[peignoir]

Hi there, my 15 years of experience was : developer / Sysadmin / tech consulting / management consulting / sales for a consulting firm / entrepreneur (many startups and non profits)

Sales for a startups depends of course of the product b2b vs b2c is one dimension and venture backed or bootstrap is another.

For b2c I would recommend lean startup (the product should ideally sell itself / marketing is key)

For b2b you need a list of contact and you need to reach out it’s a volume game to conversion like in b2c the difference is “you are the add” you should equally test different message and tweak them and the product for conversion (assuming the product is good)

Venture capitalists / angels also need a sales pitch. The pitch is closer to a story telling each of them is expecting something different and the beat way to get in is via warm intro (works also for b2b)

Nothing mind blowing here as on how to train for it I would suggest to join a software company and do sales (b2b or b2c) it’s easier to start with a known sales pitch and a known product / market than having to work on figuring it out on the way.

I will end with a funny comment yet important I think it was from union square venture who said to be careful to invest in a startup with a great sales person as it might send a false positive on growth (startups especially b2c should grow via marketing not direct sales as for b2b if the founder is an amazing sales person it might be hard to scale that)

Hope that helps