My brother and I cofounded a company together. We're both engineers and by far the hardest part has been learning sales. We're not full-on nerd stereotype engineers who can't talk to customers or network but a master's in comp-sci covers exactly zero sales or marketing.
We finally embraced that we are not going to be the best at sales or "always be closing" but the things we are really good at are automation, experimenting, and iterating which has enabled us to talk with more prospects and slowly improve conversion rates. In non-sales speak that means we have more customers having more success on our platform which is awesome.
We honestly believe we are offering something powerful to our customers to change their lives. That belief doesn't put food on the table though and shameless sales tactics like cold emailing, LinkedIn messaging, Instagram DMing, etc DO. (though we are super respectful and won't hound anyone that isn't interested)
I have a friend who works for transamerica selling financial packages and recruiting other people to transamerica. His ability to talk to anyone anywhere is constantly amazing and embarrassing.
I think there is some slant against "shameless sales tactics" here because many HN'ers aren't in a position to recognize exactly how valuable sales is. There are some well known and well loved "tech companies" that grow to be 90% sales and marketing and 10% engineering after they put their funding to use. And for those here that arent familiar, quite often VC money is meant for growth via sales and marketing, not via hiring more engineers.
What's interesting is that if you do think what you are providing is actually useful or meaningful, then there is nothing shameless about promoting it directly to those that might get use from it. And you promote it to people where they are: in their inbox, DMs, LinkedIn, etc. (We actually get tremendous results by supplementing cold email with phone simply because people are so surprised that we went through the trouble to call. But that's a discussion for another time.)
All that is to say that reaching out to people that might benefit from what you offer isnt sleazy in the slightest and is a practice as old as time itself. They will let you know if they arent interested, usually by ignoring you. Doesnt mean you should stop or feel bad about it.
Much appreciated! I've had some great conversations with sales/growth consultants that got our thinking onto this track. No surprise to you, I am sure.
There are free tools for finding direct dials but the hit 4are us pretty mediocre - 40 to 60% on average depending on sector.
HQ # are easy to find although navigating phone trees and gatekeepers is a job unto itself
Zoominfo and a few others are super expensive but have better data.
Google works better than you think. Sales navigator has some numbers.
We usually call when an email has been opened multiple times and get really good hit rates for demos when we actually reach the person (when talking about SAAS). Last week one of my guys used that to book demos with Disney, Sony, and NBC Universal at the VP level to demo enterprise marketing software.
We finally embraced that we are not going to be the best at sales or "always be closing" but the things we are really good at are automation, experimenting, and iterating which has enabled us to talk with more prospects and slowly improve conversion rates. In non-sales speak that means we have more customers having more success on our platform which is awesome.
We honestly believe we are offering something powerful to our customers to change their lives. That belief doesn't put food on the table though and shameless sales tactics like cold emailing, LinkedIn messaging, Instagram DMing, etc DO. (though we are super respectful and won't hound anyone that isn't interested)
I have a friend who works for transamerica selling financial packages and recruiting other people to transamerica. His ability to talk to anyone anywhere is constantly amazing and embarrassing.