[IAMsterdam]

As an electrical engineer with 15+ years in global enterprise software sales, a track record of 100MIO$+ sales in the past ten years and 2 failed software startups as an experience i can share following:

- A company only has excistence with paying customers.

- The global economy excists because of supply and DEMAND. So start preaching the benefits of your products or services, because there is a very high likelyhood there is potential client in the 70 Trillion dollar economy.

- Sales has evolved to being the trusted advisor and filling the blind spots for your clients with facts, value and business cases.

- Don't sell a drill, sell the hole. Clients are not looking for the specs of the drill, but the size of a hole.

- Before you start building your MVP, sell the value proposition. If you are not able to sell and validate your value proposition, you will struggle selling your MVP.

- Selling can't always be expressed in metrics. It's like sex. You have to do it, to get better in it. So stop talking about how to do it, just do it...

- You think you can't do sales? Have you ever applied for a job, sold yourself to your current girlfriend, husband or wife, challenge a friend with fact or a value creation discussion? You have done sales...

- The conversion rate of off-line sales is higher then on-line sales (for B2B complex sales cycles). So start engaging with your clients face 2 face.

- There is an absolute relation between your activities and your (revenue) results.

P.s. If you are in 1MIO$+(global) B2B (SaaS) enterprise software sales: Complex sales for global matrix organisations with multi-level stakeholders can't be achieved trough reading a book.

[afarrell]

> can't be achieved through reading a book.

Note to others: Some people learn better when they first acquaint themselves with some theory, then take that mental framework into practical situations and use it to orient themselves and pick out the important features of a situation. Know thyself and if thats you, avoid disorientation by being getting good book (or class) recommendations and discussing them. Just make sure it is a tool and don't let it be something you use to retreat from the discomfort of practicing a very new skill. You can't learn the skill only from a book.

> Don't sell a drill, sell the hole. Clients are not looking for the specs of the drill, but the size of a hole.

This is an example of a true piece of advice which is a very pithy way of stating what is in fact some reasonably meaty theory.

[thetrumanshow]

“Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmxGqsuKmY

[IAMsterdam]

A book won't help you making the actual sale. It can provide you some guidelines (SPIN, Miller Heimann, Sales 2.0, DISC, Challenger Sale and many more) and confidence to actually start, but eventually the complexity of the actual sale can be mapped to the weather. However if you have identified the clients budget, mapped their stakeholders, communicate with the decision makers and you have created the need and urgency for your solution, you can increase the likelyhood of coming to a sale. Even tough things will happen outside of your control.....

[mettamage]

- You think you can't do sales? Have you ever applied for a job, sold yourself to your current girlfriend, husband or wife, challenge a friend with fact or a value creation discussion? You have done sales...

This thinking is quite freeform. The following opinion is not one I hold strongly.

Selling myself to a girlfriend feels very different though. First, I need to define my target market. I like women who are quite like myself. I value intelligence and wisdom above everything else. So I screen for that heavily. One of the things I do is I look in their eyes, do they look intense and conscious? If so, it might be that they are my type, so I go up and talk to them and am my playful geeky self. If they like that and respond back in kind then I continue for asking their number and go on a date to drill down further on intelligence and wisdom. I mostly care about their learning ability after that.

Hmm, I suppose it isn't very different. Though, to be fair it sounds like a cross-over between sales and hiring good people.

I feel the difference in sales is that my girlfriend needs to add value to my life. Sales doesn't necessarily need to add direct value in life as long as it can add financial value through other ways.

I think you're quite right.

Hey you're in Amsterdam (or so I hope)! Want to grab a coffee? I created a new email for HN people to email me at, see my bio.

[wiz21c]

>>> - Before you start building your MVP, sell the value proposition. If you are not able to sell and validate your value proposition, you will struggle selling your MVP.

This is sad and true. Sad because you can't just code stuff and hope it will sell.

Fortunately, it is yet possible :

> ...there is a very high likelyhood there is potential client

:-)

[arthurcolle]

what does mio mean in this context? i googled and it says it means millions in some financial markets but what is the io for?

[bdibs]

It’s just an abbreviation for million, supposedly from Germany.