The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all.
They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on the customer/industry/client. These folks would also often deliver very difficult messages to their clients, which often resulted in more business not less.
The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.
There is the guy at the car dealership who specializes in adding an extended service contract for your new car.
Then there's the guy who sells a software development project that lands a well qualified customer (joy to work with) and a good specification which was well estimated and price so you can complete the work profitably. Maybe you know nothing about formalwear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in.
Sales are maligned for good reason. I'd wager I've experienced the "you know nothing about formal wear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in" salesperson a handful of times. Now, the number of times I've had someone try to sell me something while clearly not listening to what I have to say and getting uncomfortably pushy about it, well... yikes.
The first type is vastly more common than the second. So I don't think it's unfair to malign sales in general. And if I'm buying a suit I need a skilled tailor to alter it to fit me, not someone to convince me to buy a suit - if I'm in the suit store I already know I want a suit and for what purpose.
How does someone become someone who sells the software development project? Is this an architect or sales engineer? I’m confused by how a sales engineer would gain the level of expertise needed to sell the project and specs/implementation.
Note that car dealerships are like that because the dealership cannot offer you the later. You go into the dealer having looked up their cost on Edmunds/kbb/... and are determined to give them zero profit from the sale. Worse you know (right or wrong) what you want to buy and so they can't even provide the service of listening to your needs and getting you in the right car.
In theory you should have better luck by walking in and saying I'll pay MSRP (thus giving them a reasonable profit) if you don't add all that other BS. In practice they won't know how to do that because nobody else does
Okay, I've worked at a company that had that kind of sales. It is indeed very impressive to see. But I think that worked because there were only a small number of vendors who could potentially deliver for these (giant) customers in the first place. Otherwise the immense investment to attempt to land one of these customers would have too low a chance of paying off.
Although they have the same title I think it's a different job to when there are a lot of options for the customer.
> The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.
Absolutely. I have had the pleasure of working with a few elite sales people and none of them were sleazy. They were all extremely confident on the inside, but present as humble and even a little vulnerable on the outside. This is strategic as it builds trust, but I think it was also genuine for the most part -- they really wanted their customers to be happy and they wanted their customers to know that.
They dress nicely, but again in a humble way. They're not quite as polished looking as the "slick" sales people, and this too is part of their strategy. They can pull out a post it note or notebook and sketch a rudimentary diagram they've drawn a thousand times, and every time it looks like they just thought of this idea and are drawing it with wavy lines for the first time. I'm not sure if this one is intentional, but they all do it, and it always looks like they don't know how to draw straight lines.
I actually ran into someone like this at lens crafters recently. They were quite young, early to mid 20s I'd say, but after a few minutes of them telling me about the various lens options, I stopped and said, "You're the top salesperson here aren't you?" They gave me a funny look, and asked how I knew. "Just a guess" I said -- but in reality, I had seen all of their human dark-patterns before. Most people wouldn't even know they were being sold to, in fact, they would probably think the opposite... that the salesperson didn't care if they bought anything from them as long as they got the right solution from somebody in the end. Some of them will literally even say that. Of course, this only works when it is 100% believable and you don't identify it as part of their sales strategy.
How does a salesperson deliver exceptional work? In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work.
> In every place I’ve worked, outside of independent contracting, the sales person didn’t do the trench work.
Have you ever worked at a place where the sales people promised features that didn't exist? A bad sales person can ensure you're in the trenches doing work that is urgent but not important. A good sales person anticipates requirements, identifies when they're not currently available, and proactively works with the right people to get the important features prioritized strategically.
The sales people talk to the customers, so from a certain perspective they're the ones in the trenches and talking to customers while you're in the back office plugging away at a keyboard.
I've worked adjacent to technical consultants for a decade, and in tech sales leadership for the past few, and there's a lot of misleading information in this thread.
For one, there's a huge gulf between product sales and services sales. In product sales roles you'll almost never find people who are strategic advisors to their clients. Why would they be -- they'll selling products? On the other hand, in roles responsible for selling services (which may also include products, from a single or multiple vendors), you'll be far more likely to see strategic thinkers focused on business transformation or business outcomes.
That said, there are also very good reasons why even at big consulting shops (Deloitte, Accenture, BCG, EY, etc) the roles of Client Partner or Client Account Lead (the person on the hook for client revenue) is the one responsible for client relationships and client contracting, but is usually not the one providing strategy or technology advice. That comes cross-functionally.
In small tech product companies -- especially where the product isn't just plug & play -- my experience is that the sales rep is responsible for contracting and business relationships, but it's the technical pre-sales architects & the post-sales service delivery manager + architects who are providing the most value. It's exceptionally difficult to hire rockstars senior architects and always will be. It's one of the most in-demand roles in tech.
We had a sales guy that the rest of the office hated, but whom I absolutely loved. He'd sell the craziest shit. E.g. him and I attempted to replace a customers Kubernetes stack with Azure websites and CosmosDB, saving them two years of hosting the first month (We failed because the client didn't feel like we where being serious).
At one point he sold a project that would lead to his termination and it was the most brilliant sale I've ever seen. A customer wanted monitoring and a 24/7 "operation center", but one which didn't have access to any systems. We'd channel alerts from the customer into our on-call, which would then phone the customers staff and tell them that "YO! X is broken" and hang up. The price was insane, is was free money, but the customer was excited and felt like they got a great deal.
My archetype of a good sales person is the successful realtor. Realtors tend to “eat what they can kill”, so you can see the skills power law clearly. They are selling themselves more than houses, but there’s a lot to learn from that.
Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like any sales person, they generally have an interest in the transaction closing but they are only trusted if they come off as acting in your interest. That trust can ultimately help the transaction close — this is the line that I think good sales people walk.
I once worked for a company that sold industry cleaning supplies in the food processing vertical. The amount of industry knowledge that salespeople required to simply be able to offer one product over another was staggering. The best salespeople knew the industry, the end products, the supply chain, the internal processes, the potential improvements, and could present it in a way that was clear to operators, technical to supervisors, and commercially viable to decision makers.
In the telecom industry/ISP infrastructure business, the very best sales people are much more like business intelligence/market research people. They know where everyone's infrastructure is in a given region, for fiber cable routes, right of way, POPs, and what carrier is riding on top of which one. Knowing who owns and operates the underlying dark fiber route, DWDM systems, regen huts and similar on a multi state region is what gives them the power to be so effective.
Being able to operate from a position of confidence and assurance on "who has what, where" is a very powerful tool. Then, when communicating with potential customers (particularly where it's one ISP entering into a relationship with another ISP), they can offer the correct product for what the customer is looking for. Or, if they can't, they can quickly say "sorry no we can't do that, we don't have any of our own stuff there, and we can't get there by an NNI".
Yeah... "elite" tends to mean different things at different levels.
There are definitely "salesmen" with long term industry credibility, relationships and such. Probably reads as more of a "businessman" than salesman, regardless of how the bread is buttered.
That said, I think this is fundamentally different from a Salesman who can join, start or lead a sales team and start putting up sales numbers.
It's inglorious work, ultimately. Not a tone of respect for the salesman.
That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially.
Also, worse salesmen in trashier sectors tend to be more visible. A lame pressure sales guy will just seem more salesman. They'll also work colder pipelines and leads, annoy more people.
> That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially.
Absolutely. Used to do Sales Engineering, and the different Account Execs were light years apart, even when you looked at the top performers. Definite 80/20 rule here.
No no no, endulging in fancy diners with industry, running around with gifts and selling from gorrila size vendor catalog is job well done, but not ELITE. Cold sales are KING.
The real secret to having a successful sales career is to work at a company that sells a market leading product. This trumps 99% of anything you can do as an individual.
I have seen complete noobs have good sales careers at AWS
That's the difference between being a great salesman and having great sales. Any idiot can sell something that's in demand. It takes a genius to sell something that nobody wants. It's better to be the idiot.
I worked (in sales engineering) at such a company with a market-leading product. For a few years there, at the height of the market/mindshare dominance for their main product, I observed a recurring theme:
We'd hire a new manager from outside the company. This new manager would go around and meet some sales teams, meet some customers, then a month or two in, end up at a meeting where they gave a speech. At this speech, they would opine that customers loved our product, that it "practically sold itself" and our job was at least 90% execution.
Translation: a trained circus monkey could do your job. Just show up, answer your emails, and the product will do all the heavy lifting. Don't come complaining to me about how your quota is too high, product isn't taking your feature requests seriously, etc. Those are just excuses for poor performance.
I saw this happen a half dozen times, at least. In every case -- every case -- those people were singing a very different tune after they had been around for six months and saw what the job was really like.
Now, having good traction in the market, and analysts saying good things about you, and customers excited to be references? All that is really important. But in large enterprise sales, nothing "sells itself." And, for the record, we had plenty of people who weren't idiots, who nonetheless couldn't sell a product that was in very high demand. At least, not enough to keep their job.
I was talking to a sales person at Research in Motion back when Blackberry and mobile enterprise email were hot; asked him how things are. He replied it was like selling oxygen, he would walk in and take an order for how many they wanted. Every RIM salesperson looked like an amazing sales person based on sales metrics.
Also the inverse is true. A great sales team can disguise a mediocre product team.
I saw this when I worked for a SaaS that was incredibly dominant in some countries, and almost non-existent in others (where an incumbent player was dominant).
Every year or so top performing sales and marketing folks from the dominant countries would be tapped on the shoulder and tasked with growing the company in our less dominant markets. Everyone failed.
The non market leading company sometimes do very well if/where they have good sales. The easy mode is work for the market leading company while the others don't have great sales staff. But if the others have great sales staff your job as the market leader becomes much harder - your market leading position ensures you are invited to the table when something is bought, but it doesn't ensure you have the sale. (the non-market leaders sometimes are not even invited to the table even when their offering is clearly better)
You should separate between inbound and outbound sales. If you work at AWS you are receiving a lot of inbound inquiries which make sales much easier than doing outbound work. In the case of top companies such as AWS, their marketing team performed a big part of the work while in small companies marketing cannot move the needle with a minimal budget, so they should be smarter, lucky, etc.
Even well-known product lead companies like Atlassian employ sales reps, especially at the enterprise and strategic levels, because demonstrating value to the end user is only a part of the sales process. There's lots of additional work that's closer to project management that's required to close a deal. It's identifying and aligning stakeholders, helping to justify budget by putting together a business case for leadership and finance teams who won't directly interface with the product and need to be sold on it's value. This is the sort of thing high level business to business sales reps spend a ton of time doing.
Huh? You absolutely still need sales people even with a market leading product. It sells itself, sure, but someone needs to work with the client and close the best possible deal.
> The better you are at selling, the more debased your life becomes, as everything is reduced to a transaction, a leveraging of the smallest edge
I think that's the essence of having a sales mindset if I had to explain it. It's really hard to convey what it means and I think only those that worked close with people with this talent would have a chance to know what this really means. Sales is an art on top of a very technical game, where you have an unlimited number of secret knobs to balance. It's like seeing chefs or f1 drivers performing at their best, and as such it's not just about grit, you also need talent on top.
Isn’t the point being made in that passage that the better you are at sales, the more you treat your loved ones as customers you can transactionally extract value from by leveraging your sales tactics, rather than just… loving them? I don’t see how this connects to your comment on chefs and F1 drivers needing both grit and talent.
‘“Doris, what if I throw in a $50 calling card?” mutates into “I’ll be charming at your office Christmas party if you do the dishes this month,” aimed at a befuddled partner who may or may not have yet realized that what they thought was a partnership is in fact closer to a mutual exploitation.’
So yes, it’s not at all about some preternatural gift for perception or intuition that the parent commenter shoehorned in. Less artful, more “gross”.
I see it with relatives in who are always thinking they should be working on closing the next deal rather than at the aquarium with their kids. The incentive structure feels almost corrosive.
> We were victims. Therefore, we had license to take whatever measures were necessary. Once this worldview sets in, it’s very difficult to break out of, not least because it often feels so perfectly just.
One of many nuggets of wisdom in this excellent text.
Entertaining piece, the writing is very good. But the author was honest enough to tell us he had no problem lying at anytime when working as a salesman, so I take this article as a work of fiction (although I am sure that part, or perhaps most of it, is true).
> I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States.
Oh neat, how?
> Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.” As soon as I heard a yes, I said, “Great choice!” and transferred them to confirmation. My manager occasionally came by and reminded me that it was technically illegal to skip my disclosures, but he made commission off my commission, and his tone made it clear that I could do as I pleased as long as I kept putting up numbers.
[…]
> I was one of the first to go, technically for not making my required disclosures—about cancellation fees, international rates, all that fine print nobody ever bothered to recite—on a sale.
So, he and his boss did crime together for a while and then eventually their scam stopped working and he got fired.
Articles like this are valued not based on how noble is the protagonist but based on how truthful is the account. The latter is of course not granted either but I would be even less inclined to believe a story of an airtight telemarketer.
In general I think it's very easy to _not understand_ people i.e. "how could you". The interesting part for me is when I do understand: "oh this is how". From that perspective I enjoyed this read quite a bit.
> In general I think it's very easy to _not understand_ people i.e. "how could you". The interesting part for me is when I do understand: "oh this is how".
“How could you” is a rhetorical question to which the asker already knows the answer they would be given, which is almost invariably “because I lack empathy”.
To reward positive stories that include crime, just because other people "might also be doing it" is ehhh. That's literally what criminals tell themselves, that everyone else does it.
For a liar and a cheater, it's basic modus operandi to tell you some of their lies to give themselves a veneer of honesty.
Agree with you in some sense, it is what it is, but why trust anything else they say to "rescue the story"? That's the game they play.
This is not... good sales. This is making the numbers. The customers acquired with this method are not good customers.
To future salespeople in here: please work on selecting customers carefully, and pitch only to great two-way fits. That way, both customer and your organisation will thrive.
I get that the salesperson is judged by volume closed, but this gives the rest of the organisation churn problems to deal with.
I can’t remember if it’s against HN rules to implore people to read the actual article.
The reason he became good at selling (according to the article) is because he changed his attitude despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment.
It’s an interesting and probably helpful lesson for the startup hustlers here on HN if they can make it through this admittedly long essay.
I doubt there is such a thing as good sales from telemarketing. It's almost by definition a way to make a buck with no cares whatsoever if the person will ever return.
This whole thing feels like drawing blood from stone. If your company/industry is abusive and miserly, you can go above and beyond and still make a pittance. If you put in the effort, the years, whatever, what you could get is a token recogniton of your efforts like raising your wages from minimum wage to 30% above that.
Poverty, scarcity and desperation drives people to evil. If you work a stable job for a respectable wage for an industry that makes money, and is willing to share said money with you, all this stuff sounds strange to you.
All the machiavellian scheming and power games that take place in a call center on the shift manager level might only show up close to C-level in an IT company, as its only there that the opportunities grow scarce enough, and the people desperate enough that these darwinian environments arise.
It's less about sales being a difficult medium to respect.
There might be more about the people and the behaviour they are choosing. Like anything it has to be managed, because it's only a sale when the customer is satisfied to retain the sale, let alone renew.
Getting good at helping qualified leads can be just fine.
If inbound is garbage, it invites less than ideal behaviour.
tbf, this is to sales what "I developed a shell script that automatically appends extended comments and now I'm the highest line-of-code outputting developer in my cheap IT outsourcing company" is to software development....
It varies to be honest, the one in the article - telemarketing, or broader speaking, selling something they don't need to someone - is scummy. But when working in IT you have to make a decision on a solution, be it a library, a service, or something like that; the role of sales becomes more difficult then, and will involve presentations, live demos, POCs, etc.
So... the thing that made him America's top telemarketer was... illegally omitting the disclosures... which everyone was doing... but also, it made him uniquely successful because many of his colleagues didn't do it?
I'm getting the strangest feeling that maybe this guy isn't done peddling bullshit?
I thought it was a series of realizations - First he learned to stop sounding like he hated his job, and focus on making the other persons feelings. This got him to people saying "yes".
To close more, he started dropping the disclosures and sending people to the next department.
The point you are raising does make sense, I suppose the lesson for him was getting to yes, and then ensuring you dont blow the lead. Which I suppose is the core lesson to selling. You cant sell if people get out of the flow.
And he does allude to this, that the economy is small constant hustles that convince people to buy things, as opposed to the sterile idea of economic demand.
> the thing that made him America's top telemarketer was... illegally omitting the disclosures
Honestly, when I’m on a call with customer service I could do without being reminded every microsecond that I’m actually on a phone call that might be recorded.
> So... the thing that made him America's top telemarketer was... illegally omitting the disclosures... which everyone was doing... but also, it made him uniquely successful because many of his colleagues didn't do it?
And Uber is a taxi company that doesn't own taxis, AirBnB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels. Find a hyper-successful company or person, and start digging. The secret 99/100 times is crime (or incredibly crime-adjacent behaviors).
My company is a division in a political minefield that is the greater organization. In particular, my company is filled with people who have spent their entire careers as rank and file workers with their heads down and never had to develop the political savvy to steer through the minefield.
I don't know how many times I've told, and to how many coworkers, if the enemy is going to hang himself, stop talking and give him more rope.
The disclosure should be outside the phone conversation prior to funds transferring.
Send them to confirmation who should have a process of, we're sending you the email now where you enter you make an account and enter payment details. Stay on the phone with them while they do it to avoid drop off rates. During the account creation is the disclosures.
That’s why you don’t answer phone calls with „yes” as sometimes they would say your name and you would be inclined replying „yes, speaking”.
Just heard stories some shitty companies/sales would push you over they have your „yes” on recording. I don’t believe it would hold in any court if they would have to play the whole thing. But it would work on people who are not so tough.
Sattelite TV sellers were awful they almost got my mother to buy second one because they told her BS new one will void competition contract and then sales rep was pushy she wanted to back out - good thing was she did not sign anything before asking me.
So yeah I have seen some pushy idiots pushing old people or not confident people into signing stuff.
There is no evidence of a company using the fact that you've said "yes" at a random point in the conversation as confirmation that you've agreed to their (maybe unheard) pitch, despite variations on that urban legend doing the rounds for years.
Few years in my ago we had telemarketing company. "Good morning Orange".
No, that was their name. People thought they were from Orange company, but they just were stating their full name ;)
So many people got scammed.
It's also why I don't have any respect for the sales people.
Sales is about closing. He ignored rules to do it. Is it 'right' no. But he was successful at it for awhile.
The two most epic sales I ever saw where these.
One guy I saw some how resurrected a customer of ours. I flat out asked him. His words to me were 'I have no idea how I did it'. While he was saying that he pulled out his wallet and started laying 20s on the table. 'you didnt...' 'i have no idea what you are asking'.
The second one was in the dead of july at a garage sale my family was running. Suddenly a guy comes up and hands me money for a Christmas lightbulb (who put that out there?!). 'did you just get that guy to buy a light bulb' 'i showed him how he needed it'.
Sales is not about doing the right thing. But creating a need and filling it and closing the sale. In the first case he showed the guy that he needed money. In the second somehow he talked the guy into needing a lightbulb before Christmas. It works even better if you somehow get the customer to think they came up with the idea.
If you understand that rule of 'creation' you can actually make yourself immune to most sales bots. The first thing most do is create a need and magically they can fill it with the thing they just happen to sell.
Unfortunately that is pretty much how society works. As long as the right people are making money, or getting paid off by the people who are making money.
It’s weird to meet people who look for the short-term gain in every single situation.
Especially if they’re semi-talented but perennially “unlucky”. Usually trading on a curated public image or “likability” backed by nothing but positive sounding words and shifting excuses. Unable to build anything sustainable because they piss off every person with the ability to make them rich.
Walk away. Remember them as they were; and write them off.
It's interesting how different responses this article evokes. Many commenters found the writing "very good", "excellent", etc, while others thought the article "terrible" or "empty".
How comes?
Despite the hard to believe "No. 1 telemarketer in the United States" claim at the beginning, I ultimately found the author relatable. The article offered a glimpse into a world foreign to me, made interesting points about how doing sales changes one forever, and ended ironically wondering whether this article will help close a book deal.
Readit News
They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on the customer/industry/client. These folks would also often deliver very difficult messages to their clients, which often resulted in more business not less.
The sleazy sales people can build decent pipelines/sales numbers but they are not what I would ever label as 'elite'.
There is the guy at the car dealership who specializes in adding an extended service contract for your new car.
Then there's the guy who sells a software development project that lands a well qualified customer (joy to work with) and a good specification which was well estimated and price so you can complete the work profitably. Maybe you know nothing about formalwear but somebody sells you a suit you really feel good in.
Do they usually come from an IC developer role?
In theory you should have better luck by walking in and saying I'll pay MSRP (thus giving them a reasonable profit) if you don't add all that other BS. In practice they won't know how to do that because nobody else does
Although they have the same title I think it's a different job to when there are a lot of options for the customer.
Absolutely. I have had the pleasure of working with a few elite sales people and none of them were sleazy. They were all extremely confident on the inside, but present as humble and even a little vulnerable on the outside. This is strategic as it builds trust, but I think it was also genuine for the most part -- they really wanted their customers to be happy and they wanted their customers to know that.
They dress nicely, but again in a humble way. They're not quite as polished looking as the "slick" sales people, and this too is part of their strategy. They can pull out a post it note or notebook and sketch a rudimentary diagram they've drawn a thousand times, and every time it looks like they just thought of this idea and are drawing it with wavy lines for the first time. I'm not sure if this one is intentional, but they all do it, and it always looks like they don't know how to draw straight lines.
I actually ran into someone like this at lens crafters recently. They were quite young, early to mid 20s I'd say, but after a few minutes of them telling me about the various lens options, I stopped and said, "You're the top salesperson here aren't you?" They gave me a funny look, and asked how I knew. "Just a guess" I said -- but in reality, I had seen all of their human dark-patterns before. Most people wouldn't even know they were being sold to, in fact, they would probably think the opposite... that the salesperson didn't care if they bought anything from them as long as they got the right solution from somebody in the end. Some of them will literally even say that. Of course, this only works when it is 100% believable and you don't identify it as part of their sales strategy.
Have you ever worked at a place where the sales people promised features that didn't exist? A bad sales person can ensure you're in the trenches doing work that is urgent but not important. A good sales person anticipates requirements, identifies when they're not currently available, and proactively works with the right people to get the important features prioritized strategically.
The sales people talk to the customers, so from a certain perspective they're the ones in the trenches and talking to customers while you're in the back office plugging away at a keyboard.
It sounds inane, but it's appalling how often that doesn't happen, and how it irretrievably dooms a project before it starts.
For one, there's a huge gulf between product sales and services sales. In product sales roles you'll almost never find people who are strategic advisors to their clients. Why would they be -- they'll selling products? On the other hand, in roles responsible for selling services (which may also include products, from a single or multiple vendors), you'll be far more likely to see strategic thinkers focused on business transformation or business outcomes.
That said, there are also very good reasons why even at big consulting shops (Deloitte, Accenture, BCG, EY, etc) the roles of Client Partner or Client Account Lead (the person on the hook for client revenue) is the one responsible for client relationships and client contracting, but is usually not the one providing strategy or technology advice. That comes cross-functionally.
In small tech product companies -- especially where the product isn't just plug & play -- my experience is that the sales rep is responsible for contracting and business relationships, but it's the technical pre-sales architects & the post-sales service delivery manager + architects who are providing the most value. It's exceptionally difficult to hire rockstars senior architects and always will be. It's one of the most in-demand roles in tech.
At one point he sold a project that would lead to his termination and it was the most brilliant sale I've ever seen. A customer wanted monitoring and a 24/7 "operation center", but one which didn't have access to any systems. We'd channel alerts from the customer into our on-call, which would then phone the customers staff and tell them that "YO! X is broken" and hang up. The price was insane, is was free money, but the customer was excited and felt like they got a great deal.
Because they were not "elite salespeople"? Jokes aside, I guess the best salesperson is the one whose title is not "Sales".
Some people love their realtors, although they do very little for their outlandish commissions. They do however, guide you through the process and give you transactional advice. Like any sales person, they generally have an interest in the transaction closing but they are only trusted if they come off as acting in your interest. That trust can ultimately help the transaction close — this is the line that I think good sales people walk.
If you’re cold-selling people on a shitty widget they don’t need, you’re going to have to be a sleazeball.
Being able to operate from a position of confidence and assurance on "who has what, where" is a very powerful tool. Then, when communicating with potential customers (particularly where it's one ISP entering into a relationship with another ISP), they can offer the correct product for what the customer is looking for. Or, if they can't, they can quickly say "sorry no we can't do that, we don't have any of our own stuff there, and we can't get there by an NNI".
There are definitely "salesmen" with long term industry credibility, relationships and such. Probably reads as more of a "businessman" than salesman, regardless of how the bread is buttered.
That said, I think this is fundamentally different from a Salesman who can join, start or lead a sales team and start putting up sales numbers.
It's inglorious work, ultimately. Not a tone of respect for the salesman.
That said... in terms of performance... there are totally different levels here. For some businesses, this can be a key hire of the highest order. Equivalent to ceo, cto and such... potentially.
Also, worse salesmen in trashier sectors tend to be more visible. A lame pressure sales guy will just seem more salesman. They'll also work colder pipelines and leads, annoy more people.
That bias makes salesmen's reputation even worse.
Absolutely. Used to do Sales Engineering, and the different Account Execs were light years apart, even when you looked at the top performers. Definite 80/20 rule here.
I have seen complete noobs have good sales careers at AWS
We'd hire a new manager from outside the company. This new manager would go around and meet some sales teams, meet some customers, then a month or two in, end up at a meeting where they gave a speech. At this speech, they would opine that customers loved our product, that it "practically sold itself" and our job was at least 90% execution.
Translation: a trained circus monkey could do your job. Just show up, answer your emails, and the product will do all the heavy lifting. Don't come complaining to me about how your quota is too high, product isn't taking your feature requests seriously, etc. Those are just excuses for poor performance.
I saw this happen a half dozen times, at least. In every case -- every case -- those people were singing a very different tune after they had been around for six months and saw what the job was really like.
Now, having good traction in the market, and analysts saying good things about you, and customers excited to be references? All that is really important. But in large enterprise sales, nothing "sells itself." And, for the record, we had plenty of people who weren't idiots, who nonetheless couldn't sell a product that was in very high demand. At least, not enough to keep their job.
Or just a regular crook.
Dead Comment
Also the inverse is true. A great sales team can disguise a mediocre product team.
Every year or so top performing sales and marketing folks from the dominant countries would be tapped on the shoulder and tasked with growing the company in our less dominant markets. Everyone failed.
Deleted Comment
Even well-known product lead companies like Atlassian employ sales reps, especially at the enterprise and strategic levels, because demonstrating value to the end user is only a part of the sales process. There's lots of additional work that's closer to project management that's required to close a deal. It's identifying and aligning stakeholders, helping to justify budget by putting together a business case for leadership and finance teams who won't directly interface with the product and need to be sold on it's value. This is the sort of thing high level business to business sales reps spend a ton of time doing.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
I think that's the essence of having a sales mindset if I had to explain it. It's really hard to convey what it means and I think only those that worked close with people with this talent would have a chance to know what this really means. Sales is an art on top of a very technical game, where you have an unlimited number of secret knobs to balance. It's like seeing chefs or f1 drivers performing at their best, and as such it's not just about grit, you also need talent on top.
‘“Doris, what if I throw in a $50 calling card?” mutates into “I’ll be charming at your office Christmas party if you do the dishes this month,” aimed at a befuddled partner who may or may not have yet realized that what they thought was a partnership is in fact closer to a mutual exploitation.’
So yes, it’s not at all about some preternatural gift for perception or intuition that the parent commenter shoehorned in. Less artful, more “gross”.
One of many nuggets of wisdom in this excellent text.
Maybe this is the real motivation behind the "victims" of the PC mindset: its a cadre of justifications to plunder the status quo.
Oh neat, how?
> Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.” As soon as I heard a yes, I said, “Great choice!” and transferred them to confirmation. My manager occasionally came by and reminded me that it was technically illegal to skip my disclosures, but he made commission off my commission, and his tone made it clear that I could do as I pleased as long as I kept putting up numbers.
[…]
> I was one of the first to go, technically for not making my required disclosures—about cancellation fees, international rates, all that fine print nobody ever bothered to recite—on a sale.
So, he and his boss did crime together for a while and then eventually their scam stopped working and he got fired.
In general I think it's very easy to _not understand_ people i.e. "how could you". The interesting part for me is when I do understand: "oh this is how". From that perspective I enjoyed this read quite a bit.
“How could you” is a rhetorical question to which the asker already knows the answer they would be given, which is almost invariably “because I lack empathy”.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
For a liar and a cheater, it's basic modus operandi to tell you some of their lies to give themselves a veneer of honesty.
Agree with you in some sense, it is what it is, but why trust anything else they say to "rescue the story"? That's the game they play.
To future salespeople in here: please work on selecting customers carefully, and pitch only to great two-way fits. That way, both customer and your organisation will thrive.
I get that the salesperson is judged by volume closed, but this gives the rest of the organisation churn problems to deal with.
The reason he became good at selling (according to the article) is because he changed his attitude despite reading the sales scripts verbatim both before and after his attitude adjustment.
It’s an interesting and probably helpful lesson for the startup hustlers here on HN if they can make it through this admittedly long essay.
Deleted Comment
Poverty, scarcity and desperation drives people to evil. If you work a stable job for a respectable wage for an industry that makes money, and is willing to share said money with you, all this stuff sounds strange to you.
All the machiavellian scheming and power games that take place in a call center on the shift manager level might only show up close to C-level in an IT company, as its only there that the opportunities grow scarce enough, and the people desperate enough that these darwinian environments arise.
There might be more about the people and the behaviour they are choosing. Like anything it has to be managed, because it's only a sale when the customer is satisfied to retain the sale, let alone renew.
Getting good at helping qualified leads can be just fine.
If inbound is garbage, it invites less than ideal behaviour.
I'm getting the strangest feeling that maybe this guy isn't done peddling bullshit?
To close more, he started dropping the disclosures and sending people to the next department.
The point you are raising does make sense, I suppose the lesson for him was getting to yes, and then ensuring you dont blow the lead. Which I suppose is the core lesson to selling. You cant sell if people get out of the flow.
And he does allude to this, that the economy is small constant hustles that convince people to buy things, as opposed to the sterile idea of economic demand.
Honestly, when I’m on a call with customer service I could do without being reminded every microsecond that I’m actually on a phone call that might be recorded.
And Uber is a taxi company that doesn't own taxis, AirBnB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels. Find a hyper-successful company or person, and start digging. The secret 99/100 times is crime (or incredibly crime-adjacent behaviors).
I don't know how many times I've told, and to how many coworkers, if the enemy is going to hang himself, stop talking and give him more rope.
Send them to confirmation who should have a process of, we're sending you the email now where you enter you make an account and enter payment details. Stay on the phone with them while they do it to avoid drop off rates. During the account creation is the disclosures.
Just heard stories some shitty companies/sales would push you over they have your „yes” on recording. I don’t believe it would hold in any court if they would have to play the whole thing. But it would work on people who are not so tough.
Sattelite TV sellers were awful they almost got my mother to buy second one because they told her BS new one will void competition contract and then sales rep was pushy she wanted to back out - good thing was she did not sign anything before asking me.
So yeah I have seen some pushy idiots pushing old people or not confident people into signing stuff.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/can-you-hear-me-scam/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_you_hear_me%3F_(alleged_te...
So many people got scammed.
It's also why I don't have any respect for the sales people.
The two most epic sales I ever saw where these.
One guy I saw some how resurrected a customer of ours. I flat out asked him. His words to me were 'I have no idea how I did it'. While he was saying that he pulled out his wallet and started laying 20s on the table. 'you didnt...' 'i have no idea what you are asking'.
The second one was in the dead of july at a garage sale my family was running. Suddenly a guy comes up and hands me money for a Christmas lightbulb (who put that out there?!). 'did you just get that guy to buy a light bulb' 'i showed him how he needed it'.
Sales is not about doing the right thing. But creating a need and filling it and closing the sale. In the first case he showed the guy that he needed money. In the second somehow he talked the guy into needing a lightbulb before Christmas. It works even better if you somehow get the customer to think they came up with the idea.
If you understand that rule of 'creation' you can actually make yourself immune to most sales bots. The first thing most do is create a need and magically they can fill it with the thing they just happen to sell.
Dead Comment
Especially if they’re semi-talented but perennially “unlucky”. Usually trading on a curated public image or “likability” backed by nothing but positive sounding words and shifting excuses. Unable to build anything sustainable because they piss off every person with the ability to make them rich.
Walk away. Remember them as they were; and write them off.
And y’all just keep scrolling through the ads for that secret that’ll explain to you what to be angry about. Some shit will never stop working.
But the whole article was so terrible that I forgive nothing and want my time back. Who upvotes this trash?
How comes?
Despite the hard to believe "No. 1 telemarketer in the United States" claim at the beginning, I ultimately found the author relatable. The article offered a glimpse into a world foreign to me, made interesting points about how doing sales changes one forever, and ended ironically wondering whether this article will help close a book deal.