On sales (2019?)

 > do you think that when talking to potential users you should already be trying to close the sale?

Yes. Before going in to meet anyone you need to have a “hunch” or hypothesis beforehand that you have a solution to a problem they have. When you go in you need the mindset that by the end of the meeting you will close the sale with them. And if you don’t close the sale or at least push them to the next step then you have failed. 

Otherwise, your conversation with them will go on aimless tangents without a focused goal and you also can’t hold yourself accountable. What I mean by that is that it’s easy to “interview” someone: you just passively stare at them and write down whatever they say. You can feel like you did a lot of productive work and pat yourself on the back without actually having done anything. But to “sell” to someone requires that you genuinely push yourself in the moment because it’s hard as hell. 

It’s important to note here that selling does *not* mean arguing with the customer, it does *not* mean manipulating the person into buying something that doesn’t help them, and it does *not* mean not listening to the customer. People who don’t actually know how sales works will assume this is how it works from stereotypes or from salespeople who actually suck at their jobs.

In fact it’s the opposite. Good sales requires extreme skills in listening and empathy. God-like skills. Because you almost literally have to transplant yourself into someone else’s life to 0. Warm up to them and get in their side, then 1. understand exactly their problem (emotionally and in THEIR terminology/mental heuristics, NOT yours), then 2. assess with a clear mind what is the best solution for them and objectively whether your solution is a right fit, and finally 3. communicate the knowledge in your head to their head in a language that matches their head. This requires much more interaction and engagement on your part than if you just sit back and “interview.”

The reason you need to have a hunch or hypothesis or a “prior” is because you need to bring your original thinking to the table. The customer you will interact with is on ‘automatic thinking mode’ when they think about their problems and life in general, not ‘creative thinking mode.’ You *cannot* ask the user for solutions or “What do you want?” outright because they will default to unoriginal solutions or most likely a cynicism of ‘I don’t know and everything sucks and there’s no solution possible ever because I’ve checked.’ They deliberately cannot see solutions on their own because they have mentally shut themselves off from their problem in order to get on with their life. 

They have come to accept their problem so much they might have even forgotten that they had that problem. So if you showed up to a meeting and just said, “So tell me about your problems,” they won’t even remember to tell you about the important problem X that they’re having because it’s too painful to remember. But if you showed up to a meeting and said, “We’re working on helping people with problem X. So tell me about your problems,” then they remember their problem and can open up to you about it. 

Moreover, sales breaks through the politeness firewall that everyone puts up. If you propose an idea to someone, they’ll tell you “Yes I love this” because they are being polite. Even if they are trying to be as honest as possible there is still a subconscious politeness filter. When you sell something to someone it’s the ultimate moment of truth as to whether this actually solves their problem. If it does then they’ll be insisting to pull out $100 from their wallet right now because they’re in such need. If they aren’t then it’s not what this person needs. If you think about how smart of a shopper you are in that you are always trying to avoid being fooled into buying something that is a scam, then you can extrapolate this mentality to everyone and therefore understand how hard it is to close a sale. 

Finally, even if your original hypothesis seemed great in your head but turned out to be shit in reality, the fact that you will feel hungry to close a sale will force you to continue exploring new avenues of how you can help this particular person. Note this only applies when you don’t already have a validated product. If you *do* have a validated product, you should still be helpful to this person 100%, even if you don’t stand to make any money (as you should do with all sales)—but you don’t have to close a sale. You instead need to focus on finding more of the right target segment whose needs fit your validated solution.

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Sales is being pushed properly when it’s as painful as doing engineering. If sales is less painful than engineering that’s because people are giving up too easily 

Replace ‘painful’ with ‘skillful’ if you want

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As a mantra, I would say that the salesperson should always be doing a shit ton of work before the engineer even starts. If the engineer is actually any good, they ought to stab you if you make them create something that ends up being useless because their labor is so valuable. If they are blindly willing to make shit for you that’s because you have an engineer who isn’t actually good and you have been warned.