Believe it or not, for "selling software":
Selling Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Microsoft-Secrets-Successful-...
The fundamentals of software sales haven't changed much since this. While B2C SaaS is different, the B2B platform world is still much as described in this book, and more importantly, the buyers are still the people who were buying when this book was published.
While selling today should have changed, many of the enterprise procurement processes that were being set up as this was published are still the same. That makes this an excellent foundation for understanding how to change it up.
That said, you said building an agency ... so do you mean selling software, or selling the ability to deliver solutions that a company can't get off the shelf?
That's quite different.
As someone who has made lots of purchasing decisions for software (ERPs, Electronic Health Records, productivity tools) at places I've worked over the last 18 years:
I don't want to talk to salespeople, only product designers, developers, executives, and support staff. They are the people who make the stuff and/or are left holding the bag for the product when the salesperson is jetting off to their next meeting.
Same goes with service contracts for leased business equipment (copiers, postage machines, alarm/security systems) - let me talk to the "support" staff who don't read their own technical bulletins BEFORE I sign so I can decide not to go with a vendor who "requires" full admin rights to my server to manage their copiers.
This doesn't necessarily scale past small-mid size businesses (mine have been up to $20ARR and ~150 people). The occasions I've talked only with sales, there have been broken promises, missed deadlines, and a big mismatch between what we were sold and what we got.
Previous thread "I'm an engineer that needs to sell my services. Any good books on sales?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653
From that posting this comment seems useful:
The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg
https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...
Founding Sales is a great book for non sales people who need to learn sales for their own startup / business. Sounds like this is what you're after. Free to read, too. https://www.foundingsales.com/
You might like Michael Drogalis' blog - https://substack.com/@michaeldrogalis
He's a software engineer who's been building his business in the open for the last year and is sharing what he learns along the way.
This is so great! Thanks for the reply, going through it rn.
The best book on selling complex items like software that I have ever known, I got from the best salesperson I ever met: the book is
Neil Rackham: Spin SellingSecond vote for Spin Selling from me. Spin Selling is a must read for anyone doing long-term sales-- in particular, selling software that has a long sales cycle like a year from the time you get a prospect until you close the sale. But it has other key concepts for smaller software packages too that you'll find useful if you're doing something smaller.
Get Founding Sales by Pete Kazanjy (https://www.foundingsales.com/). It's written by a tech founder for founders, and he also runs some popular events and forums for the startup community.
Crossing the Chasm: Geoffrey A. Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
Basically, there's a lot more to sales than just "generate leads." You need to pick a "right-sized" market, tailor the product to the market (but not too much, so you can go after other markets,) and then as you grow, move to bigger markets.
The markets you go after when your company is small are very different than when your company is established. Furthermore, small differences in your product are critical: A tiny feature or option might be critical in a tiny niche that you need to get started; but a completely different feature or option is needed when you're able to target a larger audience.
The Mom Test teaches you how to ask the right questions to make sure potential customers actually have a need for and will pay for what you are building vs. lying to be polite. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you https://a.co/d/8rxZlJ7
You sound like you want to sell contracts to develop custom software not prewritten software right?
Intercom on Sales: https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/b2b-sales
+The Sales Handbook: https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/sales-handbook
https://www.amazon.com/Solution-Selling-Fieldbook-Practical-...
If you are planning to build enterprise software solutions then I highly recommend this book. It contains very helpfull checklists and templates.
Are you trying to sell a product or build a services business? Very different things! I have some books I like on software sales, but not for services businesses; most of the successful services businesses I'm familiar with didn't include a salesperson in their founding team.
Traction. It's about sales channels.
Are you selling a solution? Solution selling talks about complex sales.
I lost my old book, but this one looks good: mastering technical sales.
The entire sales process is pretty interesting. There was a book on the buyer mindset that i can't find. But essentially there's the dream period and the fear period, and one of sales' jobs is to move the customer psychologically from the "everything will be great" past the "omg how is this going to work" to signing.
> I lost my old book, but this one looks good: mastering technical sales.
Mastering Technical Sales is a book about and for sales engineers. It isn't going to help someone who doesn't know how to prospect, close a deal, etc. do those things.
This is old but good. https://www.amazon.com/Hope-Not-Strategy-Winning-Complex/dp/...
The Challenger Sale https://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Sale-Control-Customer-Conv...
Founding Sales https://www.foundingsales.com/
It might be a good idea to get some training or coaching. I learned Sandler but there are probably others. There is a book that’s an intro to the system called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar
Triangle Selling has good sales processes for an agency.
Dan Hebert does exactly this in his coaching and community business: https://www.salesmvplab.com/
I think more than software sales it's useful to learn about "sales" and "persuasion".
I've found Robert Cialdini's Influence to be a great read!
Small channel but Craig Hewitt is legit: https://www.youtube.com/@thecraighewitt
Founding Sales
Also while not exactly about sales, "Softwar" (a bio of Larry Ellison) has a ton of great insights on enterprise sales
It is like any other publishing business, and one inevitably becomes educated in global Copyright and Trademark policy by legal staff.
People only make money reselling the same software/services, and the authoring process is _always_ a loss of time/money (only fools try to optimize fixed engineering/development labor costs)... Note, Microsoft has resold the same product for 30 years, and no one seems to notice. Apple is a pyramid power structure (zero vertical movement for most engineers), so without Steve Jobs on the chair it too stagnates into its own predictable narrow market sector.
The joke in the industry is "if you succeed in your career, than you will inevitably end up in Marketing." You need to observe the four types of customer segmentation up close (and why you should ignore 3/4 types.) I recommend going to a few trade-shows in your area, and listen closely to sales pitches (think about how they make sales revenue, as it is usually not apparent at first.)
Study the SAP/Oracle sales model, as they extract a phenomenal amount of revenue from traditionally difficult markets.
"Don't compete to be at the bottom", as there are people that will bankrupt themselves irrationally gambling on things they plagiarized. Pick a niche product/service difficult to clone, and develop a close relationship with large customers. Ask "how can you add unique value for your users", and don't fall into the IT service industry role for one customer.
Never expose >14% of your annual revenue to any one project/person/customer, or you may as well just go directly to a casino.
Have a tax strategy (talk with local corporate accountants before you start), and also attend/chat AMCHAM webinars because they are great if you do business in the US.
Many vaporware firms are no different than the Crazy Eddie story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie
YMMV, I have risk-aversion biases given the journeys differ for most. =3
Do you know what you’re gonna build, or is the agency just building to client spec?
Who’s the client?
How will you find them? Where are they? How will you communicate with them? How will you get them to use your agency?
That’s the trick
Edit: spelling
These are very important, but at the same time easy to overlook, questions to have answers for. Thanks for reminding! Making sure i got every one of them down.
Glad to hear that. Good luck!
Sales is a matter of talking to people you know. There is no shortcut. The work is:
1. Meet people.
2. Get to know them.
3. Make a pitch if they have a problem they will pay you for.
4. Get paid.
Meeting people is literally meeting people.
Getting to know them means time and effort spent fashioning a relationship. B2B relationships are long term. You can assume that people who regularly use agencies already have agencies they work with and will continue to work barring change to their business or the agency's business. These happen but not on a high pressure timeline. Consulting is a long con. Good luck.
Predictable Revenue is considered canon for B2B/enterprise sales https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practice...
But not sure how applicable to agencies it is so YMMV.
Challenger sale
The Saas Playbook! Also includes a lot of good references for further reading
you either know how to sell or you don't
in my experience someone who programs usually can't sell
hire a marketing expert from your industry
I have many times recommended Harry Beckwith's books for this.
Have you used much software yourself? If you know the difference between good and bad software (ahem, Electron-based apps are inherently bad software), then you have everything within you to write good software.
The principles of selling software successfully are thus:
* Charge a low price. A low price gets many customers, and a high price gets fewer, but the money earned equals about the same. Better to have more customers, because that's more eyeballs and mouths seeing and talking about it.
* Make the software available for as many platforms as possible, with GNU/Linux being a first-class citizen. Although most of your customers will use macOS and Windows, having GNU/Linux support signals robustness and longevity, earning trust.
* Use a generous license. Best to AGPLv3+ -- competitors can't beat it. If others share your program gratis, it just leads to even more official customers. Any changes can be reincorporated into the official software, so the first-mover advantage is everything.
* The software must be GOOD. It's got to save people time in their otherwise busy lives, and it has to be robust -- it has to work every time. The software has to know when things won't work, and fail gracefully. This is what sets hobby-ware apart from professional-ware.
* Update the software regularly, and keep in contact with customers in a visible public place -- even if it's just a static, one-directional web page. Let people -- and search engines -- know the project is chugging along. Give customers something to look forwards to.
* Fill a niche, and give the software a broad appeal. A tool with "something for everyone" -- features that not everyone uses, but everyone uses SOME features -- is important to have.
* Write GREAT documentation, and typeset it with LaTeX. This is important to convey quality. Hobby-ware has a Readme.txt -- professional-ware has a PDF manual that is so well-written, it could be printed out, put in a box with the software on a CD, and shipped.
* Record the project into history. Be everywhere on relevant forums, and push the product when it's relevant. When someone has a problem that your software fixes, they will see those comments -- even years from now -- and that helpful, relevant advice is genuine marketing that stays posted forever. Bought ads don't come anywhere near that kind of value.
And, as far as the actual software is concerned, write it in a popular language with a popular graphics toolkit. Python 3 + Qt5 or 6 -- using PyInstaller to generate single-file executables -- is dang near perfect. Stick to conventional user interface guidelines. Build software that you, yourself, use everyday. Don't work on software that you don't use personally.
Familiarize yourself with macOS software of the 1990s (most software of this era was good, most software today is bad), and this article -- How To Design Software Good. https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/HIG/index.xml
This has to be a parody.
I literally sell software according to these principles, and several customers per week email just to tell me (and I quote) that it is "a breath of fresh air."
Why would you think this is parody?
What software do you sell? Mind sharing a link?
It's called reMarkable Connection Utility (RCU). It's an all-in-one management client for reMarkable e-paper tablets that works locally/offline, and lets users escape the manufacturer's proprietary cloud/subscription. Works like an iTunes-for-reMarkable.
>export documents with highlight annotations
SOLD. My biggest gripe with reMarkable
This is great, and looking forward to the Pro support!