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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: 0.203s | 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. mikrl ◴[16 Oct 22 16:40 UTC] No.33224981[source]▶
I’m no entrepreneur but from the media I’ve seen around recently (podcasts, articles, think pieces) you should be selling before you code, that is, eliciting problems from clients.

Intuitively it seems harder to sell a piece of software which exists concretely, than to sell a solution/maintenance to a problem which can evolve constantly. Would you rather buy a shoe that may or may not fit, or retain a shoe maker to build a custom shoe for you?

If you want to sell an existing piece of software though, I’d probably do it through an App Store and focus efforts on optimizing it’s visibility there. That way you can leverage the existing ecosystem (and let them take a cut) instead of sinking time/money into creating your own.