Ask HN: Resources to get better at outbound sales?
5 points - last Sunday at 5:49 PM
Hi!
I run a small custom software company in Michigan.
I want to get better at outbound sales beyond just cold emailing or messaging people through LinkedIn.
Weβre about to start publishing case studies and doing some outreach, so I want to take some time to study outbound sales and improve my skills.
Any recommended courses, books, or frameworks for B2B outbound sales, consultative selling, or building effective outreach pipelines?
Thanks!
Eridrus
last Sunday at 6:36 PM
I generally recommend the book Founding Sales (available for free online), but it's targeted at SaaS founders.
But you're actually doing something even more common: running a consulting business, and there's plenty of content on that for just that reason, so I would go find content on how to scale a consulting business, e.g. this seems like the start of a thread to pull on https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
brudgers
last Sunday at 6:25 PM
Relationships are the best resource for sales.
Because to solve someone's problems, they have to tell you their problems.
Or to put it another way, the thing you do is to solve the actual problems other people have. That's what you need to sell. You aren't selling the fact that you know how to use a hammer. You are selling the idea that you can build the right hammer for the job.
So sales is not "out reach." It is "what do you need?" and you will probably do better by optimizing for getting to that conversation, not through optimizing for low effort on your part.
Linked-in is best used for networking not push notification. Networking is about trust. Maybe you can't help with someone's problem but you know someone who can.
Finally, you can't sell desperately. Good luck.
SMAAART
last Sunday at 6:42 PM
Google these:
1) "inbound marketing"
2) The lean startup / MVP
AznHisoka
yesterday at 12:47 AM
Hot take, but outbound selling is so ineffective today, that if its it in a playbook, it most likely means it doesnt work