Loved the 6th video - How, when and who of sales. I was pleasantly surprised how the generic advice to find a corporate sales guy to lead your early stage startup sales is so ineffective.
A similar analogy to engineering also applies I guess. One who functions well in a corporate engineering department - with a ton of support might not do well in an early stage startup and vice versa.
Super grateful to a16z and YC for these. I wonder as a founder doing their own sales, if there are resources about actual tactics, how to make calls, handle objections, etc.
These strategy videos are great. Does anyone have a recommendation on an equivalent for the day-to-day of working a pipeline?
I don't have a ton of experience selling and haven't closed any deals for our company yet, so take this with a grain of salt, but... the sales approach that I am very fond of, and think has a ton of potential, is Jeff Thull's system, as outlined in Mastering the Complex Sale, Exceptional Selling and The Prime Solution.
Thull's approach is rooted in a developing a deep understanding of how you can create value (real value, mind you) for your customers, and to communicate with them in a way that conveys a very honest and sincere approach. As opposed to the old "Always Be Closing" mantra ala Glengarry Glen Ross, Thull advocates an "Always Be Leaving" approach, where you leave as soon as it's obvious that your solution isn't good for the customer. He would have you recommend a competitor's product if it's actually the better choice, etc. The idea is, as I understand it, two-fold:
1. Trying to sell a solution to a customer who doesn't really need it / has better options, is wasting your time
and
2. The more honest relationship you develop doing this this way will benefit you down the road when the same customer has new needs and your product is the best solution, or when they recommend you to their friends because you treated them with respect, etc.
If I had to summarize it in a way that is probably grossly over-simplifying, but which still captures a lot of the spirit of the thing (I think), I'd say it comes down to:
1. Develop a very deep understanding of your customer, their business, their market, etc.
2. Be hyper-honest with your customers.
I think this approach has a lot going for it, but again, I can't say from real first-hand experience because I haven't spent enough time in the field actually working it. Ask me in a year and hopefully I'll know a lot more.
Indeed. I thought it was going to be a one off video but pleasantly surprised by the comprehensive coverage of all parts of sale thats relevant to a solo founder.
These kind of stuff are the rare gems you get once in a while from HN.
I imagine it would depend a lot on what type of service you are offering and whether sales and marketing is something you can automate digitally for your business.
It was apparently a 'Sales School' for one of the YC batches in 2014. Hadn't heard of Steli before, his videos really give me a lot of energy. He also reinforced my belief that founders have to be great at selling their creation and gave me insights on what it takes to be great at sales.
Watching these videos made me realize how much I hate sales people. Every time I sign up for a trial or act remotely interested in something, I get inundated by assholes like the lecturer in these videos. Loud, aggressive and as he said "Hustlers". I immediately don't want to use that product or service and I look for alternatives if there are.
I feel like there is no better way to penetrate through the noise of the internet and products/services out there that Sales has to become aggressive. I don't think there is a solution to this? Is there?
Great stuff, there's always more than meet the eyes and that's true even for sales ;)
This being said, slight nitpick on #11 and #12.
Include clawbacks, especially if you're fairly dependent on sales / more geared towards high touch deals.
This obviously goes on hand in hand with reasonable targets.
Otherwise you create an incentive for sales people to make their number in any way they can to meet their ridiculous target / driven by the usual greed.
The hidden cost of that can potentially be huge, especially if your pool of potential customers is -relatively- small.
This lessons were very informative and nicely structured. Having these type of short, concept focused lessons are perfect for serving as introductory material.
I think its worth mentioning that this is for mostly B2B type startups / enterprise applications / companys that rely on VC funding, not necessarily B2C, where sales is not technically necessary.
A good readup on B2C from a mostly 1 man successful startup is from peter levels here. https://makebook.io/.
That was handy - if you are a Startup "Renaissance" sales rep interested in turbo boosting initiation sales currently happening in the enterprise + academic education space, please get in touch, I'd love to learn more about you and see if I can learn from you or we can work together. :)
Close is much simpler and BS free than Salesforce. Most sales teams I know dislike using salesforce as it is almost always configured to be more complicated than necessary.
I've used
https://leadiro.com/
recently. You can search for people based on their job description. It worked OK - I'm trying to sell to a niche of professionals and it found about 5% of how many I would expect given my query but it's better than nothing
There's many reasons for this, one that's simpler to explain is relative performance.
If sales person A is working a lot harder/smarter/adaptive to get more clients that sales person B. It may lower his morale to see B get the same compensation as him. This affects sales people more than other functions because the output of a sales person is more or less quantified by the revenue they are responsible for generating (exact metric would be different of course).
Haven't gone through the series yet so I can't confirm whether the things discussed are applicable or not.
However, I can confidently say that founder driven sales efforts are important even before 'finding' the product market fit and will most likely even help a startup reach product market fit.
On Windows, the single quotes might need to be double quotes. The above uses youtube-dl (YouTube downloader) which is a multi-platform public-domain Python program available here: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/.
Not everyone has access to millions of dollars in investment. How am I supposed to keep my startup above the water if we don't sell our product? How are we going to get feedback?
[+] [-] tsenkov|7 years ago|reply
Thanks to a16z and Peter Levine for this course.
[+] [-] factsaresacred|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wungsten|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|7 years ago|reply
A similar analogy to engineering also applies I guess. One who functions well in a corporate engineering department - with a ton of support might not do well in an early stage startup and vice versa.
[+] [-] curo|7 years ago|reply
These strategy videos are great. Does anyone have a recommendation on an equivalent for the day-to-day of working a pipeline?
[+] [-] mindcrime|7 years ago|reply
Thull's approach is rooted in a developing a deep understanding of how you can create value (real value, mind you) for your customers, and to communicate with them in a way that conveys a very honest and sincere approach. As opposed to the old "Always Be Closing" mantra ala Glengarry Glen Ross, Thull advocates an "Always Be Leaving" approach, where you leave as soon as it's obvious that your solution isn't good for the customer. He would have you recommend a competitor's product if it's actually the better choice, etc. The idea is, as I understand it, two-fold:
1. Trying to sell a solution to a customer who doesn't really need it / has better options, is wasting your time
and
2. The more honest relationship you develop doing this this way will benefit you down the road when the same customer has new needs and your product is the best solution, or when they recommend you to their friends because you treated them with respect, etc.
If I had to summarize it in a way that is probably grossly over-simplifying, but which still captures a lot of the spirit of the thing (I think), I'd say it comes down to:
1. Develop a very deep understanding of your customer, their business, their market, etc.
2. Be hyper-honest with your customers.
I think this approach has a lot going for it, but again, I can't say from real first-hand experience because I haven't spent enough time in the field actually working it. Ask me in a year and hopefully I'll know a lot more.
[+] [-] jkuria|7 years ago|reply
https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary-the-u...
[+] [-] sky_rw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] browsercoin|7 years ago|reply
These kind of stuff are the rare gems you get once in a while from HN.
[+] [-] cornflake|7 years ago|reply
Jordan Belfort's straight line persuasion sales training video series offer an interesting analysis of how to perform direct to consumer telephone sales: http://jordanbelfort.com/order-straight-line-persuasion/
[+] [-] raefa|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r_singh|7 years ago|reply
For anyone that's looking for similar resources. Here's another awesome series I came across (while searching for YC resources on this topic): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1c0oEEXWIZiWzdtUOUh...
It was apparently a 'Sales School' for one of the YC batches in 2014. Hadn't heard of Steli before, his videos really give me a lot of energy. He also reinforced my belief that founders have to be great at selling their creation and gave me insights on what it takes to be great at sales.
[+] [-] fermienrico|7 years ago|reply
I feel like there is no better way to penetrate through the noise of the internet and products/services out there that Sales has to become aggressive. I don't think there is a solution to this? Is there?
[+] [-] DeanWormer|7 years ago|reply
I found these helpful because it was less "here's 10 closing tips and tricks!" and more about the sales process.
[+] [-] lapnitnelav|7 years ago|reply
This being said, slight nitpick on #11 and #12. Include clawbacks, especially if you're fairly dependent on sales / more geared towards high touch deals.
This obviously goes on hand in hand with reasonable targets.
Otherwise you create an incentive for sales people to make their number in any way they can to meet their ridiculous target / driven by the usual greed.
The hidden cost of that can potentially be huge, especially if your pool of potential customers is -relatively- small.
[+] [-] ninja10|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swaggyBoatswain|7 years ago|reply
A good readup on B2C from a mostly 1 man successful startup is from peter levels here. https://makebook.io/.
[+] [-] razin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avinium|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] braindead_in|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fh973|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r_singh|7 years ago|reply
Close is much simpler and BS free than Salesforce. Most sales teams I know dislike using salesforce as it is almost always configured to be more complicated than necessary.
[+] [-] yread|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dstick|7 years ago|reply
The book is all about the “Sales Stack” ;-) Short but sweet!
[+] [-] zeroxfe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidos|7 years ago|reply
Why is it that sales teams are often paid via some sort of commission structure?
[+] [-] r_singh|7 years ago|reply
If sales person A is working a lot harder/smarter/adaptive to get more clients that sales person B. It may lower his morale to see B get the same compensation as him. This affects sales people more than other functions because the output of a sales person is more or less quantified by the revenue they are responsible for generating (exact metric would be different of course).
[+] [-] huhtenberg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taherchhabra|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r_singh|7 years ago|reply
However, I can confidently say that founder driven sales efforts are important even before 'finding' the product market fit and will most likely even help a startup reach product market fit.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jgh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] computator|7 years ago|reply
youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5rtyzi7g-5O...
On Windows, the single quotes might need to be double quotes. The above uses youtube-dl (YouTube downloader) which is a multi-platform public-domain Python program available here: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/.
[+] [-] kalehrishi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anoncoward111|7 years ago|reply
Outbound sales is short-term begging for money, period.
[+] [-] everythingswan|7 years ago|reply
I was watching/listening to it from the perspective that the company is generating inbound leads from a marketing team/channel.
[+] [-] TomMarius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] origami777|7 years ago|reply