An introduction to sales for software engineers & founders

If you're a software engineer and want to work at a startup as an early team member or a founder, having even a rudimentary understanding of sales is incredibly valuable. Even if you don't end up actively selling stuff as part of your day job, it helps you understand how to have more impact in your role.

I went through the process of learning about sales as the founder at Verse. I came from a technical background, with limited understanding as to how a sales process and team should function. It was quite a trial by fire, but I'm very proud of the sales team, culture and process we've built here at Verse. I'm hoping my learning process will be useful to others.

Don't look down on it

If you only read two sentences in this post, make them these:

If you're a software engineer, take sales seriously – don't treat it with disdain. Recognize you have something to learn from people who do it well.

A lot of engineers view sales as evil, with a lot of smooth talking and not a lot of value creation. The reason this view is hard to invalidate is because it is sometimes true!

There certainly are salespeople who fit this caricature. But, the best salespeople actually identify and solve a meaningful problem for their customers with the product they are selling.

The lingo

There's a lot of lingo associated with sales. You only need a bit of it to get started, so here are the basics:

• Outbound sales. A sales process focused on making outbound reachouts (e.g. calls, emails) to potential customers.
• Inbound sales. The prospects come to you, maybe by clicking a "Request Demo" button on your website.
• Inside sales. Sales team interacts with potential customers from their own workplace, not "in the field."
• Field sales. Sales team goes out "into the field" and meets prospects in person.
• Leads. Someone that's expressed interest in what you're selling.
• SDR. Sales development representative. Generally make calls and emails to set up demos of the product.
• AE. Account Executive. Do what SDRs do plus actually run demos, pitch the product and make sure customers actually buy.

Learning to prospect

I'll first cover how to sell if you're the only person selling, i.e. it's a one man/woman show. The first step of selling is finding prospects, i.e. people who might be interested in buying your product.

1. Talk to people who sell outbound in your industry.
   This is critical. If you're able to do this, your skills will grow 10x faster than they would otherwise.
   
   If your company doesn't have the right set of people, I've found that just reaching out to people in early sales roles at other companies on LinkedIn can often work if you make it clear that you're looking to learn about the industry.
   
   Stuff you should ask them:
   - How do you find leads?
   - How do you reach out to them?
   - How often do you follow up?
   - Who's the decisionmaker?
   - How long are your demos?
2. Figure out what channel works to get a hold of your customers.
   
   Most companies are a mix of email and phone driven. You've got to figure out what's going to work for your customer base. I'd bias toward calls if possible. The feedback cycle is much faster with calls.
   
   For example, if you're selling into healthcare, it'll probably be phones. If you're selling into sales departments, it'll also be phones. But, if you're selling into marketing agencies, you might have better luck with email.
3. Set up a basic script or a few email templates.
   Keep your template and scripts short. People have short attention spans.
   
   Your goal with these is to book a demo or an introductory call. It is not to close a sale!
   
   You're going to need to modify this template as you learn more about what your customers really want.
4. Get a list of at least 100 emails or phone numbers.
   In some cases, this can be a hard problem in and of itself. It'll probably require a mix of extensive Googling and tools like Seamless.ai, Lusha, etc. that help you get this list.
   
   If you're really struggling to put together this list, you may need to pause here. If you're building a business around this, you'll need some way to get a consistent set of leads. That has to be figured out first.
5. Set up some simple tracking.
   You could set up a CRM but I'd argue this is overkill. Just set up a spreadsheet that tracks who you've called, when, what they said and when you can call them back (or email).
6. Start calling and emailing.
   I'd recommend setting up a tool like OpenPhone instead of using your personal phone number. If you're emailing, make sure that your emails aren't showing up in spam.  
   
   Brace yourself. This will likely be brutal at first. If you're calling, expect to get hung up on fairly frequently. If you're emailing, expect to hear crickets or "unsubscribe" as the default response.
7. Follow up.
   Hopefully, you've gotten a couple of responses that warrant a follow up. You'll want to track these closely and follow up.
   
   Especially if you're selling a "nice to have" or your prospects aren't quite ready to buy yet, you'll need a lot of follow up. As a general rule, you should follow up through either email or phone 6-8 times before considering a lead dead.
8. Book a demo!
   Fingers crossed, if you're selling something useful, have a solid list and continued to follow up, you've hopefully booked a demo.

This process I've just outlined seems straightforward, but it requires almost blind faith in your product, especially if you're the first person tasked with selling it.

Early on, it's always hard to get any demos booked at all. Often, it's because you (1) don't really understand customer needs very well (2) the messaging is all over the place and (3) you're unable to articulate a solution to the precise issue your prospect likely has.

As a result, expect to spend at least a few of weeks of near full-time work hunting down your first demo. Don't give up too early!

The Meeting / Demo

How you run the actual meeting or demo is very product-specific, but there are general pointers that I've found incredibly helpful:

• Don't talk too much. Bad salespeople go on and on about their product and never address what the prospect is thinking.
  
• Ask good questions. Really understand the heart of the problem your customer is having and how your product might be able to solve it.
  
  Some common flawed advice is "ask questions that have yes answers" that lead to them buying your product. This pretty much never works.
  
  If you're the engineer that built the product, this should be easy!
  
• Demo the product. A lot of companies do a "qualification call" to see if the prospect really fits the mold of the "ideal customer." Implementing qualification calls too early or skipping out on demos is a bad idea.
  
  You need to get practice running demos and getting customer feedback. As a result, you should try to do a quick live demo on every single call.
  
• Demos are not training sessions. You're not explaining every nitty gritty detail of the product to the prospect. You're getting them to the point of "holy cow, this solves my problem."
  
• Set pricing for iteration, not revenue and not free. This one is controversial, but early on, I believe you should set a price for your product that gives you an indication of people's willingness to pay something for your product. How much exactly can be figured out later.
  
  As a result: set your pricing on the lower end of market, but not too far below (i.e. not free).

What good sales looks like

There are a number of misconceptions a lot of people (especially engineers, in my experience) have about sales, such as:

• Having a great, well-practiced pitch is the most important part of being good at sales.
• Being super charismatic and a great "talker" is one of the most important skills you can have.
• Building a strong personal relationship with the decisionmaker is really what closes sales.

These, it turns out, are all mostly wrong:

• Listening and "reading the room" are the most important things you can do as a salesperson. Your pitch should be "made to measure" to what your prospect actually needs, not just something you rattle off because you've practiced it fifty times.
  
  Coincidentally, doing this well requires in depth product knowledge. You can't have a weak understanding of the product and manage to sell really effectively.
• Being decent at talking is a table stakes requirement to sell most things. But, the difference between someone who is a stellar salesperson and someone mediocre isn't their ability to talk well. Most often, it's actually work ethic and a deep understanding of the product & market.
• There are some domains where the interpersonal relationships trump everything, e.g. if the buyer isn't the end user and the product is more or less undifferentiated.
  
  But, for what we do at Verse and at many other companies, the ability for a salesperson to identify a problem and solve it is 100x more valuable than just cultivating a "buddy" relationship with the decisionmaker.

Scaling the process

Let's say you're managing to consistently book some demos and you've closed a few customers. Until you've done that, you should ignore everything in this section.

If you've crossed that threshold however, you can scale the process.

This is where us programmers should feel at home. Scaling a sales team is actually mostly about process and numbers. It's like you're designing a system consisting of sales reps that's responsible for producing a certain amount of money every quarter.

To get up to speed, here's what you need:

• Set up software and process. Get a CRM (e.g. Salesforce) that lots of people know how to use and customize. Write down a basic set of processes that others can follow to keep your CRM updated. The CRM will become the "command center" for your team eventually.
• Read this: https://sacks.substack.com/p/simple-math-to-set-up-a-sales-team. Great overview of the math required to set up a sales team.
• In my opinion, hire the most junior roles first. Hire an SDR, work with them closely, then hire an AE, work with them closely, then hire a manager.
  
  A lot of people advocate the opposite, e.g. going out and hiring a Head of Sales who can then build the team around them.
  
  I think this can work really well if you get lucky and hire a great Head of Sales. Unfortunately, especially if sales isn't your domain, you're very likely to end up with someone not so great.
  
  If that does happen, you'll then have even less intuition for what is working and what's not working within the sales process. This happens since (1) you'll be separated from the problem by the Head of Sales who isn't capable of solving it (2) you won't have worked "in the weeds" with the team.

Where to go from here

Hopefully, you've run a demo or two and are starting to get a grip on how sales works.

Here's what you can do to learn more:

• Unlike technical books, a lot of sales books are very "fluffy" with a low signal to noise ratio. You do have to wade through a bunch of useless info to get to the meat. But, for a couple of books, it's worth it.
• Get the Sales Development Playbook. This was super helpful to me in understanding how an SDR role works and how to hire for it.
• Get the Fanatical Prospecting book. I've only read chunks of this one, but has been pretty high value.
• Talk to experienced sales leaders. This one's hard if you have a limited network, but this is really the only way to grow your knowledge and skillset fast.
• Run a lot of demos. There's no other way to get better at selling your product into your market.