Steve's example is financial services companies in New York but this applies to the digital realm too, especially if your customers are less geographically-concentrated.
Be where your customers are: forums, slacks, discords, social media bubbles, etc.
Cultivate real relationships and build authentically from within a community. Live alongside your customers instead of selling into a community from the outside. Interact with the community regularly instead of relying on a handful of periodic outreach responses to gather customer feedback.
Are there really online communities that are so welcoming to salespeople? How can one authentically exist in a community while taking money to do so? It feels inauthentic, a lie by omission, astroturfing. I'm genuinely curious if there's a way to exist "authentically" when money is attached.
That said, there are great examples of ways to do it right. Sponsoring events, sharing cool things from your position of corporate authority (factory yours?), solving on-the-ground problems as a passionate management person (not because of the money but because you like it).
At the risk of getting downvoted: most of the impressions IT people have on other jobs are extremely one-dimensional and naive. In my personal opinion, a lot of IT people have the impression that their job is "the most important and complex" job, and they could easily do another job of they put their minds to it.
My suggestion is to put your money where your mouth is, and try it. You will most likely figure out soon enough that - like any almost any service job where you have a lot of independence - sales is really hard, nuanced and requires a lot of strategy, tactics and logistics.
There's a huge difference between someone who's using a phone script to book an appointment for a utility provider, and someone who is selling high ticket services like the one that most likely pays your wages. The fact that you've had a few people of the first scenario on the phone can give you a hugely wrong impression about sales (pars pro toto).
Sales can be as complex or simple as software development: there is a huge difference between someone who uses an if statement in an excel formula and somebody who builds an extremely optimized HFT system with FPGA or whatever they might use...
In fact, I think there might be lots of parallels to software architecture: you need to figure out the proper model that helps you to actually sell something: not only making sure the buyer has BANT (budget / time / authority / need), but also making the buyer aware that you exist, that he trusts you, what his triggers are, when he gets triggered, how the buyer process works, who your champion might be, macro-economical factors that make your sale a no-brainer, how the sector you're active in works, what your competitor landscape looks like, how the politics in the organisation work ...
Why do I have the need and think I have the authority to say this? I've been doing both sales and development, and being an IT guy first, my arrogance of "I can do sales and marketing too, it's just some ads / SEO / phonecalls and follow ups" has cost me almost a decade of opportunity cost. It's been a humbling and eye-opening experience that finally made me realize that - even though there are some jobs where you don't need your brain - a lot of jobs are way more complex than you can imagine.
Parallels to "I can build that in a weekend" are not far away from "I could switch to a high end sales job by just reading a few books over the weekend".
I admit I fall into a mindset as described surrounding sales.
So maybe acting authentically in sales role is doing the best you can (authentic to yourself and the customer) to a point where there comes to exist a conflict of interest with your employer?
Though, it still feels like there are too many constraints on your own authenticity? At all the jobs I've worked at, there existed a gap between who I was and what the company saw as an "ideal" me in practice (how I acted versus how HR or company policy or how higher ups would like people to act or how I've seen in brand guidelines for tone and word choice for social media). I feel like the individuality/mindset I bring to the table is a large part of why I'm paid for what I do. But if I applied the employer's constraints wholly and sincerely to myself without individual thought, I would most likely be awful at my job in practice. I feel these constraints apply much more in sales, as an agent of the company, you must _act_ like the company.
Maybe I'm overthinking it, and only truly hellish employers would want this. But it still feels, averaged over all employers, the "employer ideal" salesperson could not authentically act as an individual while being an agent of their employer. Which usually inspires distrust, and empathy at their constraints.
I think they are as long as the interactions are good. When someone posts “I wish this product did x” and a salesperson posts “hey we are actually working on that now and it should be available next month link-to-info”, that’s a good interaction.
When salespeople link to their product whenever a related topic comes up. Or they start a war arguing with all criticism, that’s bad.
You also need to engage with the community independently of the product you're selling. You can't be there just as a sales guy, no matter how tactful, if you're going to "live in" the community.
I don't think you really do if you are just responding to comments with useful info. You might if you want to make top level submissions. But I don't think anyone has an issue with for example, Gitlab people commenting officially answering questions on Gitlab. Their contributions on other threads is irrelevant.
I don’t think people have a problem with that, but it’s not the same thing as what the OP was talking about.
You aren’t living alongside your customers by popping in and answering questions about your product when you get an alert that someone mentioned it on HN.
And that feels like the problem. You can't live alongside your customers unless you are truly invested in the community, and it feels rare that passion for the community would be weighed higher over the sales position salary when job applicants apply to a position.
It really comes down to the sales hiring manager recognizing this passion/emotional investment in applicants and weighting it properly. And also having a pool of people with this passion who want to work sales at this employer to begin with! How often would this actually happen in practice?
If you're seen as someone helpful first, company representative second, then it works. That also includes recommending and advising on competitor products, if it's the right thing for the person asking the question.
The real issue is too often, sales is often seen as a short-term thing - wow them, grab the money and move on to the next one. Whereas this approach is about trust and long-term relationship building (something old-school travelling salesmen used to often talk about). You might not get a sale from the person you recommended the competitor product to - but you will probably get several referrals ("these are really good people to deal with, and honest to boot - you should talk to them").
It's easy; help people who are trying to use or understand your software, or show (in detail) how your software helps solve problem X which was actually being discussed organically. Having a helpful friend who works for the company is a lot more useful than having an annoying salesbot interrupting your conversations.
I think most tech/tech-adjacent communities are welcoming of reps once they behave well. I can think of quite a few, including at least one who made a lasting impression on me (Tony from Amazon on the CAG forums).
Huh, the comment claiming that "Salespeople are people too" got deleted. I guess responses were along the same lines as what I was going to post. It would be a shame to waste that piece of writing, so I'll put it here (while noting that, /u/cobertos, this is not a direct reply to you, but rather to another comment which was mostly along the lines of "it is not morally abhorrent to sell things, it can be mutually-beneficial")
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TL;DR you're mostly right, but Salespeople are still a distasteful necessity rather than something to be celebrated (without undermining any of your other points that it is fine, good, and morally permissible for people to sell things they've made or are working on).
Lest you dismiss me out-of-hand as another engineer who doesn't "get it", who is too hung up on technological purity and doesn't recognize that businesses are in the business of business, that you need to sell something in order to start the flywheel that lets you sell more things to get more money to build more things - trust me, I _do_ get it. I know that selling the product of your labours is essential for a) survival and b) being able to carry out more labours (I wish it weren't, but I recognize that that's the situation that we live in).
But you set up a false equivalence by simultaneously saying:
* '"Salespeople" are just people'
* 'people can be an authentic community member even if they happen to have something to sell to the community[...]if you regularly comment, ...then occasional self-promotion is fine[...]People act like if someone could possibly make a dime off something, it’s somehow morally abhorrent and must be stopped at all cost[...]It’s ok to make stuff then sell it and still interact with other humans. Selling stuff does not mutate you into an alien who can no longer authentically connect with another human'
The difference is that the latter examples are all well-intentioned and mutually-beneficial - a pre-existing community member (or, a new community member who already has ideals that align with the community) offering something that they genuinely believe will be of value. A Salesperson is not this. A Salesperson's intention is to intrude, deceive, and exaggerate to extract as much profit from a community as they can. A Salesperson has no interest in the well-being or survival of the community beyond its continued ability to be a source of profit. If that were not the case, _they wouldn't be a Salesperson in the first place_ - they would be a community member who happens to have things to sell (or recommend) to their community. The very act of defining their role as "focused on selling" - rather than "fostering a community" - presupposes this. If your job description is "Salesperson", and you go to your boss and say that you took an action that did not (and will not ever) result in more sales, but resulted in the community being healthier or more positive, you will be taken to task rather than congratulated (please do not "well actually" with the fact that "a more-healthy community will result in more future sales" - that is covered under "and will not ever").
As you say, you _can_ be an authentic community member if you happen to have something to sell to the community - but if your _reason_ for joining the community is to try to sell to them, that is highly unlikely. Someone who shares the values, ideals, and intentions of a community selling to them is mutually beneficial and a net-good. Someone entering a community with the _intention_ of selling to them - a Salesperson - is much less likely to be beneficial, and more likely to be an exploitative snake. Maybe a "Salesperson" might actually make a worthwhile recommendation in a related thread ("You can sell useful stuff people want and are happy you offered") - good! Great! But they could have done that without _being_ a "Salesperson". They are, in a sense, not fulfilling their role there - they are instead acting in their role as community member (we can contain multitudes). Even if they were not employed as a Salesperson - even if they were in any other role in their company - and happened to notice that selling-opportunity, they could have taken it. The behaviours that are unique to a Salesperson are the harmful and distasteful ones - over-promotion, advertizing, astro-turfing, deception, cold-calling, pressure, intrusion.
But I know - I _know_ - that Salespeople are necessary for the growth and success of a company. "If you build it, they will come" doesn't work if your competitors are actively advertizing. Simply building the world's best FooWidget is insufficient if no-one knows how great it is. You _need_ to get the word out that your product is awesome and will solve problems and can be bought for the low low price of $X.99, otherwise you won't get any money and you won't be able to keep making FooWidgets. But just because Salespeople are necessary for a particular goal (which is, itself, only worthwhile because we have not yet achieved Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism) doesn't mean we should approve of them. My body needs to take a shit every day, but I'm not exactly delighted about that fact. They fulfill an unfortunately-necessary purpose, but they make everything worse (or, at least, not-better) by so-doing.
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> 99.99% of the time these same people will flock to high paying employers regardless of whether those employers follow these unwritten rules
This is not hypocrisy. Society is currently set up such that you need a certain degree of excess wealth to be able to give things away for free (see my pining above for FALGSC). Accumulation of (a little bit of) extra wealth to someone who's going to use that excess to build something of value, is more of a social good than that same extra wealth accruing to someone who's going to use it on a second Lambo.
So there really is just a careful balance between salesperson role and community participant role (for good salespeople who understand the balance, disregarding the salespeople who just sell and push). And as long as the community/employer ecosystem doesn't start to test those roles too hard, everyone is happy. Sigh that sort of depresses me, that this sort or relationship tends towards instability as time -> infinity. At least we have finite lifespans
> As you say, you _can_ be an authentic community member if you happen to have something to sell to the community - but if your _reason_ for joining the community is to try to sell to them, that is highly unlikely.
Yeah, this feels like the problem to me. The unlikeliness of it is why there is such a distaste societally for salespeople, causing the blindness to the least evil type of sales person.
I sorta figured this out in another comment too. Thinking about the corporate mechanisms, sales hiring managers would need to weed people out properly based on them recognizing this balance. And on top of that, you would need a pool of applicants who actually have the personal investment in the community in the first place, or the potential to become personally invested. Very unlikely! Or so it feels across most sales hiring interactions.
- If we're nothing but functions here, then why don't they just send robots?
- They don't send robots, Bob, for the simple reason, they haven't invented one yet. The day comes when they can build a robot to do what we do and make it work, then that's exactly what they'll do, precisely.
I think the moral of this story is to spend time thinking about what you _actually_ want and do _that_.
I agree with Steve's advice here. If you don't want to be in New York/SF/Wherever... don't. But accept choices have pros and cons.
E.g. I spent 7ish years in Los Angeles. Now I live in Asia. I'm having a great time here, but it _does_ mean there are certain California opportunities I have to say no to, and that's fine!
In this example, if the founder _really_ doesn't want to be in New York, make the decision one way or the other now, and commit to it. Trying to do multiple things at once will never be as efficient as focusing on one thing. You'll always be beaten by the person/team who has laser focus. You can have anything you want in life, just not all at the same time.
A great example I see of people trying to have everything at the same time is buying a house. They'll want a house they love that's ALSO an excellent investment. Usually what they end up with is a house they kinda like that's a mediocre investment.
I wouldn’t state it that unequivocally. But any high-dollar B2B operation relying entirely on remote sales either doesn’t need a sales team, or is begging for an aggressive competitor to take their lunch.
I think this is a generational thing. I do B2B consulting, remote only, and it's all about the relationship of trust. Building that over voice and video with a digital-native CEO is no problem at all.
I will add that my most recent client is remote-only and in their thirties. No competitor can beat me by going "on-site" because there is no site and never will be.
I’d wager it’s deeper than that. Economies of scale force proximity in subtle ways. Finance shouldn’t need to be concentrated, but for a host of reasons most of it is, and a start-up looking to sell to it benefits from proximity. Even crypto largely retread those old paths.
That said, there are business which do not benefit from this sort of scaling. They will be dispersed. If the supplier similarly doesn’t have scaling economies, something I’d argue most non-Fortune 500 consulting does not, then yes, remote-remote will win.
For what it’s worth, I work 90% remote. And I’m in a sales-type capacity. But the only people I work with almost entirely remotely are those who are themselves remote. And even then, in-person meetings usually add value.
I do buy into getting on a plane or having someone local. That generally speeds up and increases close rate + renewal. But if you nail distribution or PLG.. can run enterprise sales much more efficiently and without as big a hit, and reinvest that saved $ elsewhere. But that's a high bar. More reliable to take heavy VC $ and burn it on expensive field staff to paper over all the gaps and hope accounts don't churn too fast. Things change again as a market saturates, but for new categories, all this is pretty established in b2b..
Didn't downvote you either, but humans aren't saplings that can be uprooted and planted elsewhere without issues. I've moved countries thrice and I would not recommend that to the general public, especially if they have support from family and friends.
Maybe I haven't found the right thing yet, but I have never had any job or business that had a bigger impact on my quality of life than where I live does. I will never move for a job or business unless I truly can't make enough to survive where I'm living.
I didn't downvote you, but I feel it's inappropriate to tell a random internet stranger how to live their life. So if I had downvoted you, that would have been my reason.
> a somewhat uniquely New York problem, rather than a generally applicable lesson
An oil & gas start-up in San Francisco is going to have a tougher time than one in Houston. You don’t see those much. But you do see e.g. agtech in the Bay Area flying out weekly salespeople to Iowa. It’s trivial for a competitor to undercut them on credibility alone.
That said, I think this is more pertinent to sales than other fields. And for some businesses, proximity to capital trumps proximity to customers.
Not to get too pedantic, but California does have a massive agriculture industry. UC Davis is one of the best schools in the field. It’s not much of a stretch at all for agtech businesses to grow and thrive here, locally.
I guess you could argue those businesses should be in Sacramento instead of San Jose.
But example aside, I do agree with your overall point.
Totally! Which doubled my Iowan buddy’s confusion. A Central Valley, Davis or Irvine-based company would have credibility a San Francisco-based on doesn’t. That “won’t even open the door” effect is huge, and part of what the author is getting at. (The other being org chart discrepancies.)
California’s agriculture industry is not only massive but also one of the most profitable in the country, accounting for a disproportionate fraction of the food Americans eat (as opposed to e.g. corn for distillers/biofuels/animal feed) and US exports to the rest of the world. Based on cash receipts, California is #1 in the country overall (Iowa is second followed by Nebraska and Texas)
Don’t think I’m going out on a limb suggesting a Fresno farmer will receive an Ann Arbor or Irvine-based start-up more warmly than one from San Francisco.
Oh I’ll take your word on that, having no ag-sales experience myself :-)
Just wanted to point out that even before accounting for industry size, there’s just more profit sloshing around California’s ag industry which makes it easier to square market fit with the returns VCs desire.
And how about area where your business is but your best developpers are somewhere else.
For example if you work with certain industries here in Europe (Luxury, Pharma, Automative) but your development team is - due to shortage of talents in europe - in the US. Where shall you be?
> Erin’s VP of sales had just bought a condo in Miami to be next to her aging parents […]
>
> Her VP of Sales might be wonderful, but with the all the travel the company is only getting her half-time. Erin needs a full-time head of sales in New York. Time to have a difficult conversation.
This doesn’t even strike me as a good example. In management consulting, flying out to a customer site from Monday to Thursday is the norm. I’ve heard plenty of criticism about McKinsey. I’ve never heard anyone say they don’t work hard.
In fact, that way of life might mean you work more hours if anything. If you live in Miami and work four days a week in NYC, you are likely working very long days. You are not near your friends or family or your chores… that could be four days devoted exclusively to work, say 12-14 hours a day, followed by a Friday working remotely. I can see why a salesperson might need to be in person 4 days a week. But I have a hard time imagining that five days is necessary. VP of Sales has plenty of administrative work to do, and many meetings can be over the phone anyway.
I agree that you should choose family, but I disagree that it’s nonsense. It’s a simple tradeoff of money/success versus what actually matters. Assuming there isn’t some win-win compromise being overlooked.
Usually there’s no free lunch. But focus on the important stuff in life, you’ll be happier and have fewer regrets.
Some positions require a full time employee. I'm sure many of the employees have families, and you're putting them all at risk if you allow a critical full time position to work half time. That isn't hustle culture.
I am surprised those lines were in there. The point could have easily been made without an anecdote about the author recommending to fire an employee who is taking care of their family. Seems needlessly cruel and detracts from the message.
Being an exec is choice to commit an exorbitant amount of your time/energy on your job. You can always settle for an easier/lower paying job. You don't see the president complaining the job is stressful.
> Seems needlessly cruel and detracts from the message.
I'm not so sure. I mean, yes it's needlessly cruel, but that's the message that I get from a lot of people who subscribe to hustle culture. You are worth the value of your output plus nepotism minus your comp. People with families are ghosts, don't talk to them.
> IMO there’s always a way to do both. If there really isn’t, choose family.
Huh, this choosing family is a kind of luxury not everyone can afford. Otherwise we would not have mass migration of working people across cities, states, countries and continents leaving families behind. Unless of course they are all stupid enough to not know the value of family.
How on earth do people do this? This is 3 hours of flight time each way 4 days a week...do they do something like fly 6am-9am, work 10am-5pm, fly 6pm-9pm, then do it all again the next day (this is also giving woefully small buffer times)? Or am I misunderstanding? Sounds awful.
True, but this company has taken on equity ( almost certainly with preferred shares ) investors. To buy them out, you would need cash. If you don’t have the cash, you need new investors. If the business is cash flowing and/or has assets, it may be possible to issue debt, effectively swapping equity investors for debt investors. The debt investor won’t care as much about growth as it does about you repaying your loan, but you are still stuck with an investor who has pre-negotiated rights ( and now the ability to liquidate the company if you don’t pay them ). Either way, you still have investors.
There are loads of 20-50 person small businesses who raised money in many different ways ( from personal savings to bank loans to customer prepays ). Many of those likely started with a small number of people, growing over many decades one paying customer at a time.
Be where your customers are: forums, slacks, discords, social media bubbles, etc.
Cultivate real relationships and build authentically from within a community. Live alongside your customers instead of selling into a community from the outside. Interact with the community regularly instead of relying on a handful of periodic outreach responses to gather customer feedback.