| gumby wrote:
| I took the Adele Carnegie course years ago. It was really good.
| My cohort included someone who worked for KLA Tencor (minimum
| deal in the millions, 18-24 month sales cycle, team sales),
| someone who sold ADT alarms, a couple of guys who ran a T shirt
| stand on the beach. The skills we learned were mostly the same
| for all of us.
| dietdrb wrote:
| I arrived at the same realization as you--having sales as a skill
| is beneficial no matter the career path a person is on.
|
| As developer of ~10 years experience, the path I took to get
| sales experience was to take a job as a sales engineer for a
| technical product in my software domain. It is the best career
| decision I have made so far.
|
| My fear was that I would lose my technical knowledge, but I
| quickly realized that was not the risk I thought it was. I am
| consistently challenged by the breadth and depth of questions
| posed by each customer based on their unique needs. As a sales
| engineer, I learn more in my technical domain than I did at my
| last humdrum dev job.
|
| And on top of that, of course, I get exposure and practice in
| this other side of the business and set of skills that was
| previously an enigma to me.
|
| For me, sales engineering is the best of both worlds.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| If you can afford it: Sandler sales training. They're not the
| only solution, but they're very good and (at least in the past)
| part of your fee includes lifetime access to go back and retake
| the training, freshen up your skills, etc. (I'm not affiliated,
| but I did go through their training; it made me the best
| salesperson in my circle of small-consulting-shop friends and
| colleagues.)
|
| If you can't afford it? Read The Challenger Sale, a data-backed
| look at the most effective techniques.
| pryelluw wrote:
| I suggest you start browsing https://old.reddit.com/r/sales
|
| Maybe start selling something that fits your schedule. This is a
| skill you learn by doing rather than by reading. Do note that
| selling has a lot to do with how you think of yourself. Best of
| luck
| ryall wrote:
| I recommend "The Introvert's Edge". The premise is to break down
| sales into a process, measure then iterate.
|
| For me it removed a lot of the sleazyness feeling I had
| associated with selling.
| redsymbol wrote:
| I am a career software engineer who successfully learned how to
| sell. Specifically, high-ticket ($3k-5k) B2C sales. Starting from
| having absolutely no sales skills in December 2019, I managed to
| reach a close rate of close to near 50% for well-qualified leads
| by early this year.
|
| There is a great deal of advice already in this thread. If you
| have any specific questions, ask and I will answer if I can.
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