The Baby Steps Toward Tech Sales Experience as an Engineering Undergrad

By Larry Chiang This blog post solves a clear problem Paul Graham brought up Sales skills for engineers (or lack thereof) was featured in a blog post: “Do Things That Don’t Scale” http://bit.ly/pgrahamCh6 The Baby Steps Toward Tech Sales Experience as an ENGR Undergrad are curated under my fb and T feeds under “#Ch6″ Here are 3 baby steps for Stanford undergrads in engineering that want to spend 2-5 hours before next quarter preparing and augmenting their likelihood to get recruited in to YC (y-Combinator) or in to Stanford Start X. You prep by taking baby steps towards promotion experience -1- “Sell” an event that costs hundreds to attend. The idea here is to have complete cognitive dissonance with what you are selling. If I attempt to sell you a Duck9 credit card with a Larry Chiang sticker and you say no… I feel SAD. If I try to sell you on buying an $80 ticket to the TechCrunch party and you say “no”, then you are saying no to TechCrunch. This way you just get experience selling. -2- Reduce to the Ridiculously Easy to Sell ‘Sell’ pizza to drunk executives. Pizza is ridiculously easy to sell because it sells itself. Get a handmade sign that says “5 BUCKS” on a piece of non cheese encrusted corrugated. Buy 10 large pizzas -3 veggie -2 cheese only – 2 mushroom – 4 pepperoni I know that amounts to 11 but I challenge you to negotiate an 11 for 10 deal 😉 QUESTION Larry Chiang: won’t execs feel like they’re getting ripped off?! The whole pizza only cost 12 and I’m selling 8 slices for 5.oo LARRY CHIANG: execs just want to be entertained. -3- Sell Using a Full Rebate You know those deals where you buy a pen for 1.99 and there is a rebate for $2.oo?! Well you can “sell” using a rebate. Another sales genius level of rebating is the LCRRM It’s Larry Chiang Reverse Rebate Model. Ok, let’s look at a pretty ballsy example. The Stanford GSB hosts an annual Entrepreneurship Mixer. It is free. It isn’t really attended by well known entrepreneurs or VCs. So, I decided to charge VCs $95 in a fully rebated ticket. VCs got their $95 back when they showed up. I capped tix “sales” at 13 meaning that I would only let 13 people “buy” from me. When they showed up, I’d rebate all their money back. Doing this gets you sales experience without really risking – your ego – your time – your pocketbook Note: VCs love when engineering student undergrads ask them for money. It actually sexually excites them. Why??! Asking for money is a skill that VCs see as important. In my time at Stanford, I found that time-and-time again that companies with more money tended to do slightly better than companies with less money. Mark Cuban recommends that you sell shoelaces http://bit.ly/mcuban710 What A Super Model Can Teach a Harvard MBA About Credit http://www.slideshare.net/larrychiang/what-a-super-model-can-teach-a-harvard-mba-about-credit EASTER EGG: If you’d like to pattern replicate Martin Shen, I’ll let you do a #ReverseVC event. It’ll get your sales experience going. It’ll get you going. I’ll help you DO something ————– MARTIN SHEN ———- First you take over a franchise like #reverseVC Then you promote at SXSW a concept that isn’t something you co-founded. THEN you pitch Mark Cuban at SXSW for… (your 3 quarters baked idea) THEN you tech co-founder up the COMPANY #upOutSF “like” it? Then like my comment here (skip the fan page likes and like a specific comment here http://m.facebook.com/messages/read/?tid=id.184317455076887#!/811315726/timeline/story?ut=82&hash=4228111027610016817&wstart=0&wend=1375340399&ustart&__user=811315726 American Express’ Under-Promoted Credit Truths at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week (MBFW)” http://t.co/inxTmZAj My Stanford Engineering video boils down 20,000 hours and moves you to the right on the entrepreneur bell curve CEO of Duck9 MIT University EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) Duck9 = “Deep Underground Credit Knowledge” 9 125 University Avenue/ 100 Palo Alto CA 94301 http://www.duck9.com/ass 650-566-9600 650-566-9696 (direct) 650-283-8008 (cell) **************** Editor of the BusinessWeek Channel “What They Don’t Teach at Business School” http://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog CNN Video Channel: http://ireport.cnn.com/people/larrychiang Read my last 10 tweets at http://www.Twitter.com/LarryChiang Author, NY Times Bestseller http://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog/?s=Ny+times+bestseller “What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School” comes out 11-11-14 http://www.fastcompany.com/embed/c0d4562ea2049 52 Cards. Two Jokers. What They DO Teach You at Stanford Engineering Emergency swings and cutting deals as an 9 year old ########## Duck9 is part of UCMS Inc. http://www.ucms.com 630-705-5555 More on #ENGR145’s SHIFTING right on the entrepreneur bell curve