Ask HN: What is your advice for a technical founder learning sales?
Think less about pushing your product, and more about aligning your product to a stated need.Instead of "how do I get Product X into Company Y," ask "how can I help Company Y accomplish their mission with my product in a way they are currently unable to do?" The flipside of this question is "if I were CEO of Company Y, why should I want to buy Product X?"Instead of "how do I convince Buyer Z to go with Product X," ask yourself "what are Buyer Z's incentives? Do they need to lower costs/increase their revenue/help their team communicate/etc?" Buyer Z has incentives - some of them corporate-wide, some of them specific to her/his day job, some of them very personal. Try to learn what those are.Also remember that sometimes it's not a good fit, and that's okay. Preserve relationships. Sometimes you catch Buyer Z working for Company Y, and she says "right now, we're really not focused on $THINGYOUDO, and your price would be prohibitive anyway." Fast forward three months and she might have changed jobs into something that is very much $THINGYOUDO, and she now has a vastly increased budget. Much better for both of you if you have preserved the relationship.Sales becomes a much easier road to walk if you remember "this person is a person just like me, and they've got things they're trying to accomplish in their day job. Let's see if I can help them out."