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355 points rasulkireev | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | 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. denton-scratch ◴[] No.33226596[source]
I had sales training in a "seven dwarves" computer company. I quickly learned that sales wasn't for me, and switched to sales support; but I then spent a good eight years working alongside very experienced salesmen (all very unlike me, but I liked most of them a lot).

It's said salesmen are always selling themselves; I don't agree. But they're always pretty engaging company.

They taught us that a good salesman can sell anything. But that's hyperbolic; you have to know the product you're selling inside out.

They taught us to sell solutions, not features. That means (as someone said upthread) you're looking for people with problems, and you need to find out what their problems are, so you can help them.

We used to get leads by setting up stalls at exhibitions. I guess your prospects aren't the exhibition-going sort? But they probably gather somewhere; maybe you could go there.

I dropped out of sales because I couldn't cope with the dubious ethics. Not my employer, particularly; but there was an awful ot of politics, we were taught how to commit expenses fraud by our own boss, and everyone was fiddling commission. It wouldn't surprise me at all if brown envelopes exchanged hands.