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Posted by sieep 3 days ago

Ask HN: Resources to get better at outbound sales?

Hi!

I run a small custom software company in Michigan.

I want to get better at outbound sales beyond just cold emailing or messaging people through LinkedIn.

We’re about to start publishing case studies and doing some outreach, so I want to take some time to study outbound sales and improve my skills.

Any recommended courses, books, or frameworks for B2B outbound sales, consultative selling, or building effective outreach pipelines?

Thanks!

8 points | 5 comments
mmarian 6 hours ago|
Figure out who your target customer is. Imagine yourself in their shoes - how/where do you spend your time, what do you like learning about, under what circumstances would you consider a rando small software company in Michigan.
Eridrus 3 days ago||
I generally recommend the book Founding Sales (available for free online), but it's targeted at SaaS founders.

But you're actually doing something even more common: running a consulting business, and there's plenty of content on that for just that reason, so I would go find content on how to scale a consulting business, e.g. this seems like the start of a thread to pull on https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

brudgers 3 days ago||
Relationships are the best resource for sales.

Because to solve someone's problems, they have to tell you their problems.

Or to put it another way, the thing you do is to solve the actual problems other people have. That's what you need to sell. You aren't selling the fact that you know how to use a hammer. You are selling the idea that you can build the right hammer for the job.

So sales is not "out reach." It is "what do you need?" and you will probably do better by optimizing for getting to that conversation, not through optimizing for low effort on your part.

Linked-in is best used for networking not push notification. Networking is about trust. Maybe you can't help with someone's problem but you know someone who can.

Finally, you can't sell desperately. Good luck.

SMAAART 3 days ago||
Google these:

1) "inbound marketing"

2) The lean startup / MVP

AznHisoka 2 days ago|
Hot take, but outbound selling is so ineffective today, that if its it in a playbook, it most likely means it doesnt work