[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Resources to get better at outbound sales?
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Ask HN: Resources to get better at outbound sales?
Hi! I run a small custom software company in Michigan. I want to
get better at outbound sales beyond just cold emailing or messaging
people through LinkedIn. We're about to start publishing case
studies and doing some outreach, so I want to take some time to
study outbound sales and improve my skills. Any recommended
courses, books, or frameworks for B2B outbound sales, consultative
selling, or building effective outreach pipelines? Thanks!
Author : sieep
Score : 138 points
Date : 2025-12-21 17:49 UTC (6 days ago)
| brudgers wrote:
| Relationships are the best resource for sales.
|
| Because to solve someone's problems, they have to tell you their
| problems.
|
| Or to put it another way, the thing you do is to solve the actual
| problems other people have. That's what you need to sell. You
| aren't selling the fact that you know how to use a hammer. You
| are selling the idea that you can build the right hammer for the
| job.
|
| So sales is not "out reach." It is "what do you need?" and you
| will probably do better by optimizing for getting to that
| conversation, not through optimizing for low effort on your part.
|
| Linked-in is best used for networking not push notification.
| Networking is about trust. Maybe you can't help with someone's
| problem but you know someone who can.
|
| Finally, you can't sell desperately. Good luck.
| Eridrus wrote:
| I generally recommend the book Founding Sales (available for free
| online), but it's targeted at SaaS founders.
|
| But you're actually doing something even more common: running a
| consulting business, and there's plenty of content on that for
| just that reason, so I would go find content on how to scale a
| consulting business, e.g. this seems like the start of a thread
| to pull on
| https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
| SMAAART wrote:
| Google these:
|
| 1) "inbound marketing"
|
| 2) The lean startup / MVP
| AznHisoka wrote:
| Hot take, but outbound selling is so ineffective today, that if
| its it in a playbook, it most likely means it doesnt work
| philangist wrote:
| So what would you say should be in the effective playbook for
| selling going into 2025?
|
| Also running a small consultancy firm like OP and coming from a
| technical background, building an effective sales motion is the
| hardest challenge.
| mmarian wrote:
| Figure out who your target customer is. Imagine yourself in their
| shoes - how/where do you spend your time, what do you like
| learning about, under what circumstances would you consider a
| rando small software company in Michigan.
| dwa3592 wrote:
| - Go hangout where your potential buyers hangout. It could be LI,
| IG, TikTok, Golf clubs, High end bars, Charity events. Make those
| connections.
|
| - Make two (nested) lists - the people you know in real life- and
| the people they might know. Now, can any of these people be your
| potential buyers? if they are in first list, good, just talk to
| them, if they are in second list, ask for an introduction from
| your connection in first list.
|
| - Advertise where your potential buyers might notice.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| When have you bought something?
|
| Example 1: The other day I was trying to fix a sprinkler. My
| results were mid, then I saw a truck at my neighbors house with a
| phone number.
|
| 1. I was not in the market for sprinkler repair until that day.
| 2. I was too busy to make a market comparison, seeing that my
| neighbor did it was enough.
|
| Example 2: I was thinking about refining my mortgage this year.
| My current servicer called me one day with an offer. It was a
| competitive but not t optimal deal, but the lady on the phone
| signaled to me she understood my values and would get it done.
|
| That's what you are looking for with outbound, people who are in
| need, willing to part with cash, but probably not shopping for
| the thing.
|
| This is why cold calling works and why volume is so important.
| You aren't trying to persuade people who aren't interested, but
| trying to find those who are.
|
| The biggest fear of people with money is not spending money, but
| that what they pay for won't work out.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which means the outbound sales isn't the first problem - it's
| lead generation. How do you find a group that is more willing
| to purchase given the limited time you can spend on it?
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| No. Lead generation is how you find shoppers. Outbound is how
| you find people who don't shop probably because they are too
| busy or haven't identified that need yet themselves.
| cj wrote:
| There are lots of online resources for outbound sales which will
| likely be better than advice you'll find on a forum full of
| engineers (unless engineers are your target market)
|
| I'd focus on zeroing in on a niche (even if it's an artificial
| niche). Develop case studies for how you've helped people in your
| specific niche. Then find people in that niche and offer them
| those same niche services.
|
| Do not try to be everything to everyone. No one wants to work
| with a software agency that "does anything". (Well it's possible
| but then you're competing with thousands of other consultancies).
|
| If you develop into a niche well, you'll have less competition,
| you'll be able to target the right people more easily, and youll
| be able to write messaging that speaks to people in that niche.
|
| Everything gets easier when you narrow in on a small slice of a
| market. The problem set becomes smaller and easier to solve.
|
| Once you see some traction, start to expand your niche.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 1 - Understand the main processes that sales orgs use (MEDDIC or
| its variations) - you don't need to follow it in all its details
| but yes in the general idea
|
| 2 - Understand what is the problem you're solving and how
| companies can benefit from it
|
| 3 - Understand how companies actually do procurement
|
| 4 - Outbound sales are the ones that sucks the most. A rejection
| is just a rejection, don't take it personally (one part of having
| actual sales people is being a more impersonal process - they
| care about the sales but a rejection is taken less personally)
| stranded22 wrote:
| When I first started new business sales, I used the sales bible
| by Jeffrey gitomer. He's written quite a few books and I found
| them useful.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Your existing customers probably know of others who have similar
| needs. They might not want to refer you to a competitor but they
| might be happy to refer you to a complementary organization.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Not sure if they support US etc., but this is a very cool tool:
|
| www.salesviewer.com
|
| They are analyzing your website data and telling you very much
| about the visitor. (I guess they are also doing some fancy AI
| stuff in the background, like connecing/syncing with linkedIn for
| known static-IPs etc.)
|
| Give it a try!
| firefax wrote:
| So please trust me I'm not just ask me to be a reply guy. but...
| what do you mean by "better at outbound sales"?
|
| Like, you want to call up a company and get them to buy your
| software? To pay you to make _them_ software?
|
| Because while either way I'd say be more targeted -- try to
| network IRL and have linkedin (retching noise) just the place you
| go to get their email... and then make a targeted pitch to a
| smaller number of people you've met IRL. Budget to go to a few
| conferences.
|
| But that's a strategy I think works best if you have _good_
| product and want to get businesses to pay to use it, and is less
| effective in selling "consulting" (sarcastic finger quotes).
|
| Either way though, going to conferences where people will be
| legitimately interested in your product (Think going to HOPE
| instead of Blackhat)... offer to take people out to dinner,
| expense it as marketing.
|
| Also I don't reccomend buying people alcohol, just food. For
| whatever reason, people will overdrink and turn into asshole
| reasons when alcohol is free... by all means point them to a
| decent dive bar.
|
| (For example there's one behind Bally's that's attached to a
| convenience store. They used to let folks buy shit in the store
| and eat it in the bar if they weren't entitled about it.)
|
| If you're selling that you can make cool stuff, software wise?
| Try more academic conferences. A lot of people would kill for a
| decent software engineer, it can be _extremely_ hit or miss with
| academic CS types, they often would love people who can do stuff
| like set up a limesurvey server or whip up a nice looking static
| site for their lab or do really basic stuff like make R scripts
| to automate stuff done in the opendocument equivalent of excel...
|
| But no course, book, or framework for outbound sales will _ever_
| Trump face to face interaction. A lot of companies discount who
| being the "cool guy at the conference" can lead to sales...
| especially as people age (because again, I said go for authentic
| gatherings, not sport coat fests).
|
| Over time, if you combine being friendly with having something of
| value, sales will happen -- those in person leads will be your
| most valuable IMHO.
| wek wrote:
| I'd recommend learning from Jason Lemkin at SAAStr and from Jen
| Abel. She did two great podcasts with Lenny on Lenny's Podcasts.
| samsolomon wrote:
| Hard question to answer without more details, but I've got a bit
| of general guidance for B2B sales:
|
| * Know your ideal customer (ICP)--or have a decent idea. Find
| companies that match that profile.
|
| * Find the right people at those companies. Go on Linkedin and
| find 3-6 people you think could be decision makers at that
| company.
|
| * Research those people and figure out how your solution might
| work for them (RHO).
|
| * Reach out to those people. Communicate what you think their
| pain point might be and how your solution will help them. Try and
| get them to agree to a discovery call.
|
| * If they are interested, you'll need to figure out who the
| decision makers are for buying. If the timing is bad, ask when
| they renew and reach out again 3-6mos to see how their currents
| solution is treating them. If they aren't interested, DQ them and
| move on. Guarding your time here is valuable.
|
| I'm assuming you're a founder or early on. The other comments
| around MEDDPICC, MEDDICC and other sales methodologies are worth
| a look, but may be over optimizing if you're still trying to win
| your first deal.
|
| A bit of background--I was one of the first product designers
| hired at Salesloft. I've spent a decade building software for
| sellers.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'd watch Glengarry Glen Ross.
| warthog wrote:
| There was an old legendary HN comment around the following
| concept:
|
| "All things being equal, people buy from their friends. So just
| make more friends"
|
| If you are confident of your services, just make more friends.
| Talk to people more. If it is too salesly already, you lost the
| conversation. Instead try and learn about their lives. I
| sometimes even open up with "No agenda to sell, genuinely
| curious"
|
| Note: If anyone finds the link to the comment, please drop it
| here to credit the author.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I found too many sources in Google, one from 1997, but I can't
| find the origin of it.
| mekoka wrote:
| Could it be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23285438
| jameslk wrote:
| Cold sales/outbound sales is dying or mostly dead. SaaS platforms
| and "growth ops" that made it easy to set up sales sequences and
| find ICP lists helped kill it. AI making it easy to personalize
| and do all the work has been the nail in the coffin
|
| This is because sales is a zero sum game. When everyone can do
| something at scale, like send an email sequence, nobody wins. Now
| inboxes are flooded with spam that get deleted and phones go
| straight to voicemail because people have learned it's not worth
| it. You can try to create even bigger lists to capture some 0.01%
| that will respond, but that's a shrinking game and many B2B
| companies don't have the market size for it
|
| Instead, for my company and others I know, we've returned to old
| fashioned human relationships that don't scale as easily.
| Building partnerships, asking for warm introductions,
| conferences, networking, events, hell I even know of someone who
| knocks on doors for B2B and it works for them. People ignore spam
| from bots but they'll listen to real humans. They'll read emails
| and take phone calls from people they know. It's about trust now,
| not scale
|
| I'd still recommend learning closing and everything needed for
| once a deal is in your pipeline. I think a book like Founding
| Sales is good for that, if a bit dated now (skip the stuff about
| cold sales in the first half of the book). Never Split the
| Difference for negotiation. For in person sales, this is
| basically what anyone in partnerships and outer sales do. I don't
| know of resources on that. I'm learning from friends who do that
| and old fashioned searching
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Conferences are huge. We've done 5 tradeshow demos for our
| clients in the last 10 months.
|
| I agree with you about the zero sum, once you've seen the first
| hyper personalised email that says they really like your
| commitment to x, the rest are all the same.
| rkpandey wrote:
| We have hit channel exhaustion in B2B the way we hit it few years
| ago for B2C. The key is to build unified data assets and go
| multi-channel (email, linked, call). Nurturing prospects go a
| long way. Familiarity helps a lot in driving sales decisions.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Read "the terrifying art of finding customers" by Collin Stewart
|
| Very few know more about outbound than he does, and that book is
| recent.
|
| My two cents: It's unlikely you can make outbound work for a
| custom software dev studio unless you go extremely niche and have
| a way to target customers with relevant needs. The more broad
| your services the more new business depends on trust, and
| outbound has the lowest trust context of all top of funnel
| sources. What works best for dev shops is word of mouth.
|
| Maybe consider a referral program.
|
| Anything that can greatly boost trust when prospects learn about
| you.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Friendly suggestion to read (and study) The Ultimate Sales Letter
| by Dan Kennedy. In addition to anything else you do. Guy is a
| prick. But, he's a prick who has made me $$$.
| gist wrote:
| Your website (luniv.tech) is (for lack of a better way to put it)
| 'all over the place'. You are (from what I can tell) a 1 person
| operation. Nothing wrong with that. But you should try to focus
| on at most 3 things that you can do well and cut your site down
| to talking about those 3 things. Then (despite what everyone here
| seems to be telling you) you should cold outreach to people who
| can use those items and learn from the failure (and rejection).
| If you keep at it you will get results (and you will learn).
|
| Also register and use lunivtech.com as your website (it's open
| now). Don't use .tech as your primary domain.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| This book has some often overlooked insights :
|
| Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
|
| ISBN 0241242533
| pajop wrote:
| try outreachmagic dot io
| wheelerwj wrote:
| Hey man, im in a similar game in a different part of the
| country.email me if you want to connect, i can share how ive
| failed and a couple things that worked. A high level, i agree
| with outbound not being the correct strategy if you're not in
| eastern europe or south america.
| gervwyk wrote:
| Same here, would love to share experiences. From South Africa.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Having spent some time in outbound sales (after tech burn-out),
| the most important aspect (as many comments say) is
| "relationships". The best training for that is to go out and make
| them. We had sales training every single day, so it's really not
| something you can pick up a book or go to a weekend class and
| walk away being effective. That said, books and classes are a
| good way to find your footing.
|
| _Never Eat Alone_ - Keith Ferrazzi (networking & relationship
| building)
|
| _Never Sit in the Lobby_ - Glenn Poulos (sales & relationships)
|
| _Getting to Yes_ - Roger Fisher (negotiation, particularly
| "principled negotiation")
|
| _The Joy of Selling_ - Steve Chandler
|
| _The Psychology of Selling_ - Brian Tracy
|
| In one of our quarterly division training, our office manager
| gave us Dale Carnegie _How to Win Friends and Influence People_
| and were told if we learned nothing else, to study that book.
|
| It's been over a decade since my sales time, but the 2 sales
| techniques I haven't forgotten are: "selling ins't telling" and
| "feel, felt, found". As you can imagine, they are about relating
| to people, not giving technical/spec speeches.
|
| It's something you have to practice everyday, make sales a part
| of your job title -- not simply something you do on top of
| running the company. An integrated layer no different than other
| software maintenance task, except the maintenance is the
| relationships with people you want to sell to.
|
| For any other tech types that may someday find they need sales
| skills, I highly recommend actual job experience in outbound
| sales (with a company that provides frequent sales training). It
| was a massive culture shock that gave me the professional people
| and relationship skills I struggled with.
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