Sales Lessons Archives - Page 3 of 3

When I was 22, I left a cushy, high paying consulting job at Bain and joined a nondescript startup that manufactured life-saving solutions for the security forces. It was pre-product market fit, and in a very, very tough industry. To give you an idea: Each sale, on average took anywhere between 6-18 months (if not more), with at least 4-5 stakeholders involved. That’s a role I started out in, when most people in Sales get offered such roles after being in sales for a minimum of 5-6 years (that’s startup life for you). The added complexity was that the buying process was firmly regulated by the government rules, and every 't' had to be crossed, every 'i' dotted, before the sale would go through. Basically- a lot of friction. You REALLY had to convince the buyer for them to go through all this pain to actually buy from you. I spent 4 years cutting my teeth in this market, growing the company, driving revenue and becoming who I am today. I also failed a lot. A LOT. But that's a feature of being in sales, not a bug. You'll always see rejection and failure. But the biggest thing I realised? (That I think you'll find useful) Is that sales is everywhere in life. Each interaction you have- be it with your partner, your parent, a friend or a co-worker has some aspect of selling and negotiation embedded in it. We've just become so used to it that we don't even notice it. Noticing it makes us conscious. In fact, it turns off a lot of people that have this view of sales and negotiation being 'icky'. To them, I have just one message- get over it. Please. Open your mind a little and read the rest of this newsletter. It's All a Numbers' Game https://twitter.com/shubhankarchau7/status/1661688812613820417?s=20 Today, I see sales everywhere. Want to make new friends? Great. Talk to 50 new people over the next 3 months, you'll maybe like 10 of them and perhaps grow close to 2-3 enough to keep in touch with them regularly? Want a new mentor who can help level up your (insert skill name here)? Great- find one person in your network who knows anything about that skill and ask their help. They probably know someone else who also shares the same passion. Ask them to put you two in touch. Then find someone else...you get the gist? When I came to the UK, I wanted to build a network of entrepreneurs in London. That was pretty much why I moved here. I started going to networking events and meeting people. Around the same time, I also started to interact with entrepreneurs, VCs and general startup enthusiasts on Twitter. Over the past 9 months, I've become good friends with 1 person from Twitter that I chat with regularly about my 'startup' questions, as well as share my experiences with them. These are conversations I mostly cannot have with anyone else because they don't share the same passion and have the relevant experiences. I also met a really cool entrepreneur at a university event a few months ago and we've kept in touch. I meet him regularly for coffee/dinner to catch up and try and think through some of the big picture stuff that I'm unable to resolve. That's 2 people that I can include within my network, that I didn't have before. Now, most will say that is too much effort. I probably spent roughly 100 hours in effort to talk to multiple people, engage with them online, follow up, and make connections. But that's how sales works. You have: Your leads (the 100-200 people I networked with) Which convert into opportunities (the 20 people I sort of thought were decent) And then sales (the 2 people I now have added to my network). It's always a numbers game. Most people get disheartened by seeing the numbers- but the fact is that once you see how the system works, you can reliably scale it up, and optimise it to get better results. That, in a macro sense is how sales works. Most people suck at sales and networking because they don't understand the macro overview of how things work. Of course, there's tons of tactical stuff that you need to cover too- but this really is how any sales machinery works. And since sales=life, understanding this is how you can achieve mostly anything else that requires interacting with humans. Whether that is finding the right partner for yourself, or a co-founder, a mentor, a job- ANYTHING. It's all a numbers game, baby!