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Ask HN: How to learn to sell?
355 points by rasulkireev on Oct 16, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 150 comments
Hey HN,

I am a solo founder that just finished writing code for my project (MVP) and am ready to find clients.

- for the sake of the question, my clients will be small physical businesses. Think, Family Doctor's Office, Local Cafe, Small barber, etc.

I will be developing a blog for SEO purposes and doing other things to promote my business online. However, I believe the key to success here will be "Cold Sales". I have never done that before. So, if you could recommend a book, a blog post, other online resources, or you just have a random advice that I could learn from, I would be very thankful.

Suffice it to say I will be starting out ASAP, even though I don't know anything. I believe practice is the best teacher. However, if there are any resources that could help me get up and running quicker that would be awesome. Thanks a ton in advance.




Hi there - one of the few pro sellers on HN here.

You're planning on prospecting into one of the most rejection-heavy domains out there with small physical business. These people get dozens of calls per day from companies they've never heard of - many of whom are trying to rip them off - and even the best ones (Groupon, Yelp, google ads, etc.) are basically just rent-seeking. Oh, and most have gatekeepers who don't care the slightest bit about your pitch.

Because of that I'd stay away from all this "smile and dial" advice. You'll have no chance. Go out there and hit the pavement and meet these people at their establishments at off hours. If you catch the owner in there at a good time - do your best to inform them of your products benefits and come up with a really good offer to get started (something that loses you money and time). Free Trial, free month of services, whatever makes sense based on the context of your business. The goal is NOT to make money or build a book of business at this point - it's to get a person happy with your software to sell to later.

If the owner is too busy or whatever - have some stuff printed out for them to read later that you can drop off. Ideally with a small gift (coffee, food, candy, etc.) and come back in a few weeks to see if you catch them at a better time (again with a gift, until they talk).

A solid entry level book would be Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount.

Good Luck.

*edit to fix book name


I would recommend a slight verbiage change from "owners" to "decision makers" - depending on the industry and such, of course. I often end up gatekeeping on behalf of the owners of the business(es) I work for because they are far too busy/uninterested in random people trying to sell (legitimately useful) products and services, simply because the owners aren't necessarily the ones who would be the best point of contact for demos and the like.

If you're trying to sell us a new software platform, you want to talk to our IT and Finance decision makers. If you're trying to sell us magazine/trade journal subscriptions, you want to talk to our Supply Chain/Marketing/Safety decision makers. If you're trying to sell us a physical product you'll want to talk to our Procurement/Operations/Production decision makers. And so on.

The owners of any given business might need to be involved later on, but they are rarely the best people to talk to up front if you're trying to sell something.


Was coming here to reply: Fanatical Prospecting - start there. Glad it is in the top comment mentions.

Good book to get a solid base on all the sales jargon and learning the generic sales cycle that applies to all products and services and businesses. It’s legit The Bible for all AEs/BDRs, I’ve even heard hiring managers / HR people say to potential candidates to read that book before applying for a sales role as the X Sales Manager / VP really applies the philosophy in their team(s).


Just stumbled upon this tweet by agazdecki on some more sales and marketing book recs for SaaS businesses: https://archive.is/w0cWU | https://nitter.net/agazdecki/status/1581808915515207681


Do you have a good cheat sheet of all the finding/insights?


^^ would be interested in this (if it exists). I’ve tried scraping Google for PDFs in the past using terms like: cheatsheet, sales cycle, flow chart(s), checklist(s), etc. and haven’t really found anything that puts it all together simply and concisely. The /sales et al. subreddits have some gems occasionally, but seems like a lot of the "sales-related" stuff falls behind paywalls and gatekeepers, squeeze pages and landing pages with CTAs involving buying recycled courses or resources attached to X pseudo sales guru (more like furus) trying to sell you hot trash.

As someone who has always held a beat on the technical side things (with limited practical skills) and advancements, decent understanding of industry and market shifts, BUT who has always opted to be involved in the more client-facing roles and duties, front office business development ops side of things, I find there’s limited "high quality" resources or even discussion board settings where the science behind selling or business development in general is properly highlighted.

Heck, even formal academia is lacking in this department. We’ve recently seen the rise in Entrepreneurship-type undergrad programs / minors, which seem to be getting more optimized as time goes on, churning out good talent and individuals executing quickly on their ideas, but again, seems like sales in general is something overlooked, at first glance.

I notice this also with the who’s hiring-type posts as well, there has to be 1000s of "fine-tuned" AEs/sales OPS, VPs, etc. that browse this board, which no doubt is meant to cater to the devs and engineers, but I am hopeful eventually the niche will carve itself out. Every firm hiring devs is almost always hiring for sales roles.

My experience and observations have led me to understand that early stage startups usually secure their "business development" talent in early hires (like executives or VPs) with extensive experience in scaling operations with the hope to eventually start adding reps or defining territories, etc. but I foresee this tide changing soon as we enter this era of M&A/IB/"high finance" shift to restructurings, divestitures and spin offs for a lot of the bleeding tech sector and less actual M&A/vertical integration activity.

Private equity firms (who might end up being responsible for the incoming bust cycle - just need to Google things like "private equity will be the cause of the next recession" or "PE ruined X industry" to find books and posts on the topic) who are notorious for focusing on leaning out orgs and "trimming the fat" might have to begin including added sales ops to their early expenses on their roadmaps if they want to remain competitive and keep the numbers healthy for their investors.

More capital will have to go back into revenue generating operations and expenses, imo and traditional ones at that, such as business development talent vs. marketing. The more money your bus. dev people make, the more $ your firm is making. There’s a direct correlation there, since they work for commissions, not their base salaries and performance (%) adjusted annual bonuses.


As someone who as an admin was a gatekeeper to an individual with greater deciding power, I'll underscore the power of the small gift. A bit of candy, a plate of cookies, etc. did stick you in my mind.


Reciprocity is powerful. Be nice, generous, and act as grandma would've wanted mostly. Gratitude. Listening. And avoiding creating situations of patronizing flattery or bribery. Professional = being cool. Winternals (before being acquired by Microsoft) sent me a calendar pages / family photos flip holder. It was definitely more thoughtful than a coffee mug or generic swag.

That's another thing: swag. Make it awesome (hopefully not overpriced) and desirable because it's a statement about the venture. Like branded pens that use Mont Blanc refills.


Just remember that is as far as I know a US only thing.

You'll be embarrassing yourself in most western countries with the swag/gifts approach.


Vendors typically send swag like coffee mugs, T-shirt, or cookies around the holidays to their valued customers. Nothing much but it's obviously an opportunity to gently ping the customer mid sales cycle. In the US, vendors typically take prospective customers (leads) out to above-average meals for business meetings. It's transparent but both the sales person and the prospect are getting a treat on the vendor's client entertainment budget. Would you say "no" out of rigid ethical purity or go along and still insist on more features, more due-diligence, more demos, and lower pricing?


I briefly worked at a company that sold to restaurants. Just to emphasize this: they are hammered by people dialing for dollars. So OP is competing with SDR teams running sequences through outreach.io or similar.

Realistically, OP has to develop a different sales channel. Which is both intimidating and probably more intimidating than it needs to be, because OP (likely?) isn't trying to be a billion dollar business, so doesn't need enormous scale.

One (obvious?) suggestion to investigate is conventions or the local chamber of commerce.


My uncle, who is a successful entrepreneur, was interviewed for a podcast and dropped similar wisdom 35:36 - 38:40

[C-CRETS] Black Trailblazer in American Business: A Conversation with Carlton Guthrie https://podcastaddict.com/episode/146606084


Listening to this right now and enjoying it.

70's Harvad MBA, extensive experience in corporate and consultancy side moved to automotive related manufacturing based in Detroit.

> They can teach a rock how to sell.

I wonder what SAAS company has that type of approach to sales these days. Everyone SAAS sales job out there wants 2-3 years of sales experience even for entry level hires.


There's a reason that people still employ door to door salesmen: most people don't like to reject people in person. It's why you normally buy your new roof from a guy you just met and have so much trouble firing employees who used to be good but have fallen off the wagon.


On one hand, you're absolutely right that we hate to reject people in person. I mean, heck, I avoid entering small gift shops in tourist towns if I don't have cash on me, as I hate letting them down in their expectation of sale!

At the same time, I've learned to never ever ever engage salespeople in person; I've been conditioned to assume they're 100% scam. The friendliest most honest face offering to clean my ducts or redo my driveway, the smiley nerdy guy offering discounts on internet from local Bell, the supremely trust worthy kids asking for your support of charity... or to your point the guy who's "in the neighbourhood, and can give me a discount on the roof since machinery is already here" -- literally every one of them I would read in the news few weeks later as the latest local fraud scheme.

With heavy heart, I reject all cold calls & cold visits. I may ask for their website and details to check if they're legit, and possibly maybe reach back at a stable phone or email address. But, I'm said to say, I've been thoroughly conditioned by the environment to reject cold-calls :<


My partner worked as a waitress and had to kick out sales people all the time. It's amazing how many people want to sell stuff to restaurants and show up to "talk to the boss". Of course the boss had work to do and didn't want to see any salespeople...


Ooo, that was their first mistake. Rules for selling to restaurants: (1) go 3 hours before they open on a non busy weekday (eg Tuesday-Thursday) and knock on the back door (or just walk in!). If a breakfast place, buy a coffee just after the morning rush (9:30), then proceed to step (2).

(2) say to the first person you see, “are you the owner/manager?”

(3) either get directed to them immediately or get their phone number

(4) have a 1-2 minute pitch , either deliver directly or on the phone.

(5) if they really do seem to have time and interest keep selling. Otherwise schedule a followup for more info if they are interested

If (4) fails, try again in 1-2 months.


I would escort you off the property with extreme prejudice.

This is slimy. Don't do this.


I came home on Friday to a fake postal slip indicating I had missed a delivery I was not expecting. I called the provided number and provided the “code” to be offered an ADT sales pitch.

THAT is slimy.

Asking to speak with folks the old fashioned way seems quaint to the point that I genuinely am appalled by your harshness here…

EDIT: I asked my wife, a restaurant manager of some 15 years and former chef… this is exactly how folks both make sales pitches and seek work if they do not have an “in” already. This is not slimy, it’s normal course of business.


For reference, yeah it was the "walk in the back door" part that is slimy.

Walk in the _front_ door, that's where the public entrance is, and you are a member of the public. Not to mention that having someone unauthorized walking around in the back-of-house is a security risk.


>Asking to speak with folks the old fashioned way seems quaint to the point that I genuinely am appalled by your harshness here…

I think it was the "just slip through the back door!" part which is more than fair. I turn around with a sharp blade and your dumb ass is standing there and now both our lives are over.


Yeah right like he was saying to sneak up behind the chef quietly lol


I think he meant 'knock on the back door (or just walk in through the main entrance)' and not to just walk in through the back door


That makes a lot more sense.


When we were office based, I had a few encounters with salesmen,who managed to negotiate entry into restricted areas of the building,etc. Once, I was walking past the CEO's office and suddenly this guy appears out of nowhere looking to speak to someone. I walked him out, but I always wondered who the hell buys from them when they just pop in like nothing.


It doesn't have to work every time, or even the majority of the time. If it works 1 time out of 10, they'll keep doing it.


Yeah "talk to the boss" is how spam worked before email

Thanks but no thanks


BlueTie is there any way I can get in touch with you? Agreed, Fanatical Prospecting is essential reading. And live prospecting for those types of offices is a good way to go initially and a reason why pharmaceutical sales reps do the same. They stop by, chat up gatekeepers and give them gifts. Gatekeepers love the ones with good gifts (fancy pens, desk sets, tickets, etc.), which those companies with their huge margins have the budgets for (I don’t suggest spending on costly gifts).


Fanatical Prospecting

Should be the book name (I just tried to find it)


Nice catch. Fixed.


To be frank you've already committed the classic blunder of developer initiated startups. You built before you sold. Now there's no telling if what you built is what anyone wants.

IMHO, and extrapolating a lot here it's very unlikely you will get any sale based off your MVP. It's unlikely that you've hit the right market fit without first having found customer #1.

So I'd back up a step and find someone with the problem you're trying to solve. Offer the deal of a custom built solution to meet their need. Once that's built and validated that it actually solves the problem then start selling to others.


^ This. Exactly this.

By committing to building BEFORE you know what to build, you may have invested a lot of time to just get "NO". Stop what you're doing right now and go and talk to 20 people who might be customers and DO NOT PITCH them. Find out their problems and explore from there.


You're saying "may have" but then advising them to throw it away and guarantee it was a waste of time? At least they can test it out. Learning from mistakes requires feedback.

Rather than avoiding pitching at all costs, perhaps they could find more sympathetic advisers to evaluate their product then iterate from there. Like relatives or friendly small investors who know the business.


> advising them to throw it away and guarantee it was a waste of time?

I didn't say "throw it away" or make any guarantees, let alone claim it "was a waste of time." I didn't even use those words so I suspect you're responding to someone else.

Regardless, he needs to stop and figure out if he's pointing in the right direction. At the moment, he could be 1% correct or 99% correct but he doesn't know and THAT is his sole job atm.


> DO NOT PITCH them.

+1. Try to pitch me and I will use every skill i know to get away. DO NOT PITCH before you are 100% sure you know me.


It's not a blunder 100% of the time. Sometimes non tech people need to see it working before they understand.


Assuming the founder knows the problem non tech people have, which in practice doesn't happen except in very very very rare cases.


It's an "if you have to ask..." situation. The people who understand the problem likely come from the business world they're trying to sell to and their question would be more specific, or they wouldn't need to ask in the first place.


Any b2b solution you need to demonstrate to a user for them to understand it is going to be very tough and expensive to sell.

If a user is not actively looking for your solution because they don't know they have a problem, you're going to have to educate them which is quite expensive and not quite the right fit for a solo founder.


Perhaps. As long as they didn't put $1m and 8000 hours into it.

You do have to have a tangible demo to demonstrate value rather than wax the virtues and amazing features of imaginary vaporware.


Yep, exactly my thoughts!


It's not entirely a blunder but OP should consider the MVP as almost a straw man. Don't be precious about how you've designed it and don't be shocked when customers say this is not at all what they need. Having a prototype could still be invaluable for eliciting feedback.


In fact, I'd open with a pitch along those lines. "I'm looking for feedback on a work in progress... gathering requirements, tweaking the workflow, that sort of thing. It's not something that you'd find useful right now, but if I could get some input based on your specific business needs/business model, I think we'd both find it valuable."

Without some kind of MP to show, whether it's V or not, all you're offering is hot air and wasted time. If they speak to you at all, the decisionmaker will want to know what makes you think you're qualified to develop the product. If you don't have an awesome answer for that, you're done.

Much better to have something that serves as a conversation piece, even if it's just a mockup.


I wouldn't build a solution for the first interested prospect. Since he has an MVP but product market fit is unknown I would try to set up say 25 appointments using a consultative sales approach. If you can do that many 20min calls, face to face appointments or whatever and put yourself in the mindset of genuinely evaluating whether your product helps the prospect or not, at the end you'll know if this MVP is the right thing to sell or needs to be changed.

You need a lot of calls like maybe even more than 25 if the market is segmented, cause you might be right for one segment but not others.


1. It could be a huge mistake I built a whole startup around my business idea. The reality is that the code was simple, it took me ~2 week of not too involved coding. So, if it doesn't pan out, it's not like I wasted a ton of time or money.

2. It could very well be the case that no one needs my solution to a problem that I have (perhaps) imagined. However, if the problem does exist, I thought it would be better to be able to show the prototype as to how it would solve their problem.


There is a lot of truth to this. Find "design partners" early in the process and build the MVP for them. After several iterations of making requests and providing feedback that you action on, they're a lot more willing to buy, especially if you give them a sweetheart discount.

Unless it's some sort of bauble or obviously useful tool to them, I think it'll be difficult to sell MVP without any of their input.


This.

Also, the market segment ("small physical businesses") seems too large for an MVP.


This


There's a difference between marketing and sales. You're building a solution to a problem. Marketing is about getting people who have the problem to know your solution exists. Sales is about convincing them to pay money to solve the problem.

If you built the MVP but don't have customers yet, you should already have some people in mind who suffer from the problem your solution is supposed to solve. Selling is then just a conversation that loosely follows the following steps:

  (a) Ask if they still have the problem
  (b) Ask if your proposed solution solves their problem
  (c) Ask them to spend money to buy your solution
Note that every step starts with "ask". This means that you need to listen to their response. If they don't still have the problem, walk away. If your proposed solution doesn't solve their problem, listen to why not, and focus on improving your product until it does solve their problem (hopefully in a generic way such that your improvements will help you sell to other customers in the future). If they aren't willing to spend the price you're asking to buy a solution that they consider to be a solution to a problem they have, then find a way to add more value so that they will be willing to pay that price.


There is always a current pain in every business, or they would not need employees and could replace all operations with AI and robots. It's the promise given by the comfort of removing the pain and the increased power and acceleration of their business is what business people want.

Marketing is explaining the problem and educating about the solution.

Advertising is raising awareness.

Sales is convincing individual customers to spend money. This is difficult to scale but is sometimes necessary.

When possible, automate sales and marketing in pleasant, self-service SaaS apps and work legitimate influencers to advertise. Specialized B2B Fortune 500 solutions usually need sales. SMB B2B apps usually shouldn't try to scale using salespeople because the ROI isn't there.


I agree with this and have 2 book recommendations to help with marketing and sales.

For marketing, I recommend Traction by the founders of Duck Duck Go. It gives a practical guide to tons of different marketing channels and when each one is appropriate https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

For sales, I recommend How You Make the Sale. It's a general sales book no matter if you're selling software, services, or physical goods and it does a great job of walking you through the sales process and where it overlaps with the buying process. It also helps reframe a lot of the "scary" parts of sales like objections as "requests for more information". Highly recommend for technical people who are new to sales https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Sale-Frank-McNair/dp/1402204....


Exactly. Sales is solving other people's problems, which we find out about by asking a key question or three, and then listening. IF we have a good fit, we see if the other person is even interested in resolving the problem. THEN we explore the possible value to them, which will assist in price negotiations.


Selling to small businesses can take almost as much effort as selling to mid-sized or enterprise companies and your price point will be much smaller. It also takes about as much effort (or more) to support small businesses. I sold ecommerce software to small business for more than a decade and in retrospect, I should have charged 10x the price and sold to the bigger customers. Automation and scale will be your friend if you're selling to smaller businesses. You may need in-person sales at first to get feedback from your customers and make sure what you've built has product-market fit. Once you're reasonably sure you have a market that gets value from buying your software, think about automating as much of the sales funnel as possible. Buy email and mailing lists. Google Ads. Social Media ads. Whatever can scale and work 24/7 for you because your time is finite. A/B test your sales pitches and narrow down language that resonates with your customers.


Most important advice (and you can see it repeated here) is that you need to be used to rejection. An average developer might get never get a PR fully rejected -- a well oiled sales team expects to close only 1/3rd of their sales qualified leads. If you're starting from cold calls, you will be lucky to close <1% of your outreach, prepare for that mentally.

But also (again repeated in other comments) you aren't selling a tool, you're looking for their problems, try to understand them in their words and then show how giving you money makes them go away (it doesn't have to all be solved with software, your skills in setting up the system can be just as valuable).

Happy to talk more if you aren't comfortable discussing in a public forum: dave@demogorilla.com (we make software to make remote SaaS demos better: https://www.demogorilla.com)


I highly recommend the Dale Carnegie Sales course which is once a week for IIRC six or eight weeks.

When I took it long ago the class included me (enterprise SW sales for my startup), a woman selling chip fab equipment for KLA-Tencor (24-36 month sales cycle with ASP above $100MM), a woman selling ADT home alarm systems, and two guys who had opened a T-shirt stand on the beach (sales cycle <10 min with ASP of $20). We all got the same lesson and all learned a lot from each other. A very hands on class and you bring to each class how you used the lessons during the preceding week. One of the best investments I ever made.

The stages a customer goes through (whether over 5 minutes or 25 months) are “attention, interest, conviction, desire and close”. The first time I met one of the best sales guys I have ever known, when he changed PowerPoints during a presentation displayed this desktop, and his wallpaper was just those words. Even at his high level he lived them.


I actually just saved a tweet this weekend that lays it out really simply: https://twitter.com/janvmusscher/status/1581254065274892289?...

“Huge clarity if you structure your sales call like this:

> Uncover where they are now (A)

> Uncover where they want to go (B)

> Uncover what's stopping them (C)

Then pitch your offer as the solution to C”


From what I've read:

If you haven't got C, either build the missing parts (assuming that the customer is the right one) [0], or find another customer [1].

If you realise they don't really need B that much, then no amount of sales is going to help you [2]. Time to pivot based on A or find a new B?

[0] Chasm crossing - A Pennarun, https://archive.is/cHeKx

[1] Users you don't want - M Seibel, https://archive.is/tCCLa

[2] Making something people want - T Blomfield, https://archive.is/8IDcl


That's a great summary. Personally, I'd add just one more before the pitch:

(D) Uncover how amazing their future would be, if they could resolve what's stopping them

You want them to be articulating the implications of a solution — i.e., the benefits — so that they really feel the need. Then you don't even have to pitch that hard; you just gently offer your solution to resolve the need they're actively feeling. (As a bonus, you also get to hear the benefits in their words. That lets you use those words to refine your sales pitch for the next prospect.)

Anyway, these 4 steps are really just a Twitter-ified version of SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham [1] — a book which, despite its age and its title, is a very good sales book.

(The reason its so good is because it's one of the only ones that uses actual data. They studied many actually successful salespeople, identified the patterns and formed hypotheses about what works, then taught that to new/struggling salespeople to validate their hypotheses. The SPIN acronym is the mnemonic for what they found.)

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/00705111...


My 2 cents... you need to start doing cold sales and it'll be very difficult as you'll get flat-out rejected 95/100 times.

Learning about sales will feel more productive and in your comfort zone but you should start by going out there and talking to customers. Get out of your comfort zone.

I'd start by going door-to-door so you can start gathering feedback from SMBs and get a sense of the true ICP. Once you've closed ~10 clients this way then you should consider using a sales engagement platform like Outreach, Hubspot or Salesloft which will automate the cold email to call. If it's a 1-call close type sale, then you can use something like https://www.mojosells.com/. You can buy lists from Zoominfo or otherwise.

That all said, any type of human-centered sales motion in North America will require a minimum annual contract value of $10,000/yr to scale up.


* > I believe the key to success here will be "Cold Sales" *

100% correct.

1. Get a demo ready that you can show on a laptop. Focus on features.

2. Smile and dial. Set a meeting with the business owner or manager to show the demo.

3. Listen. The things they say (mostly objections) will guide your product development.

4. Accept rejection. You will get meetings from 10% of your calls. You will make sales on 2% of your meetings if the customer even needs the product.

Reading is a good way to forestall the heartache of actual sales, but that's it. Everything you need to know you'll learn in meetings.


OP please do not focus on features, focus on benefits that address bite sized tangible pain points.

To be honest you're not going to get far smiling and dialling either. After a week you'll be burnt out and miserable.


I would put Listen on top of the list before anything in sales. The colder the sales get, the harder it gets and the better you need to listen. Give your product away, for free to each and every SME you know. Demo it, let them use it, and get many, many feedback rounds.

Also, look at other angles to approaching market segments. Door to door sales in non primary products just isn’t feasible at scale. The conversion rate is too small. Remember that many SME pretty much shit on their software, but they got it via their IT-support, or bookkeeper/ accountant or professional association. Those are angles to sell that could get you a better effort to conversion ratio.


Don’t just accept rejection, but learn to thrive on it. That is the secret of sales.


How do you thrive on rejection? Genuinely want to learn.


General steps -

1. First, disassociate. Most of the time, rejection is about the subject (doing the rejection) being closed to something new rather than some notion of the object (of the rejection) being undesirable.

2. Gain confidence in the object. Understand that the object has its own merits. The object isn't undesirable, rather, you're looking for subjects who appreciate what the object has to offer. That a given subject doesn't appreciate the object, has no bearing on the object. Move on and find other potential subjects.

3. As potential subjects polarize and reject the object for reasons that are to be expected - because the object is what it is, and does not attempt to be what is not - recognize rejection as an affirmation of the object's qualities.

Most of the loop between (2) and (3) is about improving the clarity of communication, such that subjects do not make mistaken rejections, either because (a) the values of the object are not clear to the subjects or (b) the unsuitability of the subject is not clear to the object.


The goal is fast streamlined rejection. You want an enormous list of well defined rejections. Doing one more isn't a challenge. Getting rejected faster, more efficiently, more accurately and for better reasons.

Pretend you run their business, would the product be as useful as it was designed to be? To answer that question you need some information.

If your software is going to be super useful for an event that happens only 1 time per year and doesn't take much time to do manually you don't have to wait for them to explain this to you in their complex polite way.

If it is useful to them, can they afford locking themselves into the service? What happens if the product is discontinued? What will it cost to clean up behind you?

If there is a way out and they cant afford it you can still gain a free user but it might be better not to.

Every second you spend is a second not spend on the next prospect who might badly need your product. You want to waste as little of their time as necessary, when the task is completed it is completed for both parties. The goal was to figure out if it fits. When done you thank them for successfully completing the task.

You have to dial down your clock cycle to their working speed. It is your moment of relaxation. The real work is moving between such interactions as fast as humanly possible.


Another commenter put it well, disassociate.

This is REALLY hard when you built the thing you are selling by the way.

This is the main reason why it is often good to have a salesperson working with you that doesn't take the ego hit when the product is rejected, because they didn't build it themselves.

Be aware of that. It's hard and one way you can get stuck is to not find a way to get past that.


Depending on how the rejection was given, you can use it to recalibrate your methods or presentation. Avoid "sour grapes" mentality.


if the idea of getting rejected is a major problem for you, you need to hire someone else to do this for you


Don't try to sell something useless.


>Focus on features

NO

EDIT: If you are a programmer, please do not give this guy your advice on selling. Seriously, you are sabotaging him and it's not cool


haha, not going to focus on features, I promise :D


I would recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini.

And I would look for influential people and organizations instead of cold calling. You wont get 1% of deals closed. It will be closer, much closer, to 0% and you will feel like a failure.

Instead, seek out organizations and people who actively help the businesses you are helping. Small Biz associations, chambers of commerce. These wont be content creators nor "influencers" but rather gate keepers and influential organizations.

Selling to people who are actively looking for solutions is infinitely easier than cold calling.


So I faced/facing the same issue.

In general before you do any sale you need leads. I.e. you problem is not selling, but prospecting. I.e. you need prospects at the top of the funnel.

There is very good book - "fanatical prospecting" :

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fanatical+prospecting

So your first step is to raise awareness of your product.

To do that there are two way - inbound (blogs,etc) and outbound(cold call / cold email). For inbound, you need to provide value to customers which are not related to your product. I.e. first earn trust and give value.

For outbound, the key is lead filtering, I.e. looks for signals that would qualify your leads (e.g. sector, traffic). But in general outbound is a numbers game.


Remember that you want to sell your product, but your clients just want to resolve the problems they have.

So don't look at it as selling - reframe it internally as wanting to find businesses where you can genuinely help them and resolve some of their issues, and then work with the business to solve the problem they have.


This is a very subtle but great point to start off.

"How can I sell my software?"

Vs.

"How can I help these folks out?"


fwiw, during my tech support days, I "sold" more by never trying to sell anything because I had no interest in it. What I was interested in was problems, and seeing me solving their problems with the different tools our company had made a ton of sales apparently.

So agree with the above; don't try to convince them they want your product, figure out their issues and exactly how your product solves those issues


I had a funny where I apparently sold a lot of stuff years after I left.


No more books, no more blog posts and nothing teaches as you speak to a few customers first.

Go and meet 20 customers and learn what they do and how you can solve them.

Then come back and read whatever you want to read now and it will everything makes sense.


Yeah, that's the plan. Figure some things out for myself and then learn on the "Best Practices" to improve.


I'd recommend "To Sell is Human" by Daniel Pink: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others-e...

I'm a product-focused founder. I read this a few years ago when starting out with selling my company's product, and it helped me reframe sales as something essential to most of our jobs in the knowledge economy.

There's a compelling argument that persuasion and storytelling are core human activities, rather than the domain of extroverted "salespeople". Adopting that mental model was just as useful for me as learning the tactics of how to be effective at sales.


Choose a tiny niche. Solve their problem.

"Family Doctor's Office, Local Cafe, Small barber, etc." This is already too broad. Choose one.

Suppose you've chosen "small barber." Now narrow down further to "small barber seattle." Now narrow down further to "small barber, Seattle, Belltown."... And then... Narrow down further: small barber, Seattle, Belltown, men's beard trimming."

Now go physically talk to both of these people.

If they don't want your MVP, your MVP or vertical is wrong.

Write zero code.


My first narrowing down is the locality. I will start off with businesses in m area. Second narrowing is the Google Ratings. I will target location that have ~4 stars to help them improve that. Then I will start narrowing down on business type.


I would actually say that you have gone about the process in the wrong order. That is to say, you should start off by talking to your clients /first/. Figure out what their problems are. Collect all of that.

Then, come up with a concept tailored directly to their problems. You probably need no more than a 1-3 slide deck to show this to them and figure out whether the concept is desired by your end customer.

Finally, and only once you've validated that the concept is desired by your end customer, you build the product.

The problem with doing it in the order you've mentioned, is what happens when you go and show your product to a customer and they say "Nope, I don't actually have an issue which your product solves. Thanks but no thanks."

Sales is the beginning, middle and end of your journey as a founder. Building the product only comes in over time once you've found something worth selling.


As a founder myself, I’d say this is one of the best resources how to sell for early-stage B2B startups https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...


> I will be developing a blog for SEO purposes

Your blog will suck and it won't sell. People are getting really tired of this.

I'll stray from the usual advice and recommend what worked for me: brutal, disinterested honesty. People are weary of hucksters, and will sign blank cheques to the guy who offers straightforward, unbiased advice.

I've had enough of sales early on, and chose to be a honest broker. This guy wrote a great piece about it: https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-brok...


What is more valuable to you right now? Sales, or feedback that will help you improve your product and its positioning?

Don't let anything (e.g. lack of the right approach) keep you from listening to people.

Only after you've spoken with 10-20 people will the advice in sales books (Founding Sales, SPIN Selling etc.) be valuable.

If, after hearing what those 10-20 people have to say, you've decided to focus on changing your product instead of selling what you have, you might try to implement the steps in "The Mom Test".

Disclaimer: random advice on the internet. Take it with a pinch of salt!


Sales is three things:

  - Sourcing. Figuring out where your customers' hangout so you can reach them there.
  - Prospecting. Reaching out to your potential customer base.
  - Closing. Going through with a deal including sales collateral, proposals, and contracts.
The entire process should be a system that is tweaked as you execute it. Great books I’ve read are:

  - Ultimate Sales Machine
  - Sales EQ
  - Fanatical prospecting
  - Challenger sale. For the actual closing process
  - The Close.com blog is pretty great.


this just isn't true

for b2b it really boils down to the following:

data

distribution/marketing

discovery

closing

data is challenging for most companies

distribution is somewhat challenging and very challenging if your offer sucks

discovery is easy - it's a formula

closing is extremely hard and costly to get someone who can do it by definition


You haven’t told us what problem you are trying to solve. I’m afraid most of the advice you are going to get will be generic.

I’ve started and sold some businesses (had to shut two down)

Business #1 I have experience with outbound/inbound marketing and online marketing. Outbound marketing is the toughest. In my experience, people don’t like to be sold. They will most often just ignore you. I did have success with inbound marketing (Google Ads, SEO, referral) and was able to acquire more than 100+ small businesses as customers, but I had to put in a lot of work and hire sales people to close the deal. The sales cycle are long and slow. After that point on, I decided I’m never going to do offline sales.

Business #2 For my next businesses, an e-commerce store, I used Facebook/Instagram ads to generate $1M in sales.

Business #3 Created an add-on product for a company, partnered with them, built a relationship, sold the venture after 3 years and I still get royalties on sales.

Business #4 A plugin for a CMS, focused on SEO and the venture generates closes to $7k/m like clockwork.

So yeah, the sales strategy depends on what problem you are trying to solve, where your customers live, what’s the most efficient way to reach them, and so many other factors.

If you have specific questions, I’d be happy to answer them.


No substitute to getting out and actually doing the sell but this book will get you tons of ammunition to make your offer bullet proof. Don't go by the title. It has very actionable advise:

$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

https://www.amazon.com/100M-Offers-People-Stupid-Saying-eboo...


I had sales training in a "seven dwarves" computer company. I quickly learned that sales wasn't for me, and switched to sales support; but I then spent a good eight years working alongside very experienced salesmen (all very unlike me, but I liked most of them a lot).

It's said salesmen are always selling themselves; I don't agree. But they're always pretty engaging company.

They taught us that a good salesman can sell anything. But that's hyperbolic; you have to know the product you're selling inside out.

They taught us to sell solutions, not features. That means (as someone said upthread) you're looking for people with problems, and you need to find out what their problems are, so you can help them.

We used to get leads by setting up stalls at exhibitions. I guess your prospects aren't the exhibition-going sort? But they probably gather somewhere; maybe you could go there.

I dropped out of sales because I couldn't cope with the dubious ethics. Not my employer, particularly; but there was an awful ot of politics, we were taught how to commit expenses fraud by our own boss, and everyone was fiddling commission. It wouldn't surprise me at all if brown envelopes exchanged hands.


Her is my story of "cold sales"

Sometime back in 90s I had a lawyer helping me to sort out some things. In a process of doing it we had to fill endless number of forms. It is very tedious and is prone to mistakes. So I sad that unless there are some legal requirements (the forms originally come in paper form from a government) I can just quickly whip out a program (thanks Borland / Delphi) that would let to enter and keep all data in a database and would print a forms on laser printer. The lawyer said that the government would not mind. So I wrote the software. It had taken me about a month and then another month was spent on lawyer testing it with real clients and me fixing some issues.

The lawyer was happy. He refunded me all the money I previously paid to him. He said that he has a list of about 600 lawyers doing similar work. He had then written very nice cover letter and we stuffed 600 envelopes with that letter and demo version of the software on a floppy and mailed.

This is how we did "cold sales". This whole thing ended up being success and I got very healthy chunk of cash from the lawyers as they were very happy with the product.


First impression: this is the reverse order, because you started selling the moment you chose to invest in this business idea.

You already know the value, otherwise you would not have made it. But more so, you ought to have audience already engaged before you write the first line of code, if it is a code-oriented value proposition for your brand.

Getting market share, building traction, cultivating momentum, these are all totally separate of having the product actually online. The key is the value proposition. And if you cannot get attention for that, without the product even there perhaps, you have no "yellow brick road" to travel, and sales do not make themselves. But if you get attention for something, all you have to do then is follow through on the promise of your brand, and deliver the value.

Cold sales work great when your value proposition is natural, and market is not cluttered. But I would refer you to "The Lean Brand" for the real mindset you need, no matter how you sell:

http://leanbrandbook.com/


I can recommend “How To Sell Anything” by Harry Browne. Corny title, and the content is from the 1960s. But it’s the best no-B.S. explanation of selling I’ve seen for a nerd/thinking/introvert type of person.


Go to places where those business owners hang out, and simply get to know them. Try your local Chamber of Commerce for a start. Local CPAs will know a lot of local business owners, and would be another good place to start. One way to get to know a CPA is to hire one to do your business taxes. Then take him to lunch, and talk about your business, and ask for his help.


You need to deeply understand who your potential clients are.

By that I mean where they "hangout". How you can reach them.

How? Talk to them. Build relationships. Maybe online if there are specialized forums, or maybe at the bar, or maybe by first visiting them physically. Not with an hidden agenda but with the sincere goal of helping them to solve their problems. Then you will see if your product is a great solution to their problems and if it can leads to a business relationship or if you need to iterate on your MVP.

Selling a new product is all about doing things that don't scale in order to get as much sincere feedback as possible.

Finally learn to not take rejection personally but as feedback.


Being a techy who has become a sales person over the years and running my own companies (which is the ultimate in having to sell) I can highly recommend Closing is NOT your problem (1). It cuts through the fluff and breaks down the Sales process into identifiable steps that actually allow you to spot and FIX what is wrong in any sales cycle you are doing.

1) https://www.amazon.com/Closing-Your-Problem-Lisa-Terrenzi/dp...


Has anyone here made the jump from "engineering" to "sales"?

I started as a freelance webdev and now I'm a SWE at a bigco, but I dislike being an engineer. Lately I've been questioning if I really want to do a whole career of it.

It's quite isolating that the only people I interact with during working hours are other engineers or leadership, and all we talk about is technology.

I know a lot about software and sold IT services to small businesses as a freelancer, but I have no formal SaaS sales experience.

Any former engineers turned SaaS salesmen have any advice?


Talk to any manager in sales/solutions engineering at your company, they are always desperate for people who know the product well and probably willing to train you.


Have you tried looking at adjacent roles in your bigco? e.g. sales engineer, tech evangelist, heck even technical writer team. Maybe talk to your manager to do if you could some shadowing or secondment just to see if you'll like it.


I learned to sell… by selling.

I read how to win friends and influence people and made up prompts based on that knowledge. Went out there and sucked hard for two months. And then it clicked and my business took off.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip


Good luck. Small businesses run on tight margins and there's already a massive amount of people trying to extract more out of them.

I'm willing to bet you don't add any value whatsoever to their business (tech people typically don't "get" small business with physical stores) and I don't think sales techniques will help you do anything except maybe convince unsophisticated business owners...

As someone who's run a few restaurants before, if you don't have my cell number, you're not talking to me period.


My Dad taught me to sell, in the days before computers, but what he taught me still applies today.

Don't focus on selling something. Instead, find out what it is that your contact needs (I don't call them customers at this point). Then offer to help solve that need. And hey, sometimes your contact needs something that your competitor offers instead of you. But they will remember that you were honest with them.

Nobody wants to buy from you. But everybody has something they need. In your case, you are looking for people who need a good SEO blog.

And keep in mind that you're going to hear "no" ten or twenty times before you hear a "tell me more". And it might be twenty or twenty "tell me more" before you hear a "yes". Don't get frustrated.


You're asking mostly non-sellers how to learn to sell. It might be like going to a sales conference and asking them for advice on how to get into coding.

And I think the actual answer would be similar: maybe "anyone" can learn to code, but some people are born with the knack for it. And the same is true for sales.

The blank slate theory has largely been disproven.

So do you have any indications in your background that Sales might be a promising fit for you?


The thing is that I don't like "sales people" for the most part, I don't want to listen to their advice.

I'm interested from hearing thought of other programmers / developers that created something small and were able to "sell" it. I think this advice will be much more applicable than from a "sales person".

I might be wrong, but I feel like sales people learn the wrong thing on the job. If you read other comments it seems that small businesses are getting swarmed by soul-less calls from these people that will lead nowhere. That is the exact thing I want to avoid.


There are a lot of misconceptions about sales, especially from people that don't sell. A lot of that is because Hollywood and TV enjoy presenting people as shyster salespeople.

Essentially, the first thing to remember is that you're there to help them make money. Believe that, and your job is easier. Think of yourself as someone who just found this great service and they should use it because it'll make their lives easier/better/etc.

But first, you have to find your customers. Who are they? Where are they? How do you get to them?

That's what this book is for:

https://smile.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-...

Then how do you talk to them? Why should they trust you? This is one book that might help with that:

https://smile.amazon.com/Soft-Selling-Hard-World-Persuasion/...

Small businesses are hard to reach and hard to sell to. But if you get enough of them they become an impenetrable moat that will allow you to get revenue forever.

As other people have said, you may have done stuff in the wrong order. But there are plenty of startups that have done "if you build it they will come." It just costs more. I mean, you need to sell something!

You obviously built it with a customer's needs in mind. Who was that customer? A friend? Your business? That should be part of your marketing story.

Good luck!


Looking at the comments just realised that a person asked for how to sell advice and got a bunch of comments on validation and how they will crash and burn :)

Books I recommend is: - To sell is Human - Spin selling

However as you already know, practice makes perfect. Can't learn the language by reading a vocabulary, and sales is even more tricky with emotions being in place as well as rejection. It is the most fascinating thing I've done though for 6 years. Feel free to DM if you need help, I love helping solopreneurs!


Here is a good book that was suggested to me; and I have suggested to quite a few founders. I found some topics to be dated but the overall content is simple to digest and easy to follow.

Also, Marketing and Sales are two different beast.

Founding Sales, https://www.foundingsales.com by Pete Kazanjy (I think he is here on HN too.)


How do you know they'd want it if you haven't already be talking to them face to face? A friend and I used to do this when we were getting started in web design. We thought "surely all these restaurants and cafes would want better websites to attract more customers". Turns out actually nobody cares, they don't even care about serving quality food or coffee a lot of the time, many don't even see the value proposition of having a bike rack. The owners are often lazy entitled assholes even if they're not responding to a cold call, unless they're immigrants. The only successes were face to face, when you're already a customer or regular patron, and they do express they actually need something done. Square is the most successful startup I'm aware of with small businesses like this.


They may not necessarily be lazy OR entitled.

Every business has it's laundry list of problems. Every business.

Your list of problems and worldview may differ a great from their day-to-day reality. Very few want to work on resource suck that has a unknown outcome. Your selling a SaaS service to them (just picking the example in this thread as the example) isn't likely their biggest problem or decision at that moment.


I absolutely agree, it just happens to turn out that many of them were entitled assholes anyway, and it's rare for their laundry list of problems to include anything that's marginally more difficult or more expensive than absolute rock bottom labour can handle. You could also argue that the clientele doesn't care either, maybe they don't have tastebuds for example. But I don't think it would be much of a reach to suggest that there's a not insignificant portion of small business owners that don't pay much for the labour, don't provide a quality product, and don't even bother training people.


There are multiple ways to approach this but here's the core you should integrate: sales is a quantitative discipline. Be quantitative about it.

This means building a sales pipeline and tracking the effectiveness of whatever channels you use. How many leads do you get for $X in ad spend? How many of those become customers? What (ultimately) is the value of those customers?

Whatever you read, you will have to try different things. Some of them work. Many will not. Get in the mindset that you will fail more than you will succeed and don't just assume that you will get organic sales with sufficient reach. Sales is an active discipline. You will need to go out of your way to make potential customers aware of you and you will have to work to find a problem of theirs you can solve.

Be prepared to make a financial case for why they should buy from you vs [alternatives].


You [understandably] didn't give us much to go on but I find it odd that there isn't a single comment here you find worthy of a reply. You simply need to talk more. Its free!

If you are going to make a blog it is going to be required to respond to comments. You are not talking into an empty room, people take time to respond, you need to give feedback and ask for clarification to guide the conversation into a useful path.

Say, people are suggesting books in this topic. Are you going to read those? Do you want more book suggestions? To me it seems like a lot of work and possibly an unnatural way to learn to do dialog.

The crappiest sales people are the ones who love to hear themselves talk. Without engaging in the conversation you've started(!?) you'll never be able to tell the difference.


Since we’re here on HN,

Did YC alum learn any sales skills from the accelerator program? If so, was it direct or indirect ?


You should read Selling to the Affluent, by Thomas Stanley, author of The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy. I have been learning from this book. You should be a giver, understand customers' needs to sell more effectively.


I’m no entrepreneur but from the media I’ve seen around recently (podcasts, articles, think pieces) you should be selling before you code, that is, eliciting problems from clients.

Intuitively it seems harder to sell a piece of software which exists concretely, than to sell a solution/maintenance to a problem which can evolve constantly. Would you rather buy a shoe that may or may not fit, or retain a shoe maker to build a custom shoe for you?

If you want to sell an existing piece of software though, I’d probably do it through an App Store and focus efforts on optimizing it’s visibility there. That way you can leverage the existing ecosystem (and let them take a cut) instead of sinking time/money into creating your own.


Find clients first and listen to what they're really trying to accomplish. If a solo founder builds something they assume people want on their own, it maybe wasted effort. Always reduce risk by selling a promise of bit more than you currently have that you can deliver on. Being a solo founder is especially risky because there's no other person to bounce ideas off of and to keep each other ground in reality.

The hard way of selling: I didn't realize it, but there was value in unsolicited selling things people didn't necessarily want like Boy Scouts selling magazines or candy bars door-to-door. It's building comfort of rejection that's important.


My wife had a startup which didn't get traction, because she didn't like selling. Then she learned selling, grew her startup and sold it successfully to a competitor.

The book "How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling" got her started.


Haven't done sales yet, but got one of Bill Gibson's modules years back.

https://kbitraining.com/solutions/


I recommend leaving books behind for a bit. You need some experience. You don't need fancy tools, lists or anything. You can get started with a simple LinkedIn account and any tool to find email addresses or phone numbers (I like https://www.nymeria.io) but any will do.

Start calling/emailing and getting demos lined up. You will fail and embarrass yourself a lot. Keep trying. Keep learning.


I was not very successful myself, but just pick up the phone and talk with them would be already a big step.

After the first couple of calls you stop being afraid of it and it just go much smoother. But following up and make sure everything is aligned takes much more time that I expected.

Often it is not a yes or no answer straight away, but it is more a chasing, communicate, listen, learn, plan, follow up, etc...

But again maybe I was doing something wrong myself.


I've tried and failed at this, a SAAS that served small builders.

Your best bet is probably the blog and going to conferences. However I only got one customer that way.

It's also worth looking at partners. Do these companies have software that they're already using and could those partners upsell them onto your software?

I hired a cold calling firm. They made a lot of calls, but didn't get any free signups to the product, or any demos.


Very good question.

I’ve been programming for just about 30 years in one shape or another and the 2 skills I wish I had learned from an early age are sales and copywriting.

What I can say (as an amateur of both disciplines now) is that yes, find the books and courses etc.

But, the most important thing is to start selling and writing right now.

It’s the absolute best way to learn. The books and courses will accelerate your practical efforts.

Don’t wait.


Some ideas:

Take a look at how Grub Hub and similar services reached out to get restaurants to sign up for their service.

Read the book Influence: Science and Practice by Cialdini

Get some type of CRM system in place so you can keep track of who you talked to and who you need to follow up with. It doesn't have to be fancy--even note cards will work, but just come up with a way to manage that information.


I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this movie:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/glengarry_glen_ross

Get ready to work 100 times harder than you think you need to, to land that first big client. But it can be done. It's how it's always been done.


More of a passive idea, but you could add potential customers on linkedin and wait until they mention anything related to what you do, then reach out via linkedin. Less pushy (you will need to still be doing the pushy kind of sales), more thoughtful, and has worked for a number of sales people I know in different industries.


Some books I enjoyed:

- Psychology of Selling - Sales Dogs (Managing sales teams) - some of Jim Rohn's seminars are great


How? Sell!

Jokes apart: selling, like many other things, is mostly about a lot of practice. Some theory might help, but in the end, you will learn only by doing lots of mistakes.

I suggest you try to create a safe, friendly opportunity to sell something, and exercise (e.g. try to sell biscuits to your neighbors)


Dunno if anyone mentioned it but don’t forget the following:

Each small business will have their own sales cycle. They will have different payment schedules.

This is a pain in the ass to deal with. Don’t assume they will all pay with a credit card. Be able and ready to accept checks.


Coupons


https://www.amazon.com/Exactly-What-Say-Influence-Impact/dp/...


Read patio11's writings on the subject of small software businesses, if you haven't already.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/


You are asking the wrong question. Instead ask to yourself: How would I help or enable this person or organisation/business? And you will make a lot of progress.


I learned to sell from Tom Hopkins, "How to Master the Art of Selling". He also had a course I took.

Zig Ziglar is another good expert on sales with many books and programs.


Random advice, perhaps, but purchase Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port and do the work therein (there's a workbook and such). It will help with the cold sales as well.


Done three years of stock broker. Basically it's about making friends and helping each other. Absolutely hated the gig but that was the way to do it.


Put simply: by selling.

How is it you learn anything? Not by asking questions, but by doing it.

By fumbling your way around until things start to make sense.


My brother has a lot of success teaching people to do content marketing via TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.


You are born with the ability to sell. Or you aren't

The people on hn will downvote me for this, but it's true. And practically none of them are sellers


My maternal grandfather made a fortune selling sugar out of the trunk of his car during probibition. An illustration of if the product is that good or in demand, anyone can sell it!


Was sugar in short supply during Prohibition, or do you mean 'sugar'?


that is very rare to find

based on the framing you gave, sure

if you're willing to break the law, selling isn't the hard part...


ABC - Always Be Closing (on the sale)


Today it's probably "Always be working towards the next step" :) Which means you need to have a clear idea of your next step. If they need a PoC, and that needs an NDA signed, then trying to close before the NDA is going to be painful.


Remember your A-B-WTTNSs, got it ;)

Humor aside, that is good to know, thanks!


Or maybe don’t be - my sales knowledge is pretty outdated.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/always-be-closing.asp


take cocaine


Hi.

I have made over 100,000 cold calls to small businesses over the years.

It works.

The issue is the discipline, and time.

I can call 200-250 calls per day maximum, which breaks down to 25 calls per hour, 12.5 per half hour, 6.25 per 15 minutes, or 2.0833 calls per 5 minutes...2 per 5 minutes. This is numbers dialed, and NOT conversations. Clearly this is do-able. While I can do that many, I find that about 150 calls is ideal, because you want longer conversations, which means interest on the prospect's part.

I get anywhere from 8 to 12 small business owners who are interested per day. Sometimes less, but that's statistics for you.

The goal is to have longer conversations, of course, sometimes they go on for 1.5 hour conversations, and sometimes I can make 20 calls in 15 minutes because they are all "No thanks (click)* or voice mail. NEVER leave voice mail - nobody ever calls back, I've tried thousands of times and never got a call back. Sometimes I have a bunch of long conversations on a day and will only call 80 dials, which is fine, because I'm having long involved conversations, which is the entire point. If I talk with 2 people per day, each with a 4 hour conversation, wow, nice. But that's not reality, or close to it.

The best way for me to look at it is over time, you see what your average sale is (can start with plain sale but eventually want to look at CLV - customer lifetime value) to calculate. You take the number of sales per month, divide it by the number of phone calls. So for example (just an example), for each $2000 of revenue that you earn, you make 100 phone calls. This means every single phone call you make $20, right? Every call averages out to that - every single call. So the more calls you make per minute, the more money you actually make. Every single phone call, whether a hangup, someone saying no, a voice mail...every single call, you make $20. So when you hang up the phone, say to yourself, "I just made $20 with that 2 second phone call." This motivates me, at least.

I know that BlueTie suggest going door-to-door for B2B which is what you are doing, and I've done that. I have 3 problems with it.

Here are the issues: 1) With what I do, I have had business owners tell me that they have multiple people come in per week, doing the exact same thing, trying to sell them something that is similar. At first, I thought that they were lying just to get rid of me, but I went to so many businesses who said the same thing, that I had to conclude that they were telling the truth. 2) Compared to phone calls, it takes a LONG time to walk from one building to the next. Instead of calling on 25 per hour, it is a lot less because of all the walking and waiting for the owner sometimes - they're with a client, in the back room, not there, etc. 3) I live in a major city, one of the biggest in the USA. The commercial corridors are far away from each other. I work in one and have hit it up, and other ones close by, but you soon have to start traveling farther and farther for more commercial streets.

When I cold call, I don't have travel time - either from walking between businesses, or traveling to farther and farther away commercial corridors that I have not hit up yet.

So the upshot is that maybe I can do 20-40 location visits, but I can make 250 phone calls. Way more opportunity with calling. No matter what way you slice it, it is still a numbers game. You will not get any sales in walk-ins or phone calls if you don't make any walking or calling. The more you do either one, the more potential opportunities.

Also, it is all about who you click with. I've had both phone calls and walk ins where the owner has said, "Huh, usually with most people, I just say no thank you as a rule. Not sure why I want to hear from you but tell me what you do." This happens on both phone calls and walk-ins. It's because for some multiple number of reasons. They are subconsciously ready to buy which has nothing to do with you. They "click" with you, which has everything to do with you and his or her personalities clicking. And so on. There are multiple reasons, not just one.

Another thing that I have learned about B2B walk-ins is it completely matters about what that commercial area is like. If it contains a bunch of chain stores - McDonalds, Dick's Sporting Goods, Staples - a lot of large companies - that's a waste of time, as the owner is not there and everything is done at the HQ, for the most part. So these types of commercial locations are to be avoided. So you want to do commercial corridors/zoning where there are a lot of small businesses where you know that there is a good chance the owner will be there.

This next one sounds sexist, but it's what I have found to be true. I've done the work, walked the walk. I have tried to do walk-ins at fancy-pants parts of town - very high-end. I have learned that this is a waste of time, because a good percentage of them are businesses started as a "hobby" by wives of wealthy men. The woman has to do something while the man earns the big bucks, so the guy buys his wife a store. And, she never comes in and has employees to do everything. She and her husband live in a fancy high-income part of town, so they are wealthy, and there's no real need for the woman to be at the location in order to not hire one more employee. They can easily hire another employee to do the owner's work. BUT, this is in super high-income areas where I work. I thought it would be good, but owners are never there, so waste of time.

What you want for walk-in sales is to find the zoning where there are a lot of businesses side by side, and they are not big box stores or franchises, nor super high income. What you look for is places that are kind of on the lower end, but not poverty zoned places of course. When you are in the lower end streets, the owner is always there. Like, for example where your auto repair shops are usually all located on a main street and there are a lot of businesses that are similar, where the owner is there.

That is my experience with walkins for B2B.

I've done walking to B2C and have done flyers, that is so worth it, because you can tape flyers on every door (not allowed to use mailboxes) or put on every car window. I've had huge luck with that. Make sure it is in areas where there are a lot of street parking and apartment buildings - going door to door in a residential part of town where everyone parks in their own garage and there's no cars on the street is not good, plus you have to take a lot of time to walk up the driveway to the front door where you tape a flyer to the door - takes a lot more time, and it's not really something you can do fast, plus people might call up cops because they think you are casing the neighborhood.

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With phone calls, again I can call up to 250 dials per day, reach a live person, and do it anywhere in the area, next town, across the state, across the nation with a phone call.

There are tons of places to get leads, free or paid, that's the least of one's worries. I got probably 50,000 free leads in 3 or 4 days by doing some website scraping. You can do google searches for spreadsheets with companies. So, for example, you can do a google search for file extensions for excel spreadsheets for dentists by entering "'dentist' filetype:xls" and you will get a lot of results for dentists. I clicked on a dental referral list in North Carolina (https://medicaid.ncdhhs.gov/documents/files/dentist-list-med...) and downloaded a list of about 2050 dentists in North Carolina that accept Medicaid patients. It's not for medicaid patients only, they accept any kind of patient, so you have 2050 dentists in excel spreadsheet that you can immediately import into your CRM and start dialing for dollars.

Here are a bunch from Little Rock when I do ("business list" phone filetype:xls) and then click on the link (https://www.littlerock.gov/media/2422/business-list.xls) and you will get 12,818 businesses with name, address, phone, and emails.

You might not want Little Rock Arkansas businesses, but if you have a product that any small business can use, anywhere, then it doesn't matter.

Sometimes when you look up one thing on Google search, but you get another, but that's ok if you can sell to any business anywhere.

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Also, you better get a great CRM if you start calling. I recommend Zoho. It is super inexpensive at $45 per month for ZohoOne, and you get about 40 different really good other apps. Screaming deal.

There are way more ways than this, though. These were just examples to show you. You can go to list brokers and buy names and addresses, for example, but you can do a much finer granular search this way - industry SIC code, companies with between 8 to 15 employees, located in zip code or metro area, or state, or whatever. It's not too expensive - information is cheap.

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Like everyone else says - Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount is the man.

I say that the best way is to read that book, but start calling. It always is awkward at first, but after a week of calling it gets to be robotic and easy. A great offer is the best way to get attention. Not a generic offer.

Oh, and like others say - a small gift does woners, or sending a birthday card or sympathy card IN THE REGULAR MAIL, and NOT email is fantastic. I send $10 Starbucks cards if someone is real close "Thank you for the opportunity for xyz" kind of thing - all personlized and referring to something we talked about. I've sent Congratulations cards to someone who told me his wife just gave birth, Sympathy and Get Well cards, Anniversary cards. People are SHOCKED with notes. Many times, I'll send a card and they will say "You are the ONLY one who said anything, none of my friends or family said anything, and you are just some sales guy." and I get the business, of course, because I'm NOT just some "sales guy" is what they think - I care. And I do. I know one guy who sent those huge bags of M&Ms and offer either peanut or plain. That worked super well for him.




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