7. Hire and retain "T-shaped" people. In difficult times those employees execute across multiple domains.
8. Client, vendor or employee drama is quicksand. You assist with a stick or a rope, you don't jump in with them.
9. Don't romanticize work & try to avoid romance getting in the way of work.
10. You're only as happy as your unhappiest child. Prioritize good parenting over work. Good parenting = SOS: Self awareness, objectivity, selflessness.
11. Get a prenup. No, really, do get one.
12. Pay yourself according to a financial model that prioritizes healthy business cash balances, and not your personal desires.
I want to emphasize an important distinction between Actual sales, and the sales department. Actual sales fix problems, the sales department may or may not be relevant to what causes that to happen.. although they will surely fight for the credit either way.
AFAIK Engineers have an axe to grind with the sales department, not actual sales. Giving credit for a sale is a very subjective matter, and more often than not every sales person who so much as sent an email to the opp want credit - effectively taking advantage of the subjective nature as much as they can get away with. Even if in reality the customer had to pretty much talk around everyone on the sales team and speak with an engineer to gain confidence in the product. Then the engineer has to go play catch-up from the 1 hour meeting while the sales member gets % of the sale.
Yes, but I feel this is somewhat of a tautology: of course lots of revenue makes things easier.
But the important part is to diagnose why you have low or declining sales. Sometimes it's because you don't have good sales people. But other times it's because the product you have isn't a good market fit, or it's really buggy, or your salespeople oversold and now your customers are unhappy with the actual functionality of your product.
I disagree, and that's why I responded. I've seen too many "we'll do whatever we need to do to get sales" turn into salespeople making unrealistic promises on impossibly tight deadlines.
So then the sale is made, but in a way that ends up destroying the long (and even medium) term health of the business. Product/engineering goes on a death march to get things done, by the end of it many of those folks are burnt out, customers are unhappy, and sales folks see the writing on the wall and are happy to bail with their fat commission.
It's like saying "do whatever you need to raise your stock price." There are healthy and unhealthy ways to do that, and the advice is useless if you don't carefully distinguish between the two.
So I think both of you are 'right', but you're choosing to interpret, and argue, the statement from different perspectives.
Sales are important. However, as you note, sales now should not come at the expense of sales later (or lead to returns later, or etc). And debugging low sales is non-trivial.
Focusing on sales to solve internal problems is like focusing on work to solve internal problems.
It can work to an extent, but sometimes you need to solve the internal problem before you can get the results you need.
So it's a feedback loop that leads to circular thinking. The problem is when we try to blame the external side of the feedback loop, to avoid seeing that our internal side is the problem.
I don't know... I might be having a reverse-survivor bias seeing, being in and contributing to failure, but I've _never_ seen a case where "let's increase our sales headcount" strategy actually did anything (EDIT: i.e. when things are bad. Of course, if things are good, sales is a key driver to growth)
If you need "more sales" to fix it, the problem often lies somewhere else.
>> I've _never_ seen a case where "let's increase our sales headcount" strategy actually did anything
no one said hire sales people; rather if you've got a problem, first look at increasing sales before you put your efforts elsewhere. This will either fix the problem or explicitly identify it.
The original comment which said "more sales"; I've never heard someone in business refer to salespersons with the cutesy "sales" so I don't think it's reasonable to think "more sales" refers to people, and if they meant a larger department they would have said "larger department", not "more (department)".
The comment below that also says "sales fixes everything", which, again, same logic as the original (and has the same author as two below where they clearly say "we're talking sales of things").
The comment below that is the only one clearly confusing sales people/department, with sales of things, "I don't think you can solve it with more sales people".
The comment you're directly responding to said "We're not talking about sales people or the department, we're talking about actual sales of things".
And you're saying someone, other than the person being corrected, 'clearly' meant the department or role? Nah.
Expressions like "A 20% increase in sales" are almost never used to describe an 20% increase in the sales department's headcount or budget. Most people would interpret that as a 20% increase in revenue from sales.
"Cost of Sales (COS)" in finance refers to the cost of making a sale, including all the costs required to produce the good or service sold, not just the compensation and other expenses associated with a sales department.
"Sales" as a noun does often refer to teh sales department, but there are times when it absolutely unambiguously means that, times when it almost never is interpreted as that, and times when it could go either way and a word like "revenue" would be clearer, but that doesn't make using the word" sales" to refer to revenue wrong.
I believe the word revenue was simply elided in this case. i.e., parse as “sales revenue.”
(I’m noticing elsewhere in this thread that others are interpreting “sales” as sales departments or salespeople. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, where the meaning of the plain word varies depending on where you live.)
OP here... I didn't realize how literally the words would be taken, so:
Few problems (a/k/a most problems) can be solved with more sales (a/k/a sales as a P&L line item equating to revenue); but OF COURSE its what you do with the increased revenue/sales that matters. Buying a Bentley isn't going to solve the business problem.
"Sales fixes everything" means that when you look at any random problem like "turnout is really big, how we can keep people for longer?"¹, often the fastest solution is to answer "hey, how can we increase sales?".
Answering that later question can lead you into any direction. Maybe you need more sales people, maybe your product sucks, maybe you must spend more on marketing. The point is not on how, the point is that the later one is the one goal you can have more impact on, and it will lead you into solving the former.
1 - On this case, with higher salaries, but there isn't enough money to increase them, thus the actionable question.
Corollary #1 - Marketing /sales is hard. Relative to tech / code it's at least 10x more difficult. Code / tech v human behaviour?? Which is easier to predict and sort out.
Corollary #2 - Nobody cares. You might love your baby (i.e., idea / product / startup) but nobody cares. At all. See Corollary #1 for more details.
The goodness of salespeople is measured on two orthogonal axes. The one that everyone pays attention to is "money brought in". The one that is hard to evaluate is "lies to customers".
"money brought in" is air that your company breathes. "lies to customers" is poison that your company drinks.
Hire sales people 2 at a time. If you hire just 1, they will have an endless list of reasons they aren’t making sales (product doesn’t demo well, not enough marketing, bad leads, etc). sales will always say this, but with more than one, you can tell how real of an impediment to closing deals those actually are
All excellent advice. Damn - I'll just skip that MBA now! I'd expand #9 a bit:
9a: Don't hit on your co-workers
9b: Don't sleep with your co-workers
9c: Don't date your co-workers
was just going to mention that prenups really no longer carry the weight that people think it does. For 2 years, whether you are married or not, exposes you to the same liability a married individual would face in the event of a break up here in BC which is crazy.
> Couples who have been living together for two years share the same legal rights as married couples in BC, including a 50/50 split of debts and assets—excluding pre-relationship property, inheritances and gifts.
With a rate of 40% for divorce, a pre-nup may no longer be just for marrying couples, it may be needed for any relationship where cohabiting occurs. Also, there is absolutely no chance the judge will side with the men in places known.
Oregon state has destroyed my good friend’s entire life. Child taken away, only get 4 hours a week of time with his kid. My friend is smart, kind and nicest person you’ll ever meet. Personal net worth fucked.
One of the reasons for me to consider leaving California.
No, I didn't know California was a separate entity. But, what I know is that it is worse than Oregon.
Instead of HN constantly defending California, I want us to take a hard look at what's wrong with this state and improve it; but I see a bad future and looking out for myself. I want California to be the best place on the planet to live. It is regressing at an ever increasing pace. I was talking to a SaksFifth employee in SF – he is working there since 1995. I talked to him for good 30 mins talking about how things were in Bay Area specifically. It is night and day compared to 90's.
No, I don't think so but my memory is a bit hazy, this was around 2013 time frame. All I remember is that he would prepare, spend a whole week planning for things he would do, and when the kid was with him, he'd most sincerely enjoy those 4 hours, every second of it. Makes me tear up just thinking about it.
His ex-wife was a trainwreck, they faught and for so long, lost $100k+ in just attorney fees and yet, the Portland judge wouldn't give him a break. I couldn't fault a single thing in his character and offered to be a witness. His attorney did their best to put forth a case, had a psychology auditor evaluate his mental health, everything is flying colors. Still, the judge wouldn't give more time with his child.
FUCKED UP. Makes me angry just thinking about it. It made me realize that there is evil in this world in the most visceral way.
The sales thing is super important but the channels and investment really depend on the type of business. B2C won't scale with phone calls you need marketing organization.
Scaling sales is a very different thing from getting sales, and I'd argue you won't know how to scale until you find a channel that works but is not cost effective. Otherwise you're essentially shooting blind, but at scale, which doesn't hit much but uses a lot of ammo.
I'm thinking more from the low-touch, low-margin perspective. If you are trying to make money with ads, calling 70 people to get 70 ad views is a terrible ROI no matter how persuasive you are. If you're selling a subscription SaaS product and expecting a lifetime value in the thousands per customer, then cold calling is a pretty decent way to bootstrap.
No, they aren't. They're literally saying you should be a good parent to your children.
Your children - their physical wellbeing, emotional and mental health, behaviour - have a profound impact on you that, for good or for ill, will absolutely colour your own behaviour and decision-making at work.
1a) and be sure you have those sales, and keep them
I know a startup that failed because they thought they were doing ok on sales, but it turned out: lots of people were signing up for the product, but then not using it, or not being able to, and un-signing soon after.
> 1. Few business problems can't be solved by more sales.
This obviously completely wrong. The only problem that can be solved by mores sales is when your are not selling enough. And even in this case just having more sales not always work.
I'm the first to say that what matter most for a company is its ability to have more customers. But having more sales when you sales org is badly structured will make you loose a lot of money. Same products problems won't be solved by more sales, same for Marketing problems, or People problems or actually any problem.
>> But having more sales when you sales org is badly structured will make you loose a lot of money
Read the original point. The OP is not saying sales globally optimizes all things, like how your sales department is organized, rather it mitigates (i.e "fixes") the problem. All your other points are secondary, and definitely don't hurt as much if you've got lots of sales.
Larry Ellison of Oracle definitely fails rule #6 but he gets at least one big thing right. There are only two roles: You're either building the thing or selling the thing.
Nespresso coffee pods are recyclable. Our Magnapower eddy sorter has separated aluminum from plastic after crushing the pods. Video here: https://vimeo.com/118085045
I don't think K-Kups would present much a problem either, but I haven't had the chance to try shredding and sorting them yet.
Do many/most/any municipal recycling facilities have ECS sorters? Should I tell people to throw K-cups in the recycling? I'm assuming the coffee grounds need to be removed first?
Most have them. I dont see the harm in putting them in the recycling bin though thats not to say they wont end up in the landfill fraction for various reasons.
1. Few business problems can't be solved by more sales.
2. Cut expenses when the storm is approaching, not when you're soaking wet.
3. You can't eat assets or inventory. Don't get emotional about what you own, only about your cash balances.
4. Banks are your friend only when you don't need them. Corollary: One bank for borrowing, one for cash balance accounts.
5. 70 completed calls per week. Not emails, calls. You can do it, start now.
6. Don't be an asshole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule
7. Hire and retain "T-shaped" people. In difficult times those employees execute across multiple domains.
8. Client, vendor or employee drama is quicksand. You assist with a stick or a rope, you don't jump in with them.
9. Don't romanticize work & try to avoid romance getting in the way of work.
10. You're only as happy as your unhappiest child. Prioritize good parenting over work. Good parenting = SOS: Self awareness, objectivity, selflessness.
11. Get a prenup. No, really, do get one.
12. Pay yourself according to a financial model that prioritizes healthy business cash balances, and not your personal desires.