ASK IH: Do you want to learn about sales?
Hey everyone! Figured I'd ask since I've been receiving quite a handful of PM's and emails from the community asking about sales advice and selling tips (I've been building sales teams for a long time and was head of sales before taking the leap with my current IH-inspired startup).
I'm in the process of creating an online sales course for cold calling, but have been frequently asked to create one for developers as well.
- Would you care for a "Sales 101 / Sales for Technical Founders" online course?
- What would you want to learn?
- What scares you the most about sales?
- What would you pay? :)
Speaking as a founder who does not have a lot of experience with sales/marketing, I would gladly pay for course that covers the following
I'm a little late to the conversation, but I would love this. My startup a few years ago failed specifically because of my lack of sales expertise. As an engineer/product guy, I just assumed that if I built a great product it would sell itself. I quickly realized that was false.
I love everything mentioned above, but I would also really like a lesson about how to deal with rejection and motivation issues.
Focusing on sales and lead generation for SAAS type of businesses would be key, not your typical sales course.
I wanted to learn about cold emailing. When should I send the email? What should I say? maybe building a template
Great topic idea. Have you looked at Hubspot or Outreach? They have some great resources:
https://www.outreach.io/articles/how-to-get-a-52-percent-reply-rate-on-cold-emails
Thanks!!
Hi Mark - I am a little different from most indie hackers. My first job out of college was selling corn and soybeans to farmers in Indiana. As I transitioned to software, I learned that sales are the same despite the industry or vertical. Below I answered your questions.
Would you care for a "Sales 101 / Sales for Technical Founders" online course?
Yes
What would you want to learn?
How to map out a sales funnel and get feedback from a mentor.
What scares you the most about sales?
Rejection from a qualified lead.
What would you pay? :)
Of course, sales training is essential in every organiztion and could be useful for any indie hacker.
Hey T.D. - that's an awesome background. Easy to forget not everything revolves around tech in today's world lol.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi Mark, thanks for the initiative.
The most important part in Sales is to generate leads and just curious to know your perspective about the processyou focus on generating leads.
Hi Mark,
You set up four questions... and you are very honest...
My opinion is that you can get more valuable answers with questions WHY you want learn to sale?
And, ofcourse, the most scares about sales is failure... your students need to learn to live with this :-) and to learn from failure...
Also, I would change question No4 to How much knowledge about sales is worth for you? with this you will get more valuable answers than some numbers...
These next 3 books can carry you for at least the first year of selling. After that, notate what has worked for you in a "success journal" to start setting up your process.
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount (About lead generation, overall selling method)
You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar by David H. Sandler (Overall Selling)
Spin Selling by Neil Rackham (Direct selling customer interaction)
Do activities that you feel comfortable, confident, and competent doing. It's about filling up that potential customer pipeline. Never stop focusing on lead generation.
How about a productized service, Mark? Perhaps something small that people could pay you month over month?
@Vinrob , would you consider looking for help from marketing experts at www.githustle.com ?
Great idea. What would you like to see in such a product, and what would you like to pay?
I actually already have a productized service at www.sellsomemore.com. It's $100/hour/week, but I imagine that might be cost prohibitive for some.
Would pay $50 for like 20+ short lessons (videos or articles) about how to structure sales processes, dos and donts, all the tools and a few success stories.
Perfect. Just out of curiosity, what would it require for you to pay $150-250?
Not sure. As I already read a few ebooks and stuff and some were helpful, some were not helpful, it would feel to risky to pay more than $100.
Yes. Would love to hear about cold emails and sales for service businesses and would pay around 100€ I guess
Thanks for doing this Mark!
What are the key components of a good sales playbook? (A skeletal structure if you will!)
Of course!
Just off the top of my head, at the very least a complete framework would need:
If I missed anything, let me know :)
Lead generation at scale has always an area of uncertainty for me. I can easily find a handful of potential protests prospects for a new idea with a bit of elbow grease and Facebook/LinkedIn/Cold emailing but I have a hard time envisioning how to do this at scale in a sustainable way.