1. If you're serious about sales, you can't go past Salesforce. Pipedrive, Base, Sage and any others are all good, but you'll eventually grow out of them. In my view, you may as well start with Salesforce. You'll grow into it. It's the most flexible/customisable and has the most plugins and services to help you extract value from it.
2. InsightSquared.com for Salesforce analytics.
3. SalesLoft.com or Outreach.io for scalable sales development
I think sales is a skill that mystifies plenty of HN'ers, and engineers in general. Learning to become a better salesperson is the best "growth hack" for your company. You'll need it for users/customers, journalists, potential hires and investors. Many of the tips/tricks are useful across those disciplines. Look forward to seeing what happens here.
After spending a good chunk of my time in sales before I became a developer, this is one of those skills which can set you apart from everybody else.It's such a valuable tool and one of the reasons I've been hired multiple times out of large pools of candidates.
The other great thing is it doesn't take a lot of time to master. Oh sure, if you want to close multi-million dollar deals it takes some time, but if you just want to learn the basics of closing and how to read people, it's pretty easy.
Also, a lot of these techniques never get old, they're still the same methods people have been using for decades, so it's not like tech where tools and techniques are quickly outdated.
If anybody's interested, I can post some resources.
I'm not much of a salesman, but i strongly recommend Robert Cialdini's Influence. The author created the scientific field that studies how to influence human behavior - he is a sociologist and embedded himself within multiple sales teams. The book itself contains lots of references to scientific trials, and has plenty of actionable, practical advise.
Spot on. It really does help in all aspects of company-building, and like you say - it's not an extremely steep learning curve, the basics will take you a fair way.
Promerica - Overcoming Objections and Answering Areas of Concern: http://unstoppablecrew.net/files/How%20to%20Handle%20Objecti... (training guide for their sales people. It gives you all the ways to overcome people's objections. These are fairly universal techniques so I just grabbed this version since it had good examples for all of them)
Body Language for Sales Professionals: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/kyle.html (A good primer for reading body language. Always helps to give you an edge on matching what someone is saying with their body language)
Cold Calling and Sales Pitches: http://info.4imprint.com/wp-content/uploads/1P-11-0511-June-... (Cold calling sucks, but is a necessary evil in any business trying to gain traction. This PDF recommends using your elevator speech for your cold calls which is spot on. Also, you'd be surprised how good you can get once you overcome your fear on the phone, and are able to talk to people and walk them through your pitch)
I'm a dev who has spent many years closing largish deals, and the best thing I've ever read on the subject is "Spin Selling" by Neil Rackham. The focus is on the difference between closing 6 figure deals vs smaller deals and closing deals within organisations as opposed to selling to individuals. http://www.amazon.com/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/007051113...
It's also the only sales book I've read that actually measures the results of its advice, which might make it especially relevant to technical people.
I think Dan Pink summarized it nicely in "To Sell Is Human": Sales is an activity we do all the time. Every time we want to get something, and have to offer something in return, that's sales.
I won't lie - I'm not 100% certain that this can be a massive business - BUT no one can deny that it brings value to early stage products/co's and will definitely bring value to the YC portfolio.
In addition, you're right - it really can help shed light on products/teams that generally wouldn't get the time of day.
Our product was submitted to producthunt (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sparta) , we sat at the #1 position for a day - and it delivered a bunch of great prospects. We definitely wouldn't have been able to connect with so many Silicon Valley people so early, had it not been for PH.
So, to get a little but off the whole deck/fundraising thing - but how do you compare yourselves to say, Fitocracy. I just started using Fitocracy, and am really enjoying it so far. As much as I hate the word, the "gamification" elements are truly effective - definitely push me to want to workout more and climb up that point ladder.
Other than that - the app looks solid, and nice n simple. My only feedback is the tagline "for people who hate fitness". I am not a massive fan of fitness (hence why I am interested in these apps), but want to become someone that DOESN'T hate fitness - isn't that the entire goal of your company?
Congrats on raising the round and a great execution so far though :)
Fitocracy's great as well! But they're more centered in tracking and gamifying.
We take a different "just tell me what to do" approach. Users sign up, enter their stats and choose a goal: strength, weight loss, etc. With that, we generate workouts and plans to help them get there.
We also offer meal plans and personal coaching, because the human aspect matters a lot. That's why I believe most "fitness tracking" startups will fail... people are looking for a plan, not for a pretty dashboard.
I'm sorry, but I find this attitude really bizarre. You seem to confuse marketing with advertising, and even then it still feels bizarre. How are people meant to discover products, or solutions to their problems?
This never used to bother me either, but there are certain things that once you've seen, you can't unsee.
Smiling people is one of them. If your marketing site has pictures of smiling people on it, I am immediately turned off. Look at the billboard on your local subway system. Ads for dentists, graduate degrees, Trident gum, upcoming plays. 9 out of 10 of them have a stock photo of a smiling person, presumably unable to contain their enjoyment of $PRODUCT.
In very rare cases, say, for a Meetup group, or a bike tour, will I see pictures of smiling people that are actually organic. That's fine. It's when they use stock photos that it insults my intelligence and makes me feel like "marketers lying to take my money". The photos aren't even of people paid to pretend to enjoy the product, they're just sub-licensed from Getty. What it tells me is they're more concerned with sales driven by emotion than making a substantive first impression.
To test this, I just thought of the most boring thing I could think of: enterprise resource planning. The first marketing result on Google is this, complete with smiling person:
The best salespeople in the world make you walk away thinking you got a great deal, that you got the upper hand. When I see these blatant plays for emotion, I walk away disgusted.
We're in the extremely early stages our our B2B SaaS business - and cold calling has been extremely effective so far. We've gotten great feedback and battle-tested our hypothesis on "real customers".
Indeed, cold calling will not be a big part of our strategy going forward - but it's a great way to feel out the market.
Why will it not be part of the strategy? Too costly in terms of time based on profit you get out of it? Or there wouldn't be profit if you scaled this up with extra support?
2. InsightSquared.com for Salesforce analytics.
3. SalesLoft.com or Outreach.io for scalable sales development
4. LeadGenius for assisted lead gen
5. http://SpartaSales.com for sales gamification (plugs into Salesforce too)