[seanherron]

I didn't expect to learn much from this article - but it actually really resonated with me. I often am responsible for purchasing decisions and found much of the advice to sales reps really insightful.

(1) The number one thing that bothers me is when I reach out to a company to explore their product and I get scheduled with a BDR who's sole job is to "qualify" me as a lead. I know BDRs are in a tough spot - but if you have someone reaching out and interested in your product, take advantage of that and get them straight to the person who can demo and answer questions. I'm shocked at how many companies make me want to prove myself as a customer before spending time on demoing.

(2) Ask before recording meetings, and if someone doesn't want to be recorded make sure you actually have the ability to turn that recording off. I've been on calls where the person who set up the Zoom/Gong wasn't on the call, and so no one had the ability to stop recording.

(3) The details of what is shared on calls is often completely lost. Every time a new person gets on the call, they ask the exact same questions that have already been answered. Make the customer feel as though you're interested in their business, have discussed their pain points, and have a plan ready to help them.

(4) Discounting discussions are always a pain. It's a game that no one likes to play.

(5) Offer to send some swag to the implementing team at your customer - not just your champion. It's a nice gesture and goes a surprisingly long way towards building positive sentiment.

[zippergz]

A while back I wanted to become a customer of a company I had formerly worked at. I reached out via an executive-level friend and former co-worker who made a warm intro to sales. And STILL they first scheduled a call with a brand new to the job BDR who knew less about the product than I did. Not that person's fault, and I felt bad for them, but it was a complete waste of everyone's time.

[vorador]

Sadly that's how incentives works in modern sales orgs – BDRs get paid on the number of calls they convert to the next stage and you were a guaranteed conversion since you already knew and wanted to buy the product.

[stingraycharles]

So that’s a problem with how the incentives are set up I’d say. Not the BDR’s or their manager’s fault, rather a high level incentive problem which should be fixed.

What’s HN’s opinion on sales commissions anyway? I always thought that research showed that any job that requires creative thinking doesn’t make people work harder if they are compensated based on bonuses / commissions.

Have any large organizations ever experimented with getting rid of the whole commission based compensation for sales? If so, how did it work out?

[vorador]

I think at least from sales orgs, bonuses are very easy to justify. Sales orgs are very data-driven – typically their CRMs measure everything from the time it took to close a deal to how much each rep brought in a quarter. If just paying a regular salary worked to motivate reps enough, you'd find lots of companies doing that, but they're pretty rare.

[leaflets2]

I'd like to know, too:-)

[cercatrova]

As someone that's done sales, it is very important to qualify even incoming leads. I can't count how many times I wasted my time because the person who thought they wanted the product actually wasn't a good fit. After I implemented a lead qualification pipeline, that number dropped dramatically and the leads that did qualify were, predictably, much more likely to buy.

[CPLX]

Yeah but qualify them by showing them the fucking software.

It's gotten so bad out there that I've gotten to the point where I just refuse to do qualifying calls. When I can smell one brewing I just email and say I'd like my first call to be one where I can see someone using the software via screen share, or be given the opportunity to log in or have a test account myself. I don't care if I'm talking to a high school intern feel free to screen your big swinging dick's sales guy's schedule but then get your intern show me the fucking thing, the features, the screens, what it does, the basics of how it works.

If I start a call and it's happening I just ask if they're able to show me the software. If they say no, we'll schedule a future call for that I say great press the button in that CRM that qualifies me for that call and I'll log off now.

If they don't want my business good for them, they can run things how they like, but my time is valuable too and I'm the customer so if you can't show me the product fuck off.

[mbesto]

> Yeah but qualify them by showing them the fucking software.

As a potential buyer, I immediately ask to get a pre-sales person on the call otherwise I'm not joining the call. Get's them to move pretty quickly.

[fphhotchips]

The fact that you know to say that is a good enough qualifier in my mind. Only people who know how to buy know what presales even is.

[leviathant]

After doing dev work for nearly two decades, I've been in presales for the last six years. I've definitely had a one or two intro calls with tech-savvy people who bullied their way past the BDR. These were smart people with good ideas, who had no idea what procurement at the enterprise company they just started working for even begins to look like, and it was 60-90 minutes none of us will ever get back, for a project that's never going to happen anyway.

I worked at a company where we jumped at every opportunity that we got, it's real nice to be somewhere now where there's a little more of a vetting process.

[kinj28]

As some one running growth for a low code/no code platform for internal tools - we would want a qualification call to help the demo team with info that can then allow demo team to prep a demo which can make the call really relevant. Given how crowded our space is most of the times customer would have seen atleast 2-3 tools before and learning what they liked or didn’t like is very important.

[CPLX]

If you insist on scheduling two calls with me where it’s a guarantee one of the two is completely fucking useless and irrelevant for me then you’ve maxed out your potential mean highest average relevance of a sales call to 50%. That’s your best case.

Maybe just work on a couple common use cases and get your team able to pivot and share the more relevant examples on a demo in the first call and aim a little higher.

Your software’s various applications are probably not each the special precious unique snowflakes you think they are. Just a guess.

[seanherron]

Often BDR calls don’t even focus on if the product is a good fit - it’s “how much budget do you have?” “Are you the decision maker?” “When are you looking to make a purchase?”. That’s, frankly, a waste of time for me. It’s one thing to have an initial call to show off core functionality and see if there’s a good fit - but if the focus is just trying to determine how much money I have, then it’s going to leave me fairly annoyed that I spent time on the call.

[CallMeJim]

These calls exist because companies have learnt from wasting their time talking to people who can't afford it, aren't the decision maker and aren't interested in purchasing any time soon. The conversion rate of the sales profession is really low, and it can easily get an order of magnitude worse without qualification.

[phpisthebest]

Which is ironic because often times companies refuse to give budget numbers unless I sit through a damn demo first....

At this point I strongly disfavor companies that do not publish their retail prices. everyone from Microsoft to SpaceX can do it, there is ZERO excuse for companies not doing it today

[bruce511]

I'm a bit like you, I prefer published list prices. It really helps me if I know my budget is somewhere near your list price.

But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote.

I'm not involved in the sales side, but I expect there's at least some demo as part of this process because it's helpful when reading the quote if the user has some idea of what they are buying. I don't think it's a terribly long demo though.

That all said, it is helpful to both parties if budget is mentioned early. With software-only projects I will often give the caller some idea of budget very early just to make sure we're playing in the same ballpark. That saves a lot of time.

[nextaccountic]

> But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

> In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote.

IOW, if the customer were afforded just a little bit of price discovery the business would tank.

Lots of companies have interactive websites where I can input all my requirements and it outputs exactly how much I'm going to pay, with no human in the loop involved.

[phpisthebest]

That is still not a reason to hide price. At a minimum publish the range, but in the modern age these is very little reason a matrix or wizard could not be created to get that price.

A F150 is almost infinitely configurable, yet I can walk through the website and configure my dream truck I will never actually buy because it is the price of a home and I don't want to live in it....

Further still most of the time when I see companies hiding behind 'install and support' my Spidey sense star tingling

[rwmj]

And yet I can buy a car from a website even though cars are hardware that can vary in price by 5x or more.

[bstpierre]

These kinds of calls should really just be emails. Forcing a synchronous meeting to essentially fill in a form is dumb.

[sneak]

Just turn down the calls and ask them to use email instead. You’re the customer, you make the rules.

[grogenaut]

3 different times I've used a product, either via freeware or sales lead and when I went to go buy the spent so long getting back to us on a price we had written around it on the engineering team. One small team had not sold a copy before and so they took 3 weeks to settle on a price (but they had a sales staff), in which time I had learned enough 3d math to just re-write the system.

[CPLX]

They’re still talking to them.

They’re just wasting everyone’s time.

[FredPret]

A lower ranked salersperson does the qualifying. The more trained ones do the selling. They are optimizing their resources and for a big purchase, the buyer is expecting a more involved process than one-click checkout.

[CPLX]

Yeah I get it it’s just annoying. Train some entry level people to show some basic software features instead of training them to waste people’s time asking questions.

[sylens]

Wanted to reply to this as somebody's who bounced between pre-sales and engineering roles in the past.

For #1, what is most likely happening is that they are trying to maximize the use of the pre-sales engineer's time. I can't tell you how many demos I gave as a sales engineer, but I can tell you that the opportunities that progressed past that demo are much less than 50%. After a while, sales engineers can even grow resentful of their BDR or AE for what they view as wasting their time. You could probably maximize your chances of getting a pre-sales engineer on the call to demo it by clearly stating your pain up front and emphasizing you have a rapidly approaching deadline to narrow your options down to a final 2 or 3.

I completely agree with you on the rest of your points. It can be hard to find sales reps that do the fundamentals well.

[version_five]

> opportunities that progressed past that demo are much less than 50%

Any sense of what industry norms are? 50% sounds astonishingly high to me. For most products I would have expected a pre-sales demo to be a pretty early step. 50% basically means everyone you talk to is committed to buy something and is only looking at 2 vendors.

[rocmcd]

It varies drastically by the business but I would say that it’s more on the magnitude of 10% or less (for enterprise sales, IME).

If you’re getting a 50% conversion on your demos then either your sales org has _really_ dialed in the target persona (qualifying everyone else out early) or your market is very wide.

[fphhotchips]

I would suggest that there's a subtle difference between "progressed past the demo" and "converted". 50% progression past the demo is reasonable. 50% conversion would be amazing.

[sylens]

Yes, this is what I meant. I would say that for over half the demos I gave, that was my last time talking to that prospect. For the rest, some of them would go a few more meetings and fizzle out, and some would convert to actual sales.

[unionpivo]

Well If I demo a product and clearly see it's not fit for my org, what more is there to talk about ?

There are things that you can't really covey good in text or voice communications, but usually quick to see on the demo.

[Spooky23]

I hate companies that do this bullshit, as it’s fundamentally disrespectful of customers.

We regularly have to deal with this crap to prospect vendors for tech solutions. Some companies do multiple rounds of qualifications with people punching their KPI cards wasting my time. If you’re recording the calls, listen to the recording and stop wasting my time.

If we don’t need the vendor, we ghost you. If we really need the vendor, we have a process to flag it so that someone gets ahold of a C- or founder level contact in the company. That’s gotten at least 3 sales directors fired, and with the high level sponsor, we usually grind out a significant concession to close the deal.

[shostack]

Care to share stories of how you got the three sales directors fired?

[thehappypm]

Omg, #1! I had to buy a product in the big data space last year. Company was all in on “buy” after some build vs buy discussion.

I kept asking for demos and getting these weird intros with non technical folks who couldn’t give a demo!

[holografix]

No offence but you clearly have never worked for “the vendor side”!

Do you know how many thousands of time wasters you get a month? People comparing you to the competition, trying to get a master class from you so they can pose as a consultant for your technology, learning from you so they can apply for a job… the list goes on and on.

Give them all swag…?! Hahahaha there would be people lining up to waste your time and get free swag.

Thank god for the BDRs making sure you’re not some underling with no budget, authority, need or time pressure. Yep that’s BANT for you!

Discounting discussions should be simple: you buy more? You pay less. You commit for longer? You pay less. Simple.

It’s painful when the prospect start calling you expensive, saying the competition is cheaper, that there could be a “partnership” because they are the hottest newest crypto-quantum-ai to revolutionise web3.

Gimme a break!

[nxmnxm99]

Weird comment. Tough shit? That’s sales. The OP is just telling you what works if you actually want to sell.

We do most of what he said because it works. So what if you have to humour some dick? Don’t be a sales rep then.

[holografix]

You missed my point. I’m telling you it _doesnt_ work.

If you’re a small startup and no one knows you, sure, give everyone a demo, but it’s not scalable.

For people that want to see a demo and just wanna know price there’s the website and recorded demos.

[robomartin]

> "qualify" me as a lead

This is very common in the US, almost to the point of being standard. It is incredibly annoying and it gets in the way of doing business. This is particularly true in the hardware front.

Interested in a connector?

No problem.

What's you estimated annual utilization rate? How many product lines is this going into? What's your current usage? What will be your MOQ? How often do you expect to reorder? Etc.

The difference with Chinese suppliers could not be greater. I can't remember the last time a Chinese supplier interrogated me this way on first contact. They are often eager to do business with anyone and have no problem selling sending you samples or selling you a small quantity for testing.

Not sure what that's about. I truly detest dealing with companies that size you up like that.

[duxup]

> Offer to send some swag to the implementing team at your customer - not just your champion.

This seems weird to me. I guess if it works to send some trinkets to people you do it… but if it makes a difference to them I’d be kinda judgmental about that fact ( not really related to the sales process).

Personally I don’t want more trinket crap in my life but maybe other folks feel differently.

[Kamq]

The devs integrating with your solution are going to hate it at a certain point. This may or may not be your fault (underlying technical limitations you've papered over will look like your fault from the outside at a certain point).

Devs hate basically everyone else's code.

A t-shirt (or jacket, or water bottle, or whatever) is a surprisingly cost-effective way to turn "I hate this" into "Sure it has some quirks, but have you seen the other options?"

[bostik]

> Devs hate basically everyone else's code.

Including their recent selves'.

The gentle way of expressing this is well known: if you are not embarrassed by code you wrote a year ago, you have not improved at all.

As far as I am aware, coders and artists are the only two groups of people who routinely describe their own creations as "shit", "crap", "garbage" or "disgusting". How could one even begin to appreciate someone else's work when the primary feeling we have of our own is self-loathing?

(If you haven't looked at a piece of code, gone "what kind of idiot...?" and discovered via git-blame that it was you, you have not been in this profession long enough.)

[noirbot]

Yea, maybe not a shirt, but hell, send them some nice coffee or some snacks or something. My current job is probably at least 50% implementing stuff my company bought, and for one of them, they had an on-site meeting about the implementation/proof of value stuff and they offered to buy everyone coffee/tea/whatever at a coffee shop by our office before the meeting and that definitely helped me be a bit less grumpy about the work.

Any sort of "congrats on launching/implementing our stuff" gift is at least an acknowledgment of the work put in to help the sales team land their contract, and that helps keep the relationship on a good footing.

[fian]

A few companies I have worked for have had a strict no gifts policy. Many of our customers had similar policies, to the point that we couldn't even pay for a customer's coffees if we have a meeting at a cafe.

These policies are aimed at preventing even the whiff of bribes or favoritism wrt purchasing or awarding of contracts.

Mostly this was in the Oil and Gas industry. We had a few mining clients that were less strict wrt gifts/swag. I now work in the banking industry where there are strict regulations against bribery, facilitation payments and many types of gifts.

So I find it a bit weird to hear that sellers provide "swag".

[duxup]

I remember working at a place where the local IT guy’s office was covered in trinkets and swag.

It certainly gave off a kinda wonky vibe, even if he was operating on the up and up.

[noirbot]

Yea, definitely depends on the industry, but even at that point, just a very nice note thanking the implementation team feels good.

[leviathant]

>Yea, maybe not a shirt, but hell, send them some nice coffee or some snacks or something.

So. Tired. Of swag. But food? Even when it's crappy, I appreciate it, and at least it ends up in sewage processing instead of a landfill.

[seanherron]

This is more of a post-sales item. A pivotal part of a renewal is going to be how successful implementation is - and that success is largely dependent not just on the sponsor of the project but on the team that supports them. Those folks are often the ones who don’t get the trinkets. Something like a nice jacket or even a pair of socks can go a long way to building positive sentiment there.

[dehrmann]

> Ask before recording meetings

Remember that California requires the consent of all parties on this call, so this isn't just being polite.

[grecy]

For 5, I can’t tell if you’re being serious?

Swag is the scourge of the earth. It’s almost always cheap junk made overseas and goes directly into landfill. It’s the kind of stuff I would never spend my own money on, so by definition I don’t need it. I literally walk away whenever I see it, avoid at all costs.

[jiveturkey]

(1) The sales and SE time is very expensive in both direct and opportunity cost. If you were on the sell side you would appreciate this. Leads, even incoming, absolutely need to be qualified.

I'm with you on the rest, maybe not all the way on (3) though.

[spoonjim]

Yes - make your product usable enough so that even a BDR can demo it

[rocmcd]

That sounds nice, but it simply is not possible for very technical products (many kinds of databases, low-level infra, dev tools, etc). You won’t be able to find BDRs that can talk to devs the way another dev would.

[8note]

For 3) somebody from the same side should be able to give a detailed review of the call and answer those same questions?

[jahnu]

Just to be clear, did you learn these things from the article or you just agree with them but already knew them?

[azmodeus]

Shameless self promototion at comtura.ai we are working on 3.

With Comtura we plug into call transcriptions and recommend conversational suggestions to push the customer's voice into Salesforce.

We have come across so many companies spending hundreds of thousands on Salesforce data entry with very poor quality data captured. This also results in sales management potentially spending 8h a week just watching Gong recordings to understand their pipeline.

I am Chris, one of the cofounders of Comtura if you are interested to learn more about we do email me at chriss[at]comtura.ai