Your thoughts on learning sales and marketing?

[Awoken]

Novice to marketing, sales, copy etc. I’m eager to start searching for needs and testing their viability. Do you think investing time into learning sales, marketing, etc before pursuing ideas is worthwhile? Or would learning as I progress with an idea be more efficient?

Interested to read your thoughts. Also, if you have recommendations for books, courses or other ways to start learning these skills I’d greatly appreciate you sharing them.

If there are other threads like this, feel free to call me out and drop a link to them if you’d be so kind - I failed to find any.

Cheers!

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

Novice to marketing, sales, copy etc. I’m eager to start searching for needs and testing their viability. Do you think investing time into learning sales, marketing, etc before pursuing ideas is worthwhile? Or would learning as I progress with an idea be more efficient?

Interested to read your thoughts. Also, if you have recommendations for books, courses or other ways to start learning these skills I’d greatly appreciate you sharing them.

If there are other threads like this, feel free to call me out and drop a link to them if you’d be so kind - I failed to find any.

Cheers!

You'll have to learn these skills at some point. While you're looking for ideas, why not sharpen your skills? Take yourself to "school"

 

[Edgar King]

Novice to marketing, sales, copy etc. I’m eager to start searching for needs and testing their viability. Do you think investing time into learning sales, marketing, etc before pursuing ideas is worthwhile? Or would learning as I progress with an idea be more efficient?

Interested to read your thoughts. Also, if you have recommendations for books, courses or other ways to start learning these skills I’d greatly appreciate you sharing them.

If there are other threads like this, feel free to call me out and drop a link to them if you’d be so kind - I failed to find any.

Cheers!

What is your goal? Learning vs experience?

I'd say, learn the fundamentals of sales/marketing for a few minutes to an hour (e.g. offer a solution to an unmet need). Then solve a problem for someone and get paid for it by going out there and offering your solution e.g. go out to your city centre and sell pens/clothes/water if you have to start small.

You can learn sales/marketing on the go and get paid to do so. You'll learn from your mistakes too, and see where you need to improve, which is where those courses and books would come in handy.

Start, and then learn, is what I'd recommend.

What can you offer that would make someone happy? What can you offer at all? Then go to the people who need this.

 

[fridge]

Do you have a job already or a business already? If you only have a job that you don't mind quitting you could always get a job in sales for a few months and read a couple of sales books to get a good grip on sales. I've been learning mainly the straight line method of selling.

 

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[Andy Black]

Learn a wee bit (no need to buy a course, there’s plenty of great threads in this forum), then engage the market immediately.

Make it your goal to sell something, this week - even for free. (Selling something for free isn’t as easy as you think, especially to busy business owners wary of wasting their time.)

I know I sound biased, but there’s a reason I’d recommend Google Ads… it teaches you that sales is much simpler when you’re selling to “the starving crowd” (look up Gary Halbert and the starving crowd).

Google Ads (paid search) also “fails safe”. Setup correctly you only pay when someone looking to buy visits your website. If no-one is searching then you have no ad impressions, no clicks, and therefore no spend.

Advice I constantly give people: pick some marketing skill (ahem, I say Google Ads) and let your whole network know you’re now doing it and ask if they know anyone who needs help. Start helping someone for free, where they pay the ad spend (which you’ll keep low).

Take it from there.

Even if you don’t go down the digital marketing service provider route, you’ll learn skills and lessons you can apply to your own business, AND you’re rubbing shoulders with business owners (your free or paid clients).

Good luck.

There’s a few rabbit-holes in my signature that may help.

Just remember:

“You can’t invoice for input.”
(Blaise Brosnan)

 

[Johnny boy]

When I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I was a fresh community college dropout, I started selling cars. I was soon making 6k a month living at home. It was awesome. I would sell cars, ride my motorcycle to work, I saved like 4 grand a month and would go party and smash poon every afternoon.

I saved up my money and started my current business within a year of my first full time job.

Sales helped with everything. It'll help teach you how to close. How to look someone in the eye and not be afraid to tell them to hand over large sums of money. It's not that hard, but when you're brand new, it can make you nervous. It definitely has helped my ability to communicate which has helped in everything related to my business. Hiring people, training them, getting customers, managing expectations, etc. Communication is the biggest skill you can have.

 

[Awoken]

Thank you everybody for your responses!

I appreciate your advice @Andy Black, I’ll begin learning by reading through relevant threads here. I‘ll start investing time into Google Ads as well as social media ads (I think both will be handy).

Also going to take the advice of looking around for a part time sales/marketing jobs I could take up whilst still at uni. Might as well learn whilst working!

Thanks everyone I appreciate you all

 

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[Ronnie Bryan]

I have done sales for Life Plus a networking work from home pyramid business model.,Direct TV, Vector Marketing and Action x press printing a brick and motar company I co-owned back in 2009 . My suggestion if you are just starting out work for Vector Marketing and sell Cutco Knives of all my experiences it was the most profitable and educational for learning sales.

 

[Walter Hay]

Sales helped with everything. It'll help teach you how to close. How to look someone in the eye and not be afraid to tell them to hand over large sums of money. It's not that hard, but when you're brand new, it can make you nervous. It definitely has helped my ability to communicate which has helped in everything related to my business. Hiring people, training them, getting customers, managing expectations, etc. Communication is the biggest skill you can have.

This says all you need to know. Experience the joys and fears of selling face to face and you will learn as Johnny boy says: "Communication is the biggest skill you can have."

I started selling dressed rabbits door to door at the age of 8. I moved on to selling kindling firewood door to door at the age of 12. At the age of 17 I got a job selling latex foam pillows door to door on commission. The result was that my communication skills enabled me as an adult to sell to anyone, including senior company executives.

I once attended a full day sales training course that taught me nothing but how to cheat and lie. It did nothing to improve my communication skills.

Walter