Ask HN: Any good essays/books/advice about software sales? I'm a software engineer trying to build an agency, would love to hear anything(literally) about how can an engineer learn to generate leads and convert them.
Thanks! |
Ask HN: Any good essays/books/advice about software sales? I'm a software engineer trying to build an agency, would love to hear anything(literally) about how can an engineer learn to generate leads and convert them.
Thanks! |
in my experience someone who programs usually can't sell
hire a marketing expert from your industry
Also for anyone interested, we are looking to expand our software portfolio so if you have a solution we would be happy to have a chat! Our main client base is in the Fintech, Gaming and Investment industries.
1. Get a lead and qualify it. Red flags for qualification are small company size, weird location which isn't in your geography (e.g. middle east), person enquiring is not sufficiently senior in the organisation etc.
2. Understand the customer's problem better than anyone else. This includes visiting them, sitting down in person, clearly stating their problem on some slides so they know you understand it. If you are the only person to visit the customer in person, you will probably win the lead.
3. Describe how you plan to solve the customer's problem, and demonstrate how you have relevant experience and how this won't be a challenge. This isn't an exciting project for you - you want to work together but this is an easy problem that you have solved a hundred times before and you can solve it with confidence.
4. Be flexible in the sales process - ask the customer to help you tweak the proposal until it's exactly what they want.
5. Tailor the solution to the size of the business - don't sell a giant over-engineered solution to their problem if they are tiny, find a way to solve it with no frills or quick hacks. On the flipside, don't sell a no-frill's solution to a giant enterprise, they will want to believe they are getting something suitably engineered. Also tailor the sales process - if you are winning a massive contract you put in more effort than a tiny contract (and if sufficiently small, your proposal can just be an email back).
6. Give a clear and reasonable commercial model that fits in-line with the customer's expectations. If it doesn't fit with their expectations, adjust the scope and price (don't significantly adjust price without adjusting scope - it's bad for relationships)
7. Be super flexible when closing the deal. You are a small agency, your benefit is you can do things that bigger agencies can't. Don't endlessly argue over meaningless contract terms - just make sure they pay your first invoice which should 'cover your ass' until the next invoice, and work from there.
The main difference in agency selling compared to standard software selling is that it is high-engagement and high-effort. If you spend 5 days winning 20 days of work, you are probably doing pretty well.
Also, the big mantra is "doing is selling" - doing a good job on one project will lead to both more work from the same client, and recommendations which brings in even more. Everyone employed at a consultancy/agency is responsible for selling, some directly, others indirectly by making sure they do a great job. The company doesn't exist without winning projects!
Who’s the client?
How will you find them? Where are they? How will you communicate with them? How will you get them to use your agency?
That’s the trick
Edit: spelling
I've found Robert Cialdini's Influence to be a great read!
The principles of selling software successfully are thus:
* Charge a low price. A low price gets many customers, and a high price gets fewer, but the money earned equals about the same. Better to have more customers, because that's more eyeballs and mouths seeing and talking about it.
* Make the software available for as many platforms as possible, with GNU/Linux being a first-class citizen. Although most of your customers will use macOS and Windows, having GNU/Linux support signals robustness and longevity, earning trust.
* Use a generous license. Best to AGPLv3+ -- competitors can't beat it. If others share your program gratis, it just leads to even more official customers. Any changes can be reincorporated into the official software, so the first-mover advantage is everything.
* The software must be GOOD. It's got to save people time in their otherwise busy lives, and it has to be robust -- it has to work every time. The software has to know when things won't work, and fail gracefully. This is what sets hobby-ware apart from professional-ware.
* Update the software regularly, and keep in contact with customers in a visible public place -- even if it's just a static, one-directional web page. Let people -- and search engines -- know the project is chugging along. Give customers something to look forwards to.
* Fill a niche, and give the software a broad appeal. A tool with "something for everyone" -- features that not everyone uses, but everyone uses SOME features -- is important to have.
* Write GREAT documentation, and typeset it with LaTeX. This is important to convey quality. Hobby-ware has a Readme.txt -- professional-ware has a PDF manual that is so well-written, it could be printed out, put in a box with the software on a CD, and shipped.
* Record the project into history. Be everywhere on relevant forums, and push the product when it's relevant. When someone has a problem that your software fixes, they will see those comments -- even years from now -- and that helpful, relevant advice is genuine marketing that stays posted forever. Bought ads don't come anywhere near that kind of value.
And, as far as the actual software is concerned, write it in a popular language with a popular graphics toolkit. Python 3 + Qt5 or 6 -- using PyInstaller to generate single-file executables -- is dang near perfect. Stick to conventional user interface guidelines. Build software that you, yourself, use everyday. Don't work on software that you don't use personally.
Familiarize yourself with macOS software of the 1990s (most software of this era was good, most software today is bad), and this article -- How To Design Software Good. https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/HIG/index.xml
1. Meet people.
2. Get to know them.
3. Make a pitch if they have a problem they will pay you for.
4. Get paid.
Meeting people is literally meeting people.
Getting to know them means time and effort spent fashioning a relationship. B2B relationships are long term. You can assume that people who regularly use agencies already have agencies they work with and will continue to work barring change to their business or the agency's business. These happen but not on a high pressure timeline. Consulting is a long con. Good luck.
Also while not exactly about sales, "Softwar" (a bio of Larry Ellison) has a ton of great insights on enterprise sales
But not sure how applicable to agencies it is so YMMV.
Customer is always right, because he is the one paying.
BTW, the original quote goes "The customer is always right in matters of taste"
Sell me this pen.
2. Speak in conferences that interests your customers. If you are a techie, default attraction is to speak in tech conferences. Unless you are selling to CTOs or VP(Engineering), none of your customers come there. You shouldn't just participate in these conferences where your customer's come. You should be a speaker. Speakers have a certain authority and your customers will crowd to that awesome speaker of the conference. It might only generate lead, but it will be a strong, qualified lead. From sales point of view, these conferences will give a pretty good idea of what matters to your customers.
3. Find the decision maker as quickly as possible and speak to them rather than wasting time with gate-keepers who can say no but not yes. Decision maker is the one who writes the cheque or the sponsor of the project or who can say yes as well as no. Decision maker need not be a CEO all the time.
4. Roleplay sales calls. Record these roleplays and keep improving your tone, words, tempo everything. You should be able to establish quickly why you, why now, and why at the price point you mention.
5. In every step of the journey, they should see value in interacting with you. As often as the prospect says, "of all the agencies I'm talking to, you folks come with depth and present with structure", it is better for you. Even if they don't close because of price, they will come back to you.
6. Make them smile during the sales call. There are many ways to do it. They will forget what you told them, but they will never forget how you made them feel. If you make them feel good, they will come back. At the least, they will refer you to others.
7. As a techie, you might have dealt with logic and deterministic outcomes. Sales is emotional and probabilistic. Get used to it. It is not easy.
Finally, good luck.
(P.S: If interested you can read what I wrote about: Mastering sales as a CTO: https://jjude.com/cto-sales/; it is not as agency owner, but I get on sales calls for an IT services company. So probably we are closer in that sense).
Why would you think this is parody?
edit: I don't remember tbh
Selling Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Microsoft-Secrets-Successful-...
The fundamentals of software sales haven't changed much since this. While B2C SaaS is different, the B2B platform world is still much as described in this book, and more importantly, the buyers are still the people who were buying when this book was published.
While selling today should have changed, many of the enterprise procurement processes that were being set up as this was published are still the same. That makes this an excellent foundation for understanding how to change it up.
That said, you said building an agency ... so do you mean selling software, or selling the ability to deliver solutions that a company can't get off the shelf?
That's quite different.
I don't want to talk to salespeople, only product designers, developers, executives, and support staff. They are the people who make the stuff and/or are left holding the bag for the product when the salesperson is jetting off to their next meeting.
Same goes with service contracts for leased business equipment (copiers, postage machines, alarm/security systems) - let me talk to the "support" staff who don't read their own technical bulletins BEFORE I sign so I can decide not to go with a vendor who "requires" full admin rights to my server to manage their copiers.
This doesn't necessarily scale past small-mid size businesses (mine have been up to $20ARR and ~150 people). The occasions I've talked only with sales, there have been broken promises, missed deadlines, and a big mismatch between what we were sold and what we got.
Lots of people overestimate their value in the process, including buyers. You don't want to talk with sales people, but from the other side, why should the sellers (in any function) talk with you?
I've purchased products. And sold them. Lot of waste from both sides, primarily when people aren't prepared, don't understand their problems, misunderstand use-cases, don't know product, etc. The list of grievances is long.
Designers and devs and makers too busy doing their jobs to bother with your arcane requirements and need to do an 'apples-to-apples' comparison on every bid, respond to hundred-page RFPs in nitnoid detail, buy you drinks so they can suss out why you don't actually know your own requirements, navigate your own effed up procurement process, your politics, your internal power struggles, and your primadonna self-belief that you are special.
Buyers are in the power position for sure; you write the checks!
But just know that there's a whole layer of people out there who end up in sales who have to clench their teeth and endure the bullshit of dozens of companies in their portfolio – in the same way you might feel like you have to endure theirs.
Be a qualified lead. Show you have your shit together, and then yeah we can start bringing sales engineers and devs and designers into the conversation so you're not wasting their time.
If you want an easy procurement process and no regrets, follow best practices: come to the table with your internal and external research done, with a clear list of requirements, an executive sponsor with actual decision-making power. Understand that if you change your requirements midstream the budget will change. Pad your budget so I don't have to pad my estimate.
Sales guys can be douchey for sure, but that doesn't mean they're trying to scam you. Their incentives are more closely aligned with yours than anyone else's.
The salesperson has a vested interest in getting the customer everything they need to win business so they get their commission. A good one is an utter pain in the ass internally because servicing them and the customer is quite often at the expense of everything else. 1:1 sales tactics don't scale unless the customer is huge. It's a classic 80:20 rule - 20% of customers normally drive 80% of revenue, so it's only sensible to focus on certain customers and ignore others - but obviously that only makes sense in a vacuum where businesses don't rise and fall, and suppliers alongside them, so you need to toe the value threshold when it comes to exposing customers to engineering - which is where a good salesperson is gold.
Product designers, developers, executives, and support staff - all of them have better things to do than service a single customer most of the time. Building features, marketing, hiring staff, documentation, validation, and making new products. All these things are 1:N activities. If they're sucked up talking to one customer, they're not doing 1:N. It quite often feels like the salesperson works for the customer, not us, because it's clear to everyone that the demands are hurting the product in the long run by sapping everyone's time doing servicing when the opportunity:cost ratio isn't there.
To your point, it feels great when a customer follows the expected flow. Planning/marketing/engineering/executives can be brought in as and when needed, rather than when they're demanded of. Almost all customers demand the time and attention of everyone but the sales team, but I've often found that the ones who provide all the info and jump through all the hoops get what they want much faster.
Putting an executive on the phone is not going to happen that early. A lot of vendors don't seem to accommodate research starting with a demo set up by one engineer on a small team in the org who might have a corporate credit card for the search.
If those people had to do their jobs, plus manage pipelines, plus BDR work, plus chasing leads that went cold, plus negotiating over contract language and price. . . well you get the point.
For big ticket B2B stuff, you really need a sales person (sorry Account Executive) running point. It doesn't mean that's the only person you talk to, or really even the person you talk to the most, but an AE needs to own getting the sale closed.
Primarily its hard because a large sum of money will leave a buyer (they're sad to see it go) and there's uncertainty if the software purchased will achieve the goals they are seeking. (Incidentally this is true regardless of the definition of "large".)
It's hard for the seller because the software is expensive. So customers are always inclined to do nothing, or buy something cheaper.
Buyers have procurement processes to try and hedge the risk. Some "standard terms and conditions" seem crazy to me (as a seller). Sellers are wary of buyers with unrealistic expectations, and buyers who aren't clear regarding their needs and goals.
The deal is seldom just "software off the shelf". There's usually a commissioning phase, services, support etc. Proper sales staff, and proper buying staff, learn to spot red flags, ideally before too much time is sunk.
Yes, there are bad sales staff, bad customers, just like there are bad everything else. But good ones are a pleasure yo work with, and add huge value, regardless of whether you are the buyer or seller.
Tbh OP, if you’re looking to scale, selling to people like the above commenter isn’t going to get you there. (No offense to said commenter.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653
From that posting this comment seems useful:
The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg
https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...
He's a software engineer who's been building his business in the open for the last year and is sharing what he learns along the way.
Basically, there's a lot more to sales than just "generate leads." You need to pick a "right-sized" market, tailor the product to the market (but not too much, so you can go after other markets,) and then as you grow, move to bigger markets.
The markets you go after when your company is small are very different than when your company is established. Furthermore, small differences in your product are critical: A tiny feature or option might be critical in a tiny niche that you need to get started; but a completely different feature or option is needed when you're able to target a larger audience.
It's worth a read just to understand it, but it won't help you with sales. It might help when your sales dry up, but 'traction' would also help because maybe the issue is your channel has dried up and you need another one.
Neil Rackham: Spin SellingIt’s for anybody working on software, whether building a SaaS or working for a client or anything in between. A ton of solid advice on project management, client relationships, interface design, code and more.
Free to read online (and a free PDF): https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real
+The Sales Handbook: https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/sales-handbook
As a programmer, I found this perspective particularly enlightening. It taught me that effective selling isn't just about persuasion; it's about conviction and truly understanding the value of what you're offering.
But product companies are very different from agencies (i.e. consulting/services companies), which it sounds like you're trying to do.
A great place to start is Hubspot.com. Just do some of their courses. AND also try to talk to salespeople, and "agency people" in real life. It's a completely different mindset - not something you can learn intellectually; you have to let it soak in over time.
One great way is to try to sell anything in real life. You'll learn so much more from that than from a book.
People only make money reselling the same software/services, and the authoring process is _always_ a loss of time/money (only fools try to optimize fixed engineering/development labor costs)... Note, Microsoft has resold the same product for 30 years, and no one seems to notice. Apple is a pyramid power structure (zero vertical movement for most engineers), so without Steve Jobs on the chair it too stagnates into its own predictable narrow market sector.
The joke in the industry is "if you succeed in your career, than you will inevitably end up in Marketing." You need to observe the four types of customer segmentation up close (and why you should ignore 3/4 types.) I recommend going to a few trade-shows in your area, and listen closely to sales pitches (think about how they make sales revenue, as it is usually not apparent at first.)
Study the SAP/Oracle sales model, as they extract a phenomenal amount of revenue from traditionally difficult markets.
"Don't compete to be at the bottom", as there are people that will bankrupt themselves irrationally gambling on things they plagiarized. Pick a niche product/service difficult to clone, and develop a close relationship with large customers. Ask "how can you add unique value for your users", and don't fall into the IT service industry role for one customer.
Never expose >14% of your annual revenue to any one project/person/customer, or you may as well just go directly to a casino.
Have a tax strategy (talk with local corporate accountants before you start), and also attend/chat AMCHAM webinars because they are great if you do business in the US.
Many vaporware firms are no different than the Crazy Eddie story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie
YMMV, I have risk-aversion biases given the journeys differ for most. =3
Are you selling a solution? Solution selling talks about complex sales.
I lost my old book, but this one looks good: mastering technical sales.
The entire sales process is pretty interesting. There was a book on the buyer mindset that i can't find. But essentially there's the dream period and the fear period, and one of sales' jobs is to move the customer psychologically from the "everything will be great" past the "omg how is this going to work" to signing.
Mastering Technical Sales is a book about and for sales engineers. It isn't going to help someone who doesn't know how to prospect, close a deal, etc. do those things.
Here are the learnings out of this and how to do sales: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D366FMV5/
Founding Sales https://www.foundingsales.com/
If you are planning to build enterprise software solutions then I highly recommend this book. It contains very helpfull checklists and templates.
1. Customer Centric Selling
https://books.google.com/books/about/CustomerCentric_Selling...
2. Never Split The Difference (from buyer angle, but still good)
[1] - https://books.google.com/books/about/Developer_Hegemony.html...
Your website looks pretty nifty but the different speeds with which the tech and domain listings scroll made me motion-sick, I realize this is a me problem. Maybe slow down the tech listing or have them going at the same speed? (I only checked on desktop btw)
Also if you can it would be nice to book a photographer to take portrait shots of you and your co-founder, maybe a combined photo for mobile? Just a suggestion because I believe it would look cooler than simple profile pictures and it would showcase your personalities even better. (You both seem cool dudes)
1. Growing a public profile for the firm (low effort: blogging/content; medium effort: strategic open source contribution; high effort: direct outreach community building, setting up events, doing trainings)
2. Landing a couple early customers and bending over backwards for them
3. Using endorsements, case studies, and word of mouth from those customers to grow the business.
One strategy that can work: find ways to specialize (ideally: not on specific technologies, though AI might be an exception at the moment; specializing for specific verticals) to make landing and expanding within specific segments. We did this, for instance, with intitutional financial technology (trading, FIX, etc). The idea (early on) isn't to stay with that practice focus area, but rather to streamline that 1-2-3 process.
What I've seen tried, but haven't seen work: cold-calling, direct email, account management style sales.
The good news here is I'm not sure there's a whole lot of sales domain knowledge you need to execute this strategy. The bad news is that there's no substitute for hard work in it.
Probably the most important things to know going into this:
* Your rates need to account for "feast or famine" cycles in your business, meaning they should be drastically higher than your current FTE comp backed out to a bill rate; 2x is a floor not a ceiling. The first year of a services firm is usually terrifying (at least, on the pipeline calls) and if you've set things up right the reassurance you have, when there are no projects set to close in the next 8 weeks, is that you only need to be 40% utilized to match your previous FTE comp.
* If you've positioned the firm correctly, the big problem in your market should be that buyers don't have enough options for firms to do the work; for instance, lead times for new projects being 3 months out would be a good sign. This is market research you can just go do! I transitioned a few years ago from a seller of services to a buyer and it was eye opening; we hadn't succeeded, in my previous firms, by hustling, but rather by positioning ourselves in places where customers were already tearing their hair out trying to find a trustworthy firm that could start a project within the next quarter.
Hope that helps!
Apart from anything else, commoditizing your complement is good business strategy.
Customers are not looking g For silo systems. They're looking for things that play nice with sll the systems they currently have.
Mind you, you absolutely Can get into a negative loop - needy customer with unrealistic expectations who over pressures the sales person, who then over pressures the pm, who then over pressures the team and you end up with unfeasible expectations and conittments. But sanity needs to prevail everywhere, it cannot be focused on the "good kind of salesperson"
(I will never ever ever be a sales person; and I share most people's frustrations, but I've also seen what the good ones do for the customer and teams so am slowly starting to understand both the value and necessity :-/)
Equally though, the old phrase "we all work for sales" always rings as true now as it ever did. The best engineer with the best product will make diddly squat if they can't sell the product. The best salesperson could sell rocks off the roadside if they're good enough - the product is often irrelevant. Personally, I wish more engineers went into sales because the best salespeople have deep product knowledge and are way more empathetic because we've gone through trials and tribulations.