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AUTHOR'S NOTE
The companies mentioned in this book are not in any way affiliated with Sales Hacker, Inc. We take no fees or compensation from any of the companies mentioned in this book. The companies listed are in no particular rank or order. I provide information and my opinion, but it's up to the reader to decide which companies to do business with and what process to follow.
Visit www.SalesHacker.com for more information and bonus material.
INTRODUCTION
Why Sales, Why Now?
The world of sales is blowing up. It's a $500 billion industry that employs over 15 million people in the United States alone. Salesforce, a company that focuses predominantly on sales technology, may soon be doing $10 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR). For reference, that comes close to what the National Football League made in revenue in 2015.
Sales itself is undergoing a transformation. One could call it the sales acceleration or sales automation era. There is more financial investment in sales, and more talented people are choosing careers in sales than ever before. The Ivy Leaguers who once would have jumped straight into finance jobs at Goldman Sachs are getting into the sales game instead. Big venture capital firms are funding sales automation and acceleration start-ups. There are more cash-rich companies that have capital to spend on natural acquisitions than ever before. It's a good time to be in sales.
Business executives are realizing that a good sales team will make or break their business. In a Stanford computer science lecture on distribution, Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley's most outspoken angel investors, said:
The first thing to do is to dispel the belief that the best product always wins. There is a rich history of instances where the best product did not, in fact, win. Nikola Tesla invented the alternating current electrical supply system. It was, for a variety of reasons, technologically better than the direct current system that Thomas Edison developed. Tesla was the better scientist. But Edison was the better businessman, and he went on to start GE. Interestingly, Tesla later developed the idea of radio transmission. But Marconi took it from him and then won the Nobel Prize. Inspiration isn't all that counts. The best product may not win.
Thiel, who has been a part of some of the most successful technology companies of the past two decades (PayPal, Facebook, Yelp, Palantir, and many more), is worth over $2 billion, and he comes from a product background.
Sales is in everything you do.
Yet, with all of these facts, only a handful of colleges offer degrees in sales, and most Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs don't offer a single class in sales. That is why I'm writing this book.
As the marketplace rapidly changes, there are so many new things to take advantage of as a modern-day salesperson. Consider reading this book as your enrollment in a class – the beginning of your degree in modern sales. I call it Sales Hacking.
Who This Book Is For
This book was written for anyone who is in a sales role. To be more specific, this book is for:
● The individual sales reps who want to get ahead of their peers and be at the top of their organization
● One of your company's first few sales hires who has to sell and create a process as he or she goes along
● The early stage company with a cofounding team that is looking to build a sales process that they can bring in experienced salespeople to run
● Anyone building a sales process in which he or she is selling to an entity, such as a business, a government, or another type of organization. This is called business-to-business, or B2B, sales.
Where This Book Fits In
● Your company has a sales process, but it was built in the Prohibition Era.
● You have a sales process, and it is working out well, but you're working too hard.
● You have a product market fit and some paying customers, but you need to know what to do next.
What This Book Is Not
● Start-up Sales 101. Hacking Sales won't help you get a product market fit, validate ideas, give you a lean start-up methodology, and so on. If you want to learn more about start-up sales, read Steli Efti's short book, The Ultimate Startup Guide to Outbound Sales, which I recommend for learning more about these topics.
● The answer to all of your problems. You're still going to have to figure out what works for your individual business. Every business is different. This book is a guide that can help you figure those things out on your own.
● A guide on how to hire, train, and manage teams. Hacking Sales is for sellers, hunters, and deal-closers.
Having a sales process for your business is extremely important. Without it, your business will be disorganized and disjointed. If you're not tracking and measuring with a standardized approach, then how will you get better? The best assets of sales teams and salespeople are great organizational and analytical skills. Companies that figure this out early and build a strong and streamlined engine will surpass their competitors. Sales reps who figure this out will outsell their peers.
This book was written to help you build a strong foundation for your business. Specifically, this book will help you to do the following:
● Build a pipeline in a repeatable and scalable manner that can be refined and enhanced over time
● Close deals faster and nurture leads properly
● Take advantage of all of the new technologies that make selling more efficient
This book can be used at any stage of a B2B business. Some companies will use this book later on to strengthen an existing business. Some will use it early and build from scratch. Consider this book as your playbook.
A lot of books claim to have all of the answers, which is, of course, impossible. In the end, all companies are made differently. Different variables such as industry, country, deal size, deal cycle, and target buyers affect outcomes greatly.
While I don't promise to serve you the answers on a silver platter, I will put you on the path to find them for yourself. I'll talk about problems and solutions as generally as possible; just understand that parts of the process vary greatly for different companies. The timing of sending out e-mails and other communications that I explain later in this book may be drastically different from what yours should be, for many reasons. There are so many variables at play. Take this book as a guide, but don't blindly follow it. Always test and optimize suggestions to find what's right for you.
Most of the book will focus on outbound sales. However, much of the advice will work for inbound sales as well; for example, segmenting, messaging, and lead research are relevant to