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.
4 reviews. 3 stars. A hundred quid. This has got to be the most erudite book recommendation in the history of HN. I’m very tempted to get it just to see the fuss.
Ask chatgpt to summarize it for you and go from there. 95% chance it has it, 5% chance it makes it up better that it was written.
Genuinely curious, how you manage to derive value from this kind of LLM-assisted reading. At least in the areas I know, the gpt summaries are wrong and generic enough to the point that a read of the book summary, or a read of the preface, is more useful than what the AI returns. If I want to summarize something I provide, it works great. But for these more general overviews I don't trust it.
The handful of business style books I have run through it are wildly accurate and did a great job of summarizing the book chapter by chapter. I would probably not rely on it for technical books but for business books that often have only a handful of key ideas, it works great.
You can view it here for free: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781558508217
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.
> 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.
Lots of people overestimate their value in the process, including buyers. You don't want to talk with sales people, but from the other side, why should the sellers (in any function) talk with you?
I've purchased products. And sold them. Lot of waste from both sides, primarily when people aren't prepared, don't understand their problems, misunderstand use-cases, don't know product, etc. The list of grievances is long.
> I don't want to talk to salespeople, only product designers, developers, executives, and support staff. They are the people who make the stuff
Designers and devs and makers too busy doing their jobs to bother with your arcane requirements and need to do an 'apples-to-apples' comparison on every bid, respond to hundred-page RFPs in nitnoid detail, buy you drinks so they can suss out why you don't actually know your own requirements, navigate your own effed up procurement process, your politics, your internal power struggles, and your primadonna self-belief that you are special.
Buyers are in the power position for sure; you write the checks!
But just know that there's a whole layer of people out there who end up in sales who have to clench their teeth and endure the bullshit of dozens of companies in their portfolio – in the same way you might feel like you have to endure theirs.
Be a qualified lead. Show you have your shit together, and then yeah we can start bringing sales engineers and devs and designers into the conversation so you're not wasting their time.
If you want an easy procurement process and no regrets, follow best practices: come to the table with your internal and external research done, with a clear list of requirements, an executive sponsor with actual decision-making power. Understand that if you change your requirements midstream the budget will change. Pad your budget so I don't have to pad my estimate.
Sales guys can be douchey for sure, but that doesn't mean they're trying to scam you. Their incentives are more closely aligned with yours than anyone else's.
I work as an application engineer in the semiconductor industry; basically tech support for engineers. I get customers from "We're going to build a product" to "Design is finished and we're ready to sell our system". As such, I work daily with the field team who are out there winning business. I can say without a doubt that whatever a buyer's perception of their sales rep, that person is the best internal advocate they're ever going to get.
The salesperson has a vested interest in getting the customer everything they need to win business so they get their commission. A good one is an utter pain in the ass internally because servicing them and the customer is quite often at the expense of everything else. 1:1 sales tactics don't scale unless the customer is huge. It's a classic 80:20 rule - 20% of customers normally drive 80% of revenue, so it's only sensible to focus on certain customers and ignore others - but obviously that only makes sense in a vacuum where businesses don't rise and fall, and suppliers alongside them, so you need to toe the value threshold when it comes to exposing customers to engineering - which is where a good salesperson is gold.
Product designers, developers, executives, and support staff - all of them have better things to do than service a single customer most of the time. Building features, marketing, hiring staff, documentation, validation, and making new products. All these things are 1:N activities. If they're sucked up talking to one customer, they're not doing 1:N. It quite often feels like the salesperson works for the customer, not us, because it's clear to everyone that the demands are hurting the product in the long run by sapping everyone's time doing servicing when the opportunity:cost ratio isn't there.
To your point, it feels great when a customer follows the expected flow. Planning/marketing/engineering/executives can be brought in as and when needed, rather than when they're demanded of. Almost all customers demand the time and attention of everyone but the sales team, but I've often found that the ones who provide all the info and jump through all the hoops get what they want much faster.
I was going to write a response and you wrote it all. Especially in SAAS companies, a "strong" sales team in my experience was an hidden fast-track to becoming an integrations company.
At the point where you need a sales team to sell the product, ie your product is expensive, and complicated enough, then you had better integrate with everything.
Apart from anything else, commoditizing your complement is good business strategy.
Customers are not looking g For silo systems. They're looking for things that play nice with sll the systems they currently have.
I agree to some degree, it’s a question of extent. If you sell a very specific feature that no one else will use for a 20K annual revenue customer, then it’s not obvious at all it’s beneficial to the company at large. Personally I’ve seen too many cases here where individual sales people still campaign for the sale internally, supposedly for the commission.
Can vouch that sales team is an immense advocate for customer and frequently pain in the kiester for people who are trying to do stuff.
Mind you, you absolutely Can get into a negative loop - needy customer with unrealistic expectations who over pressures the sales person, who then over pressures the pm, who then over pressures the team and you end up with unfeasible expectations and conittments. But sanity needs to prevail everywhere, it cannot be focused on the "good kind of salesperson"
(I will never ever ever be a sales person; and I share most people's frustrations, but I've also seen what the good ones do for the customer and teams so am slowly starting to understand both the value and necessity :-/)
Absolutely. I work with salespeople I despise; ones who actively hamper the company's success because of their demands in pursuit of commission. Trying to explain to them that you're working on a problem faced by a 100M/yr account so don't have time to service their 1M/yr customer doesn't fly, so they jump over everyone's head shouting so loudly that a director or executive tells you to reprioritise to get them off their back. 1:N activities get sidelined, the high revenue but quiet customers get ignored and upset, but sales reach their design-win targets. It's incredibly frustrating and I think if they continue that behaviour despite warnings then they're not a team player and should be replaced.
Equally though, the old phrase "we all work for sales" always rings as true now as it ever did. The best engineer with the best product will make diddly squat if they can't sell the product. The best salesperson could sell rocks off the roadside if they're good enough - the product is often irrelevant. Personally, I wish more engineers went into sales because the best salespeople have deep product knowledge and are way more empathetic because we've gone through trials and tribulations.
> come to the table with your internal and external research done, with a clear list of requirements, an executive sponsor with actual decision-making power
Putting an executive on the phone is not going to happen that early. A lot of vendors don't seem to accommodate research starting with a demo set up by one engineer on a small team in the org who might have a corporate credit card for the search.
I think those people can, and often times should, be involved in the sales process. Espcially for big ticket B2B sales. But really those people just need to be available for demos, technical questions, etc.
If those people had to do their jobs, plus manage pipelines, plus BDR work, plus chasing leads that went cold, plus negotiating over contract language and price. . . well you get the point.
For big ticket B2B stuff, you really need a sales person (sorry Account Executive) running point. It doesn't mean that's the only person you talk to, or really even the person you talk to the most, but an AE needs to own getting the sale closed.
At a fundamental level, selling, or buying, expensive enterprise software is hard.
Primarily its hard because a large sum of money will leave a buyer (they're sad to see it go) and there's uncertainty if the software purchased will achieve the goals they are seeking. (Incidentally this is true regardless of the definition of "large".)
It's hard for the seller because the software is expensive. So customers are always inclined to do nothing, or buy something cheaper.
Buyers have procurement processes to try and hedge the risk. Some "standard terms and conditions" seem crazy to me (as a seller). Sellers are wary of buyers with unrealistic expectations, and buyers who aren't clear regarding their needs and goals.
The deal is seldom just "software off the shelf". There's usually a commissioning phase, services, support etc. Proper sales staff, and proper buying staff, learn to spot red flags, ideally before too much time is sunk.
Yes, there are bad sales staff, bad customers, just like there are bad everything else. But good ones are a pleasure yo work with, and add huge value, regardless of whether you are the buyer or seller.
On the flip side, as the customer, involve the people who'll actually be using the software. You only have to go one manager up to miss crucial day-to-day operation requirements.
My impression is the profit margin of B2B anything relies on selling things with high price tags to people who won't actually use the product and under-deliver the product to the poor souls who have to work with it.
I honestly don’t know many companies any more that are going to give easily on moving past the sales team. I have seen Sales Engineers, Product Managers, and executive sponsors come to sales calls once you’re a pretty qualified lead and at a certain spend point.
Tbh OP, if you’re looking to scale, selling to people like the above commenter isn’t going to get you there. (No offense to said commenter.)
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...
Wow, this is so valuable. Thanks!!
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.
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.
Chasm is more about the meta process of sales and product. It's not really about sales per se.
It's worth a read just to understand it, but it won't help you with sales. It might help when your sales dry up, but 'traction' would also help because maybe the issue is your channel has dried up and you need another one.
This book really nails it. If you're selling for any startup or fast-growing company this book will have insights.
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/
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.
Not about sales, but if you haven’t yet, try Getting Real by 37signals (Basecamp, HEY).
It’s for anybody working on software, whether building a SaaS or working for a client or anything in between. A ton of solid advice on project management, client relationships, interface design, code and more.
Free to read online (and a free PDF): https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real
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
Interesting recent discussion on The Mom Test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41545926
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.
Intercom on Sales: https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/b2b-sales
+The Sales Handbook: https://www.intercom.com/resources/books/sales-handbook
Great resources! Thanks so much for sharing!
I recently read "Sell or Be Sold" by Grant Cardone. While the author might come off as a bit scammy, the book itself offers valuable insights. The key takeaway for me was the importance of genuinely believing in what you're selling. You need to be convinced that your product or service is the best possible solution for your customer, whether it's in terms of value for money, ease of use, or any other criteria. By selling it, you're actually improving their life.
As a programmer, I found this perspective particularly enlightening. It taught me that effective selling isn't just about persuasion; it's about conviction and truly understanding the value of what you're offering.
Just so you know, there are many different types of sales. When I saw your header, I thought you meant "B2B (product) software sales." Many of the responses are about that.
But product companies are very different from agencies (i.e. consulting/services companies), which it sounds like you're trying to do.
A great place to start is Hubspot.com. Just do some of their courses. AND also try to talk to salespeople, and "agency people" in real life. It's a completely different mindset - not something you can learn intellectually; you have to let it soak in over time.
One great way is to try to sell anything in real life. You'll learn so much more from that than from a book.
Think of your comment as a real trigger, i have couple of things in my mind that i can try to sell. It would be quite a journey. Thanks!
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
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.
Happy to help here. Selling is such an important part of any business. I have helped Bitmovin (YC15) to scale over $20 Mio in ARR.
Here are the learnings out of this and how to do sales: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D366FMV5/
The Challenger Sale https://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Sale-Control-Customer-Conv...
Founding Sales https://www.foundingsales.com/
Came here to recommend the Challenger Sale
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.
We are 2 engineers who want to find businesses and create value for them from scratch, not only be concerned with technical stuff(like in our current careers). This is what we are passionate about & we are trying to sell service. BTW here is the landing page: https://www.mazeg.io/en
I know this is unsolicited advice and feedback so take the following as you will.
Your website looks pretty nifty but the different speeds with which the tech and domain listings scroll made me motion-sick, I realize this is a me problem. Maybe slow down the tech listing or have them going at the same speed? (I only checked on desktop btw)
Also if you can it would be nice to book a photographer to take portrait shots of you and your co-founder, maybe a combined photo for mobile? Just a suggestion because I believe it would look cooler than simple profile pictures and it would showcase your personalities even better. (You both seem cool dudes)
I have some experience with this. There are multiple ways to get a services firm on its feet. The ways I've seen engineers be successful doing this on their own, without capital investment, generally involve:
1. Growing a public profile for the firm (low effort: blogging/content; medium effort: strategic open source contribution; high effort: direct outreach community building, setting up events, doing trainings)
2. Landing a couple early customers and bending over backwards for them
3. Using endorsements, case studies, and word of mouth from those customers to grow the business.
One strategy that can work: find ways to specialize (ideally: not on specific technologies, though AI might be an exception at the moment; specializing for specific verticals) to make landing and expanding within specific segments. We did this, for instance, with intitutional financial technology (trading, FIX, etc). The idea (early on) isn't to stay with that practice focus area, but rather to streamline that 1-2-3 process.
What I've seen tried, but haven't seen work: cold-calling, direct email, account management style sales.
The good news here is I'm not sure there's a whole lot of sales domain knowledge you need to execute this strategy. The bad news is that there's no substitute for hard work in it.
Probably the most important things to know going into this:
* Your rates need to account for "feast or famine" cycles in your business, meaning they should be drastically higher than your current FTE comp backed out to a bill rate; 2x is a floor not a ceiling. The first year of a services firm is usually terrifying (at least, on the pipeline calls) and if you've set things up right the reassurance you have, when there are no projects set to close in the next 8 weeks, is that you only need to be 40% utilized to match your previous FTE comp.
* If you've positioned the firm correctly, the big problem in your market should be that buyers don't have enough options for firms to do the work; for instance, lead times for new projects being 3 months out would be a good sign. This is market research you can just go do! I transitioned a few years ago from a seller of services to a buyer and it was eye opening; we hadn't succeeded, in my previous firms, by hustling, but rather by positioning ourselves in places where customers were already tearing their hair out trying to find a trustworthy firm that could start a project within the next quarter.
Hope that helps!
If you're selling to developers, you should know the way they discover, compare, and buy software is totally different than how 'traditional' buyers make their purchase decisions. They typically rely on strong technical documentation, peer reviews, and hands-on testing through self-serve demos before advocating internally for adoption. I've bookmarked this this page, The Developer Marketing Funnel: https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/the-developer-ma...
Here is a nice history of selling software: https://wtfeconomy.com/enterprise-software-death-and-transfi...
Had sales folks throw two books my way:
1. Customer Centric Selling
https://books.google.com/books/about/CustomerCentric_Selling...
2. Never Split The Difference (from buyer angle, but still good)
Developer Hegemony [1] will help your thinking on how to price software in a world that traditionally rewards business people, as well as being pretty emotionally revealing about the trade we’re involved in.
[1] - https://books.google.com/books/about/Developer_Hegemony.html...
I'm the owner of Procufly.com and we sell software. I always try to get straight to the point and avoid sales pitches and slides.
Also for anyone interested, we are looking to expand our software portfolio so if you have a solution we would be happy to have a chat! Our main client base is in the Fintech, Gaming and Investment industries.
I think being an agency is different to selling software - I work for a consultancy and do sales and the process is:
1. Get a lead and qualify it. Red flags for qualification are small company size, weird location which isn't in your geography (e.g. middle east), person enquiring is not sufficiently senior in the organisation etc.
2. Understand the customer's problem better than anyone else. This includes visiting them, sitting down in person, clearly stating their problem on some slides so they know you understand it. If you are the only person to visit the customer in person, you will probably win the lead.
3. Describe how you plan to solve the customer's problem, and demonstrate how you have relevant experience and how this won't be a challenge. This isn't an exciting project for you - you want to work together but this is an easy problem that you have solved a hundred times before and you can solve it with confidence.
4. Be flexible in the sales process - ask the customer to help you tweak the proposal until it's exactly what they want.
5. Tailor the solution to the size of the business - don't sell a giant over-engineered solution to their problem if they are tiny, find a way to solve it with no frills or quick hacks. On the flipside, don't sell a no-frill's solution to a giant enterprise, they will want to believe they are getting something suitably engineered. Also tailor the sales process - if you are winning a massive contract you put in more effort than a tiny contract (and if sufficiently small, your proposal can just be an email back).
6. Give a clear and reasonable commercial model that fits in-line with the customer's expectations. If it doesn't fit with their expectations, adjust the scope and price (don't significantly adjust price without adjusting scope - it's bad for relationships)
7. Be super flexible when closing the deal. You are a small agency, your benefit is you can do things that bigger agencies can't. Don't endlessly argue over meaningless contract terms - just make sure they pay your first invoice which should 'cover your ass' until the next invoice, and work from there.
The main difference in agency selling compared to standard software selling is that it is high-engagement and high-effort. If you spend 5 days winning 20 days of work, you are probably doing pretty well.
Also, the big mantra is "doing is selling" - doing a good job on one project will lead to both more work from the same client, and recommendations which brings in even more. Everyone employed at a consultancy/agency is responsible for selling, some directly, others indirectly by making sure they do a great job. The company doesn't exist without winning projects!
This is old but good. https://www.amazon.com/Hope-Not-Strategy-Winning-Complex/dp/...
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
Dan Hebert does exactly this in his coaching and community business: https://www.salesmvplab.com/
Small channel but Craig Hewitt is legit: https://www.youtube.com/@thecraighewitt
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!
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!
Ordered it! I've been recommended this one handful of times. Time to read it, Thanks!
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!
This really connected *something for me. Thank you for sharing.
edit: I don't remember tbh
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.
Founding Sales
Also while not exactly about sales, "Softwar" (a bio of Larry Ellison) has a ton of great insights on enterprise sales
Crossing the chasm, repeatable revenue the challenger sale, start with why
You sound like you want to sell contracts to develop custom software not prewritten software right?
You are right, i'm a software engineer myself. Me & my other engineer friend started this, we've been building software for 6 years together already & have a passion for business as well, so we are navigating our ways through this new maze we found ourselves in!
I have many times recommended Harry Beckwith's books for this.
Triangle Selling has good sales processes for an agency.
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.
A great deep advice: Listen to your customers.
Customer is always right, because he is the one paying.
> Customer is always right
BTW, the original quote goes "The customer is always right in matters of taste"
No it doesn’t, that’s a later addition. IIUC, all the “original” or “full” versions of common sayings are later additions. It’s misinformation; a modern myth.
It does not seem to be 100% decided, but you are probably right. At least online there are no reliable sources that confirm that the "in matters of tast part" existed from the beginnin. Thanks for pointing this out.
Devtoagency.com
Challenger sale
I need to see what your baseline is...
Sell me this pen.
1. Know your customer (geography, industry etc; their revenue segment; CTO or CMO or CEO etc). Selling to a CMO of an e-com making $100mio in Europe is different from selling to a CTO of startup in healthcare in Canada. When they finished talking to you on the first call, they should feel this guy told me more than I knew in my business; he was able to articulate what I was thinking. If you leave them with that thought, most probably they will come back to you to sign on the dotted line.
2. Speak in conferences that interests your customers. If you are a techie, default attraction is to speak in tech conferences. Unless you are selling to CTOs or VP(Engineering), none of your customers come there. You shouldn't just participate in these conferences where your customer's come. You should be a speaker. Speakers have a certain authority and your customers will crowd to that awesome speaker of the conference. It might only generate lead, but it will be a strong, qualified lead. From sales point of view, these conferences will give a pretty good idea of what matters to your customers.
3. Find the decision maker as quickly as possible and speak to them rather than wasting time with gate-keepers who can say no but not yes. Decision maker is the one who writes the cheque or the sponsor of the project or who can say yes as well as no. Decision maker need not be a CEO all the time.
4. Roleplay sales calls. Record these roleplays and keep improving your tone, words, tempo everything. You should be able to establish quickly why you, why now, and why at the price point you mention.
5. In every step of the journey, they should see value in interacting with you. As often as the prospect says, "of all the agencies I'm talking to, you folks come with depth and present with structure", it is better for you. Even if they don't close because of price, they will come back to you.
6. Make them smile during the sales call. There are many ways to do it. They will forget what you told them, but they will never forget how you made them feel. If you make them feel good, they will come back. At the least, they will refer you to others.
7. As a techie, you might have dealt with logic and deterministic outcomes. Sales is emotional and probabilistic. Get used to it. It is not easy.
Finally, good luck.
(P.S: If interested you can read what I wrote about: Mastering sales as a CTO: https://jjude.com/cto-sales/; it is not as agency owner, but I get on sales calls for an IT services company. So probably we are closer in that sense).
The Saas Playbook! Also includes a lot of good references for further reading
The SaaS Playbook
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