Sales

I should add a quote from Peter Thiel's Zero to One where he distinguishes between sales and marketing.

• http://www.evanasano.com/2015/08/31/5-mistakes-sales-team-leaders-make/
  • Some good info

  • Our team uses and invests in the following sales tools: Clearslide, Followup.cc, Dropbox, Uber Conference, Join.me, CRM among others. We spend over $200 per month per sales person on tools to enable them to streamline their work flow and better do their jobs. It’s an investment I would estimate pays off 10x. 

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3fri9a/ask_aubrey_de_grey_anything

  • Q: I often only have a few minutes in passing conversation with friends or coworkers to plant the seed of treating aging like a disease. My question to you is, what have you found to be the most effective point you can make in only a couple minutes that gets people to pause and actually think about the problem from a different perspective? 
    
    Aubrey: I tend to spend the first minute asking questions - discovering whether their main hangup is feasibility or desirability (even though the two do mutually reinforce), and a level down, whether they have actually thought about those questions at all. The goal is to identify just one thing you can tell them that pierces their armour of certainty - that lets them know they could be really messing up unless they let you tell them a lot more.

Compensating sales reps

• 2013.06.21 - SaaStr - An Initial Sales Rep Comp Plan to Lower Your Stress Level, Increase Cash, and Make Everyone a Lot of Money
• 2013.10.19 - HN - Ask HN: What commission to give a sales person for selling SaaS?

  • When it comes to SaaS sales, I recommend reading SaaStr from Jason Lemkin, ex-Echosign founder (grew business from $0 to $50,000,000, then sold to Adobe). His advice is pure gold.
    Here is an initial comp plan. Visit his blog for more.

SDR Compensation

• http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-refutes-the-naysayers-2015-11

  • Compensation was changed for the sales development rep (SDR) organization, a group of junior salespeople who make cold calls to find leads for senior sales people, but the change wasn't for cost-cutting reasons, he told us.

    The idea came from the new sales leader hired to run the unit. She believed "the compensation on these teams was not weighted enough towards performance. We decided to lower the base compensation and increase the variable pay and do it in a way that the people who were performing could make more money," Conrad explained.

    The changes angered some people, and caused them to quit.

    "This was not something that was driven by cost cutting," he said. "Companies change sales rep compensation plans all the time. As happens when you change sales rep compensation, there are always people who are upset about it. That happened in our case and we probably could have done a better job of explaining it to people."

Books

Books I haven't read yet

• Ben Feldman - Creative Selling for the 1990s
• Andrew Thomson - The Feldman method: The words and working philosophy of the world's greatest insurance salesman

How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling

• by Frank Bettger
• High-level summary
  
  • Part 1
    • Enthusiasm is the most important determinant of success.  If you don't feel enthusiastic, force yourself to act enthusiastic, and that will soon change how you feel.
    • If you ask enough potential customers, you will be successful.  To force yourself to ask enough people, keep records. Record how many calls you make every day, and which of these lead to interviews, and which of those interviews lead to sales.
    • The biggest enemy he ever had to face was his fear of speaking to strangers, both individuals and groups. To fix this he joined a group where he got repeated practice in speaking in front of strangers.  This also got rid of his fear of speaking to important individuals.
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
• Part 1 - These ideas lifted me out of the ranks of failure
  
  • 1. How one idea multiplied my income and happiness
    • Summary: Enthusiasm is the most important determinant of success.  If you don't feel enthusiastic, force yourself to act enthusiastic, and that will soon change how you feel.
    • When starting out as a pro baseball player he was fired for being "lazy", when his lack of energy was really a result of nervousness / fear.  The manager told him to put enthusiasm into whatever he did next.
    • At his next baseball team he played with as much enthusiasm and energy as he could muster ("like a man electrified"), and within two years he was playing for the Cardinals and making thirty times his old salary.
      • He played better.
      • His teammates became more enthusiastic.
      • Instead of becoming exhausted from his extra exertion, he felt better, both during and after the game.
    • Two years after that, he had an injury that ended his baseball career. He then spent two unpleasant years collecting installments for a furniture company, then ten months failing at selling life insurance. He decided to switch to becoming a shipping clerk, but decided he needed to conquer his fear complex, so he took Dale Carnegie's course in public speaking.
    • Carnegie pointed out that Frank wasn't speaking with enthusiasm: "How do you expect your audience to be interested if you don't put some life and animation into what you say?"
    • Frank resolved to use the same approach that had worked well for him in baseball to sell life insurance, and it worked.
    • "Force yourself to act enthusiastic, and you'll become enthusiastic."
      • Ex: Pounding on a desk.
    • "I firmly believe enthusiasm is, by far, the biggest single factor in successful selling."
    • He knows one salesman who is very knowledgeable about insurance but can't make a living from selling it because he lacks enthusiasm, and another salesman who is far less knowledgeable but made a fortune because of his enthusiasm.
      • The successful salesman would recite this poem almost every morning:
        
        Victory
        You are the man who used to boast
        That you'd achieve the uttermost,
        Some day.
        
        You merely wished a show,
        To demonstrate how much you know
        And prove the distance you can go...
        
        Another year we've just passed through.
        What new ideas came to you?
        How many big things did you do?
        
        Time left twelve fresh months in your care.
        How many of them did you share
        With opportunity and dare
        Again where you so often missed?
        
        We do not find you on the list of Makers Good.
        Explain the fact!
        Ah no, 'twas not the chance you lacked!
        As usual–you failed to act!
    • Walter Chrysler said, "more than enthusiasm, I would say excitement. I like to see men get excited. When they get excited, the customers get excited, and we get business."
  • 2. This idea put me back into selling after I had quit
    • Summary: If you ask enough potential customers, you will be successful.  To force yourself to ask enough people, keep records. Record how many calls you make every day, and which of these lead to interviews, and which of those interviews lead to sales.
    • TODO: Summarize the rest
    • [NW: This chapter seems to slightly contradict the previous one. In the previous chapter Frank says it was Carnegie's advice to be enthusiastic that got him to start selling again, but in this chapter he says it was his boss' advice to focus on the number of calls you make.]
  • 3. One thing I did that helped me destroy the biggest enemy I ever had to face
    • Summary: The biggest enemy he ever had to face was his fear of speaking to strangers, both individuals and groups. To fix this he joined Dale Carnegie's course, where he got repeated practice in public speaking.  This also got rid of his fear of speaking to important individuals.
  • 4. The only way I could get myself organized
  • Summary
• Part 2 - Formula for success in selling
  • 5. How I learned the most important secret of salesmanship
  • 6. Hitting the bull's eye
  • 7. A $250,000 sale in 15 minutes
  • 8. Analysis of the basic principles used in making that sale
  • 9. How asking questions increased the effectiveness of my sales interviews
  • 10. How I learned to find the most important reason why a man should buy
  • 11. The most important word I have found in selling has only three letters
  • 12. How I find the hidden objection
  • 13. The forgotten art that is magic in selling
  • Summary
• Part 3 - Six ways to win and hold the confidence of others
  • 14. The biggest lesson I ever learned about creating confidence
  • 15. A valuable lesson I learned about creating confidence from a great physician
  • 16. The quickest way I ever discovered to win confidence
  • 17. How to get kicked out!
  • 18. I found this an infallible way to gain a man's confidence
  • 19. How to look your best
  • Summary
• Part 4 - How to make people want to do business with you
  • 20. An idea I learned from Lincoln helped me make friends
  • 21. I became more welcome everywhere when I did this
  • 22. How I learned to remember names and faces
  • 23. The biggest reason why salesmen lose business
  • 24. This interview taught me how to overcome my fear of approaching big men
  • Summary
• Part 5 - Steps in sale
  • 25. The sale before the sale
  • 26. The secret of making appointments
  • 27. How I learned to outsmart secretaries and switchboard operators
  • 28. An idea that helped me get into the "major leagues"
  • 29. How to let the customer help you make the sale
  • 30. How I find new customers and make old ones enthusiastic boosters
  • 31. Seven rules I use in closing the sale
  • 32. An amazing closing technique I learned from a master salesman
  • Summary
• Part 6 - Don't be afraid to fail
  • 33. Don't be afraid to fail!
  • 34. Benjamin Franklin's secret of success and what it did for me
  • 35. Let's you and I have a heart-to-heart talk

Enterprise Sales

The Enterprise Sales Guide
http://www.enterprisesales.nyc/

Books

• Amazon - Hacking Sales
  • HackingSalesv1.pdf

There are times when it's best to be pushy / persistent

Definition of "pushy": "excessively or unpleasantly self-assertive or ambitious."

Barbara Corcoran - Shark Tales

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - Titan (book)

There are times when it's best to spend money creating an image of success

Barbara Corcoran - Shark Tales

But then she seems to directly contradict this advice in another section:

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - Titan (book)

Misc Advice

Mark Cuban on sales:

- Everything he knows about selling, he learned by selling stuff door-to-door.
- You need to be able to quickly handle objections.
- When he was running his company he would give new salespeople a Cadillac and then tell them that if they didn't make quota the Cadillac would be taken away from them.


Barbara Corcoran on sales (from her book):

Part 1:

1. If you don't have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails.
2. Paint the rocks white and the whole yard will look lovely.
3. If the sofa is ripped, cover it with laughter.
4. Use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
5. Offer the bigger piece and yours will taste better.
6. Put the socks in the sock drawer.
7. If there's more than one kid to wash, set up a bathtime routine.
8. If you want to be in two places at once, borrow a reel-to-reel.
9. It's your game; make up your own rules.
10. There's always room for one more.
11. Go play outside.
12. When the clubhouse is quiet there's probably not making spaghetti.
13. If you want to be a cheerleader, you better know the cheers.
14. Go stand next to Nana and see how big you are!
15. If you want tot get noticed, write your name on the wall.
16. Sweep the corners and the whole house stays clean.
17. In a family, everyone helps mash the potatoes.
18. Moms can't quit.
19. When there are ten buyers are three puppies, every dog is the pick of the litter.
20. Jumping out the window will make you either an ass or a hero.
21. You have the right to be there.
22. You've got to bully a bully.
23. Never be ashamed of who you are.
24. The joy is in the getting there.

Part 2:

1. Trust your gut.
2. You can't fake passion.
3. Dress the part.
4. Do your homework.
5. Fancy talk don't work.
6. Pushy people deliver.
7. You gotta have a gimmick.
8. Everybody wants what everybody wants.
9. Step apart from the crowd.
10. Expand before you're ready.
11. Be willing to flop.
12. Shoot the dogs early.
13. Fun is good business.
14. Pick good people.

- 'sales' shows up in the book 155 times.

- She talks about the need to play to your strengths / differentiate yourself ("If you don't have big breasts, put ribbons in your pigtails!")
- She talks about the need for a killer instinct
- She mentions her best salespeople wearing really flashy / outlandish clothing
- I think she mentioned firing the bottom-performing salespeople every year?



Ross Perot on sales (from a biography of him):




Bill Gates on sales (from biographies of him):




Howard Schultz on sales (from 'Pour Your Heart Into It'):





Sam Wyly on sales (from '$1000 and an Idea'):




Here's a guy from Infer.com explaining their sales strategy:

Advice from a sales guy who went to college for it (so he's really into it):

Here are some comments from salespeople I've worked with:

What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School - Ch 14. - For Entrepreneurs Only - p245

Allison (Dev's girlfriend)

About her:
- She was serious into tennis, the 12th best in the US, but wasn't able to make it pro.
- She wasn't allowed to do many fun things when she was growing up; she went to a tennis tournament every single weekend from age 8 to 18 (or something like that). 52 tournaments a year. She would travel by herself because her father would accompany her brothers (who were in a more prestigious league). She took a plane to Florida by herself at age 10. [This sounds very reminiscent of Branson and and Ted Turner(?) both being sent to boarding school and being forced to rely on themselves. Branson was given lots of challenges by his relatives when he was younger to teach self-reliance.]
- She became friends with the head of Amazon's Kindle division when she went to some Spain-related meetup. They now talk just about every week(?).
- She was the #1 salesperson at her company the first year she ever started to try to sell anything.
- Her job is to boost the number of prescriptions doctors write for the drugs her company makes [pretty scandalous if you ask me]
- She said she made her pharmaceutical company something like $16mm and was given a $40,000 bonus, which just pissed her off. She said she was making ~$100,000.
- She said she's going to do it one or two more years and then try to start her own thing.
- Dev suggested she was now making ~$175-200k.

Her advice:
- She said, "Don't start asking for favors immediately. Wait six months. Build up a friendship with the person first.". She gave an analogy with dating: "Imagine you walk up to someone randomly on the street and say, 'Hey, do you want to go on a date?' 'Uh, no...'." [I felt embarrassed because that wasn't intuitive to me, but it was extremely helpful to get a good salesperson's perspective.]
- She shows up once a week to drop off samples and chat up the doctor.
- She just looks around his office at stuff on his walls and uses it to come up with questions. If he's got a diploma from Oklahoma State, she'll ask about Oklahoma.
- She says if the doctor doesn't want to see her it's extremely difficult to get them to change their mind; she estimated she only got through to around 10% of them (or maybe that was when she was talking about when the secretary would try to block her? She could only get past the secretary 10% of the time?)
- She said you'll get 80% of your sales from 20% of your customers. So try to identify those customers and focus on them instead of chasing after the ones who aren't going to buy as much.
- Most salespeople fail because they're afraid to ask, they're afraid to stand there in uncomfortable silence after they've made the ask.
- She tries to get the doctor to promise to do something, anything, every time she visits. That way she can follow up the next week and say, "You said you'd do X...". Most people in the US have been trained since they were young to keep their word, so getting someone to promise to do something is a very powerful way to get them to do it.
- She said something I had just read in this book "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling", which was along the lines of, "most people just don't make enough calls. You need to do a certain number of calls per day, and just assume that a certain percentage of them are going to lead to success. Just plow through them." (she said something along those lines. I don't remember her exact phrasing.)





AdRoll
https://www.adroll.com/



Henry Ford on his approach to selling:

We were careful in the selection of our salesmen. At first there was great difficulty in getting good salesmen because the automobile trade was not supposed to be stable. It was supposed to be dealing in a luxury--in pleasure vehicles. We eventually appointed agents, selecting the very best men we could find, and then paying to them a salary larger than they could possibly earn in business for themselves. In the beginning we had not paid much in the way of salaries. We were feeling our way, but when we knew what our way was, we adopted the policy of paying the very highest reward for service and then insisting upon getting the highest service. Among the requirements for an agent we laid down the following:

(1) A progressive, up-to-date man keenly alive to the possibilities of business.
(2) A suitable place of business clean and dignified in appearance.
(3) A stock of parts sufficient to make prompt replacements and keep in active service every Ford car in his territory.
(4) An adequately equipped repair shop which has in it the right machinery for every necessary repair and adjustment.
(5) Mechanics who are thoroughly familiar with the construction and operation of Ford cars.
(6) A comprehensive bookkeeping system and a follow-up sales system, so that it may be instantly apparent what is the financial status of the various departments of his business, the condition and size of his stock, the present owners of cars, and the future prospects.
(7) Absolute cleanliness throughout every department. There must be no unwashed windows, dusty furniture, dirty floors.
(8) A suitable display sign.
(9) The adoption of policies which will ensure absolutely square dealing and the highest character of business ethics.

And this is the general instruction that was issued:

A dealer or a salesman ought to have the name of every possible automobile buyer in his territory, including all those who have never given the matter a thought. He should then personally solicit by visitation if possible--by correspondence at the least--every man on that list and then making necessary memoranda, know the automobile situation as related to every resident so solicited. If your territory is too large to permit this, you have too much territory.

Source: My Life and Work by Henry Ford - http://www.1920-30.com/automobiles/henr ... s-men.html

Compensating Salespeople

Videos

• Ben Feldman At Work Insurance Interview - Part 1 Of 4
• Ben Feldman Sales Video
• Joe Ades, the Union Square vegetable peeler salesman

Practicing

• 2011.03.01 - Inc - Jason Fried - How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

  • Like I said at the outset, it's all about practice. Whether you're playing drums or building a business, you're going to be pretty bad at something the first time you try it. The second time isn't much better. Over time, and after a lot of practice, you begin to get there.

    So here's a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.

    Go buy something on Craigslist or eBay. Find something that's a bit of a commodity, so you know there's always plenty of supply and demand. An iPod is a good test. Buy it, and then immediately resell it. Then buy it again. Each time, try selling it for more than you paid for it. See how far you can push it. See how much profit you can make off 10 transactions.

    Start tweaking the headline. Then start fiddling with the product description. Vary the photographs. Take some pictures of the thing for sale; use other photos with other items, or people, in them. Shoot really high-quality shots, and also post crappy ones from your cell-phone camera. Try every variation you can think of.

    I love doing this, because there's no real risk involved. If you already have a business, you don't need to dream up a new product line or rock the boat with crazy experiments. If you don't have a business, it's a perfect way to work on your chops.

• 2018.04.?? - LAHWF - Chatting with a Muslim
  • The Muslim guy says his dad owns and operates an ice-cream truck, and Andrew Hales replies by saying that before his YouTube channel he was selling Italian ice. It made me think that maybe his experience with selling Italian ice gave him the confidence with strangers to allow him to do his 'walk-up-to-strangers' videos. So selling those Italian ices could have been great sales / people-person experience.

Examples of people who got sales experience

• Kidnapped and TORTURED by a Cartel for 16 days - Larry Pollock - Fresh Out Interviews
  • 10:22 - This guy got experience selling knives door-to-door and says he did well because he didn't care if a particular person he talked to was interested or not, he'd just move on to the next house.  He ended up being a manager.  He then went on to selling steroids and was successful at that.