transGLUKator

Sales Pal

Sales 101 for a person who has completely no sense what sales is

Hi everyone. I've a friend who's trying to build his own company. He's providing services in the area of architecture and construction, he has a team of 5 engineers and right now what he's struggling the most with is getting new customers. He's never worked in sales and has completely no sense of how it should work. What advice can I give him to start things going. He's reaching out mainly through emails, but rarely follows up if gets no response.

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17 comments

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funcoupons

WR Officer

👑

He needs to hire an experienced salesperson rather than trying to learn a complex set of skills while also running a business at the same time.

RealPatrickBateman

Politicker

🔪Amateur Butcher🔪

AMEN 👏🏻

Let someone else SELL the vision, while he builds the vision.

IndianaShep

Politicker

Director of Sales and Marketing

Would they hire us to engineer? Although I guess that’s more damaging to innocent bystanders than someone forgetting to update their projections. ;)

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Try following up.

Or hire a salesperson.

transGLUKator

Politicker

Sales Pal

Yeah, following up is an obvious thing. I mean may there is something else he can start doing now? Hiring a salesperson is not an option right now

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Why not?

transGLUKator

Politicker

Sales Pal

scale. he doesn't need a fulltime salesman, he needs like 1 new customer every 2-3 months

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Could he consider hiring a part time salesperson?

Hiring someone that knows what they're doing is much easier than trying to DIY while also running the business.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Start doing this right now: read some books and build a prospect list. Call them or visit them. Close them. Nurture the ones who aren’t ready or the ones that you don’t have capacity for. If you can’t do that then hire a fractional sales rep.

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

Hire someone who does.

saaster

Fire Starter

Account Executive

I have a friend who was in the same spot - his consultant had him do the following:
He hired sales person and paid full 150k ote for a 1 yr ramp that dropped to 75/75 after that year
Hired 2 pt SDRs- each like 25-30 hrs/wk comp I think $200 per booking that reached stage 4 plus 1 or 2% acv - they also became ft after a yr
Hired a fractional cmo with a 1 yr retainer
He also gave the sales person a VERY long leash and a commitment to stay out of their process unless asked/invited, didn’t cheap out on sales tools like HubSpot, sendoso, nav, and zoominfo.
The thought process was if you’re going to do it you might as well do it and spend the strategic capital now rather than fuck around and burn capital drastically extending the process.

LightingLeader

Politicker

Specification Sales

Tell him to hire me, a sales person in the construction industry

Notmyrealname

Politicker

Sounds like some cheap inbound marketing might work better? If it's architecture/construction consulting/planning/etc., it's going to be very difficult to find a customer by outbound surely? I'm guessing they need to find a project at its very beginning to be a candidate? Like a needle in a haystack.

He can use some good marketing tools for free/cheap like mailchimp and hubspot to send out ads and wait for one to call back, but I can't see anyone deciding to launch a construction project just because a salesperson convinced them that they know a really good architect.

Jewcan_Sam81

Politicker

Account Executive

But seriously, parroting a couple questions up there: have you put out any feelers for a full-time salesperson?

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Did he see product market fit before launching ?

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

The easiest way to sell something is to solve a problem/s so what does your friend solve for and how does he market that?

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

If he doesn't want to hire an experienced sales person &/or can't afford it right now, he needs to just get on the phone and start letting people know that he exists. He should have something of a network he can reach out to for this.

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