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Ask HN: How to learn to sell?

355 points rasulkireev | 1 comments | 16 Oct 22 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source

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.

1. jmyeet ◴[16 Oct 22 16:17 UTC] No.33224766[source]▶
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].