Ask HN: How to learn marketing and sales as a solo entrepreneur?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37021837

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36922114

Some good recs in the above threads. You'll be able to learn and thrive with those, IMO.

That said, it basically boils down to 3 things:

Personas

Channels

Messages

You have an archetype of someone in your head that would like your tool, you want to test if that archetype exists. That persona likely consumes content, your job then is to understand the channels that persona typically likes to consume their content, and try to serve them a message they can understand in the time you have to serve it. There are thousands of personas in millions of channels consuming billions of messages, that is why it's hard.

It's both easy and deep reading. Long but worth it. It changed marketing for me from smoke and mirrors to a systematic, fun, creative analytical process.

The ideal thing to do is become your customer, hang out with them, learn from them. Shape your product around them. They will tell you what they will buy for how much.

Only a few products are so innovate that everyone understands what it is and the value it brings and they demand it and only you can give it to them : think ChatGPT. Those products market themselves once word gets out. Is that your product? If not you have to tell people or show people.

Any advice I give may not apply to you and your business. My business is b2b and it's a platform for certain kinds of professionals as well as an API that powers many well known businesses.

I've only had success through two general strategies:

1. Networking (friend of friends, friend of customers, etc). Leverage your network to find more customers.

2. The "Long Game" (SEO, word of mouth, etc). This is where I get most of my customers.

I'd say focus on the long game from day one (blog posts, good marketing pages, etc). Use networking to determine how valuable the product is and if people give a damn about it. If no one wants to talk to you about it, no one is going to want to pay for it.

There's lots of competition, and most customers are already using something to help with their problem.

What worked for me 25 years ago is not going to work as well today. Well it will, but its much harder to stand out from the crowd.

Some things don't change though. You need to find customers before you find (ie build) product. Ideally you get a deposit before you start writing. Getting customers is harder than writing code, so do that first.

Finding customers is hard. You need to get close enough to see their pain. You need to make that pain go away. It's seldom as easy as you expect to make pain go away (the devil is in the details.)

The good news is that it is possible. And it's hard enough that it keeps the competition away. Do it well, carve out a niche, and you can build something good.

And always remember- customer service is what you are really selling, not software.

Lots of great experiences retold - from the startup world rather than some Coca Cola exec.

I think its

    - right market
    - right time
    - right product
    - right attitude

Rather than building web projects, I'm not shifting my attention to overlooked areas (C, CLI, other low level areas)

- you can't outsource sales before pmf, and you probably don't have pmf yet

- talk to (at least) a potential customer every day, keep track of what you said and how they responded

- make and give your leads materials they can use to sell internally, figure out who makes decisions (probably not who you talked to first) and make sure it's relevant to them; you may need multiple versions

- aggressively think about pmf, don't worry too much about official definitions here. just ask yourself: "if i took a month long vacation, could sales ostensibly be on autopilot?" if no, you don't have it yet. if yes, take the vacation you're doing great

- look for pmf by making your idea smaller, not bigger, or you will waste money and time

- when you can make a product idea really tiny in scope, and someone will still pay for it, you've identified a strong pain point you can exploit (aka charge for). Build the product/platform around that, not the other way around. Never convince yourself you have to build a huge thing before you can sell it, you're most likely wrong. optimize for finding that tiny scope early on

- when i say look for or find or think about pmf i mean come up with a way to pitch your product, and then pitch it to someone new. then compare that to the last times you did it. you have to talk to a lot of people for this to work, way more than you think. your product will not sell itself, you will have to talk to a lot of people. as many as physically possible to get the feedback you need to create a sales cycle that runs without you i.e. pmf. this is something that took me multiple years to internalize. you're just never talking to enough potential customers

- don't ignore seo, and pick names that are easy to say and read; figure out where your customers consume media and get your content there. every business will be different here, and you gotta get creative

- something i saw on reddit that stuck with me: first time founders think about product, second time founders think about distribution. i operationalize this as: do not begin engineering a product until you're clear on how it will be marketed and sold, bonus points if you can convince someone to sign a contract saying they want it-- and remember in B2B/gov this can (should?) be a sales channel partner not just an end-user

still on this way as well :)

The trust you earn by trying to genuinely be of service to the market pays back dividends. Not in an easily quantifiable RoI. But eventually it will.

The other bit of advice is you need to set some boundaries and expectations for working together. This includes closing the sale (we need contract back by X date or we can’t work together) and when executing / serving them (we can’t exceed this limit, we need payment by Y or service will be paused). Hold yourself to being disciplined and not people pleasing. You’ll regret the latter usually. Sometimes the best thing you can do is NOT close the deal.

Don’t undersell yourself. Set a price point where half of your inbound is unable to work with you. Eliminate bad fits early.

As a solo entrepreneur your time is extremely limited. So boundaries and setting a good price point are very important so people don’t waste your time.

And because you’re probably still looking for PmF these trusting relationships turn your potential customers into advisors. Treat your best customers advice as sacrosanct. You’ll find a niche in partnership with them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41862332

https://www.foundingsales.com

I should clean it up and organize it better at some point, but there is a big variety these days.

Step 1: Offer your product for free. Free (and useful) products spread organically on internet. If people aren't using your product even when it's free, no amount of marketing will make it successful.

Step 2: If people are "consistently" using your free product over time, you can then offer additional value at a price or try any other pricing strategy.

Not all products can be offered for free, and that's okay. It's worth spending some money initially (if you can) because your primary goal is to reach Step 2.

In my experience, many product makers who describe themselves as being bad at sales just can't get their head out of their own view point. So even speaking to a person who is just marginally above average at sales and describes it as an outsider can really shift their way of thinking. The customer may not use the product in the exact way you think they will when you made it. Having the benefit of seeing how others see your product will put you on the same footing when you pitch it to them.

Also, find a way of presenting that fits your personality. I'm pretty mater of fact and my sales pitch has always been sort like "we have some cool stuff for sale, you use some of the exact kind of stuff we sell, let's talk about whether our stuff would be good for you." Then I just ask them questions. Sales people have the (deserved) stereotype of blathering on about their product or service and being tone deaf to whether it's a good fit or not. I ask and I ask. People will talk about themselves quite a bit and in my mind, I am taking notes on what may be a good fit for them and what might not be.

Eventually, they've run out of things to talk about and I'll start talking about what I think they should look at and why. That brings me around to another thing--fitting in. I have no problem telling people if one of our offerings is not something they should consider. I don't want to force something on someone, when they are smart enough to know it isn't right for them. Cajoling someone into a sale that isn't a great fit just leads to problems after the sale, then I'm putting out fire with them when I should be selling to others. Not only does it build trust with the customer to pass on things, but it's just the right thing to do.

Think of yourself not as a salesperson, but as a problem solver. If they have a business problem your product can solve, tell them.

Good luck and I hope this helps!

The first book I would read is Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. After this, in no particular order you could have a look at:

- This is Marketing by Seth Godin

- Positioning by Al Ries

- The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

- Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross

- Traversing The TRaction Gap by Bruce Cleveland

- From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin

I would also have a look at the models created by Winning By Design [1]. But be sceptical! These models do however hold some value in terms of visually presenting the sales funnel and gaining understanding of land and expand.

Best of luck to you!

[1]: https://winningbydesign.com/resources/blueprints/

The only real problem which exists in society is the problem that the system itself prevents us from solving. The problem of allowing people to obtain money to buy the damn stuff that is being produced and whose production could be easily scaled up at will and there is nothing save climate change and other doom narratives getting in the way of massively scaling up production and automating everything. Letting the pie grow as big as is required to satisfy everyone. Ask just about anyone on the street what they need and if they're honest, 99% of them will tell you that they need more money to buy the stuff that already exists. The government could essentially give free land and free money (UBI) to everyone, new cities would be built and the system would expand and decentralize outward, creating an abundance of opportunities.

How do you solve the problem of helping people to get more money when the entire monetary system is designed to concentrate wealth, to take away opportunities and wealth from the masses. The only solutions to the most important problem in society are political. There are no business solutions for this problem within the current political framework.

There is no incentive to actually automate anything (beyond the point when it satisfies only the elite) when the masses are systematically broke and desperate for money. People will always be as cheap as machines. Slavery exists on the periphery and will grow in the current system. It will come down to the cost of food for a slave or electricity for a machine... However, the slave can produce their own food in the same way that an intelligent machine could produce its own electricity. The net cost is 0 in both cases. Slavery is more achievable, even today.

Now if you're interested in ways to make money without solving the only problem that matters, then you need to basically come up with a solution to make the problem worse; which helps concentrate the money faster, more surveillance, more control, more plausible deniability, more dulling of the senses, more inequality, more suffering... Basically anything that helps to prevent political change. Nothing else pays in the current political framework besides protecting the current political framework.