Do sales people have something important other than their interpersonal skills? Like if I am just a 1 person startup, I am pretty sure the 2nd guy to hire would always be some confident full-stack guy. I am not going to go and find some sales pro. There would be no way to convince that guy to work for a small startup.
> Do sales people have something important other than their interpersonal skills?
Consider the difference between my dad telling a joke at dinner and a standup comedian doing a 2 hour set to a sold out arena. They both technically are "just telling jokes", but there's a lot more that goes into the latter – pacing, rhythm, crowd control dynamics, an extensive repertoire, so on and so forth.
Similarly, great salespeople have 'advanced interpersonal skills'. They have a great understanding of human motivations, how people think about how to make decisions, and they're great at systematically breaking through worries and concerns and so on. They also typically have great networks and relationships with others, which can be very useful.
But yeah, I wouldn't hire a sales person until much later either.
it's not just the skills, but the dedicated time. Cultivating leads and developing marketing plans takes time that you as a tech lead shouldn't have and skills that you probably don't either.
It's a full time job to do well, and your technical people's time is too valuable to have them half-assing it.
A big part of the value a successful salesperson brings to the table isn't "I can talk well," but being adept at
A) determining who is valuable to talk with
B) finding out how to speak to them
C) in the language they use to make decisions
and we should add that the technical people have probably under average interpersonal skills so it's really a bad use of their time to put them to sales. An average sales guy would do better.
"Similarly, great salespeople have 'advanced interpersonal skills'. They have a great understanding of human motivations, how people think about how to make decisions, and they're great at systematically breaking through worries and concerns and so on."
Good points. I always think to myself, "what product are you selling and to whom?" In the case of startups selling technical users, are advanced interpersonal skills required where a demonstration trumps talk. Can the most verbal hacker do the sales ... or are we talking post VC or startup at the 20-30 ppl scale?
> great salespeople have 'advanced interpersonal skills'.
but what about an average sales person. He might just have 'normal interpersonal skills', by 'sales pro', I meant an average sales person though. For average salesperson, their difference from normal developer's interpersonal skills might not be that much.
Firstly you clearly don't know what sales people do if you think it's simply interpersonal skills. That would be like saying a dev just needs typing skills. I say this Not as a sales person, but someone that has sat in rooms with some very good sales people and seen what they can do both on the business level and making a pitch happen. And I see how valuable a good sales person is and know I can't do what they do.
And no way to convince them to work for a small startup? You really think that? Why does anyone good join a small startup then?
Could you have just answered OP's question instead of telling them how wrong they are? From "Do sales people have something important other than their interpersonal skills?" it seems clear to me they are hazy on the value of good sales personnel and want someone who knows to elucidate it.
I can try: As far as I can see, a good sales person sees the needs of the customer and presents the product in such a way that it is clear to the customer that it will fulfill a need. Or, in other words, a B2B salesperson's job is to say "buying our product will offer a very good return on investment" in a way that sounds true to the customer.
This requires some knowledge of the product, but it requires far more knowledge about the customer, their line of business, what people make purchasing decisions etc.
I was actually looking for a sincere answer since I don't know a lot of about what sales people, and what they do. Sorry If I might have worded that in a wrong way.
I'll try to answer from my non-sales POV about what good sales people bring;
- Existing relationships - the old 'who you know'. This can really be a game changer, or at the least speed things up.
- Pricing expertise - sales should be financially savvy and work closely with finance to work out what is the most profitable products they can sell, how they can add/reduce for greater over profit or for leaders how to best stimulate sales teams.
- Product knowledge from the field - The can be a great source of feedback. A good sales person will separate what matters at the core vs why the latest client didn't buy.
- Business knowledge and lateral thinking - so many sales turn up and pitch what expect to sell. Really good sales people get to a business and offer solutions. The need to understand your business fast. When I'm on the customer side I find this most important. You quickly know the people that are trying to sell a product vs those with businesses savvy looking where their solutions can benefit your outcomes. Often they will find new ways to utilise their product to offer benefits.
- Internal fixer/project manager: for many products the person selling hands deliver off to another team. The better ones ensure your happy ongoing and make sure any down the line problems get resolved internally even when they get involved outside of their sales area and have to become temporary project managers etc.
Off the top of my head that's the other value add. Interpersonal is important but is a smaller component than most people give it credit for with the 'fast talking' sale image that is often displayed.
Sometimes folks say otherwise blunt, insulting things out of ignorance and not malice or spite. Take the charitable view and give them an honest answer to expand their worldview, don't shit on them.
Sure, good sales people have good interpersonal skills. But great sales people are doing business strategy as well. They understand where their product is great and deficient, which provides a better interface to marketing, business development, and engineering. It helps to avoid some of those deals which require more cost for the service provider than the client.
They leverage their network to connect to the right people for a sale. For example, imagine you are B2B and want to sell your product to Box. Who are the decision makers, and who has money at Box to buy your product? How do you get in the door with those folks and have a conversation? What are the needs of the customer and how can you map existing solutions to these problems? These are hard questions to answer but with a good network you can get in the door, and has less to do with interpersonal skills and more on strategy and execution.
Forming and maintaining relationships is more difficult and important than commonly assumed by non-sales people. Developing a pipeline, knowing the industry, the right people to talk to, negotiating contracts... I am not in sales, btw, but I have worked closely with them.
Great sales people have great networks. They know how to maintain those networks to discover more clients. They also understand timing and "pain" from potential accounts. One of the best sales people I ever met started working for a 4 person startup because he knew he could bring in about $1mil in sales in the first year. He ended up doing $1.9mil in sales that year.
All this talk of "who to hire first" is totally case-sensitive, but if you're dealing with entreprise or high-value things, a great sales person can make your company.
Sales people make the company money. You can have the greatest product of all time but if you dont know how to find people who need it or how to sell it to those people after you find them than your startup is dead on arrival.
