Ask HN: Recommended books for a sales newbie?

petercooper · on Aug 31, 2009

I suggest these all from personal experience and success (yes, these books have indirectly made me money):

* Tom Hopkins - How To Master The Art Of Selling (some of it is a bit American but the overall concepts learned here are priceless)

* Harry Beckwith - What Clients Want

* Leil Lowndes - How to Talk to Anyone (not directly sales, but this is a massive part of it nonetheless)

* Sam Horn - POP! Stand Out In Any Crowd (this will help you hone your message - learning to sell is good, but if your message sucks, so will the selling)

All of these are reasonably short, cpl hundred pages at most.

mogston · on Aug 31, 2009

Thanks for the recommendations, i'll check them out and let everyone know how i get on.

I've finally just ordered my copy of 'The Four Steps to the Epiphany' - can't wait to get stuck in.

lsc · on Aug 31, 2009

Unless you are good at sales, focus on

1. provide a product with a compelling, obvious, and objective advantage over the competition. (either better or cheaper, but preferably both.) You don't have to be better in every way, just obviously and objectively better in some way.

2. let people know you exist.

Seriously, this is the way to 'scale' sales. Face-to-face selling is excessively expensive, and best left to the professionals.

Personally, in person I usually end up talking up my competitors. For example, I always say I've heard good things about slicehost. Slicehost sells a directly comparable product, and my advantage over them is obvious, dramatic, and objective. Other than price, though, I haven't heard anything bad about them.

If you need to co-locate high-power boxes, or rent high CPU but low-ram boxes, I like rippleweb.com. Rippleweb charges something like $80 for each rack unit of space, no matter how much power you use. So if you have a 1u box with 2 CPUs, (likely eating more than 200w) rippleweb is cheaper than I am for co-location. (I happen to know that rippleweb has significantly lower power costs than I do. And Raphael is pretty good.)

If you do have a low-volume, high-margin product without sales skills, I'd suggest getting a hired gun. Do you think you can compete with a professional on sales? Do you think a professional salesguy could compete with you when it comes to programming after reading a few books?

I personally don't use a reseller program or commissioned sales folks, first, because I have a low margin, high volume product, so giving someone 30%, while doable, would hurt some, and secondarily, because I have very specific ideas about what I want my image to be. And personally, I like the "I'm bad at marketing" image. Besides, I'm selling out about as fast as I can put servers up, even with my nearly zero effort marketing.

mogston · on Sept 3, 2009

Thanks @lsc! I love you approach -how are you getting word out about your hosting business? What % are you getting actual sales from word of mouth versus SEO/online marketing versus direct face to face selling?

ankeshk · on Aug 31, 2009

I would also recommend: Ice to the Eskimos: How to market a product nobody wants - by Jon Spoelstra (an awesome awesome book. More about strategy than face to face selling though. But one of the best marketing books I've read.)

Top Dog Sales Secrets: 50 Top Experts Show You Proven Ways to Skyrocket Your Sales - by Michael Dalton Johnson

Art Sobczak is another good author for learning about cold calling. I've read some of his stuff which is good - but not his books. But you may want to check his book out: How to Sell More, in Less Time, With No Rejection : Using Common Sense Telephone Techniques