Comment by jd115 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jd115 | Hacker News Reader

Lots of condescending negativity in the comments here. Although a lot of it is true, it's not necessarily helpful.

I've been through this exact frustration, read everything there is on the topic, and have discovered things that work and things that don't.

First and foremost - DO NOT go hire anyone to do this for you. No one can. You MUST learn to sell your own products and services, there is no way around it. And no one can do it better than you.

Second, avoid paid advertising before you've learned how to generate high-ticket sales WITHOUT it.

Paid ads and sales people are for scaling only, once you've got your offer and your messaging down to a proven working system.

The good news is, you can get started easily and you can see results quickly, without spending a fortune on anyone or anything.

If you'd like some hand-holding through this, ping me at code+hn@a115.co.uk

I dunno about the negativity.

The deal with an X consulting shop is simple: you're now a salesperson first and an X second. If you don't like that reality, or expend effort appropriately, your small consultancy is very likely going to fail. That goes squared for selling into the upper midmarket / low enterprise, which is what healthcare software almost always is.

This is good advice. When you are just two people doing consulting services then you need to do your own sales probably starting with a bunch of cold calls.

At some level of scale (obviously not zero clients), a client services person can be useful for chasing down POs, checking in on clients regularly, etc. But in my experience at a couple of consulting firms, a "sales person" has trouble even selling standard packages on their own. And they really have no way at all of selling one-off projects.

> and have discovered things that work and things that don't.

Could you share some of your insights?

Happy to help. Send me an e-mail with a bit more details about what you do and what you're currently struggling with.

It would be helpful to share some general insights, or give some concrete examples from your particular experience, so we can all benefit.

Then people can email you for their specific situation.

Ok, I wrote a blog post about it. Hope it's helpful: https://corebrief.com/2020/09/09/a-better-way-to-find-client...

Thank you!

Great read, thank you for taking the time to write it and share it.

Wholeheartedly second this advice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com