HACKER Q&A
📣 tawb

How to make cold outbound less like pulling teeth as eng founder?


I'm a technical founder, background in software and robotics. I'm a competent on fundraising and sales calls, but doing cold outbound has always felt like pulling teeth. I love talking to customers. But, I've never found a method to rewire my brain to find any hint of joy or progress when I'm doing outbound sales. Even warm intros feel like marching through mud, mentally.

Any thoughts/tips/tricks for overcoming this?

  👤 _448 Accepted Answer ✓
If you change your mindset from "selling and promoting" to "educating/informing and helping", then any sales and marketing process becomes satisfying and joyful with positive outcomes.
👤 daydream
Two thoughts.

Are cold outbound calls really critical to your sales/marketing strategy? What is the goal of these calls and can you achieve it any other way? Even if the alternatives are somewhat less optimal, if they are more palatable you’ll probably do them more and be happier about it. You’ll be more motivated to do them. That upside could outweigh any downsides compared to cold outbound.

Second, if you really have to do them, just do them. Repeatedly. If they are really painful and you must do them do MORE of them, not less. Grind it out and see if your feelings towards them change over time. It may or may not. Regardless you’ll have gotten through a ton of calls in the meantime, and hopefully much closer to your overall goal.

Good luck!

👤 joshxyz
What changed my perspective on this is understanding more what the sales process should look like instead of just winging it without structure and process.

twitter.com/bowtiedsalesguy this person's tweets are very helpful in understanding it, in the way that ylu should be mindful of your tonality and pace, of how you screen your buyers, of how you turn conversations into an emotional one, on how to find the pain encountered by the clients.