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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: 0.204s | 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. ultrasaurus ◴[16 Oct 22 18:19 UTC] No.33225850[source]▶
Most important advice (and you can see it repeated here) is that you need to be used to rejection. An average developer might get never get a PR fully rejected -- a well oiled sales team expects to close only 1/3rd of their sales qualified leads. If you're starting from cold calls, you will be lucky to close <1% of your outreach, prepare for that mentally.

But also (again repeated in other comments) you aren't selling a tool, you're looking for their problems, try to understand them in their words and then show how giving you money makes them go away (it doesn't have to all be solved with software, your skills in setting up the system can be just as valuable).

Happy to talk more if you aren't comfortable discussing in a public forum: dave@demogorilla.com (we make software to make remote SaaS demos better: https://www.demogorilla.com)