Many years ago, I did 6 months of sales training. They were training me to sell mainframes; but they told me that if you have product familiarity, a salesman can sell anything.<p>Sales didn't suit me, for several reasons. I don't agree that everyone should have sales skills. I mean product sales; I'm talking about selling stuff for money. I don't regard "selling" yourself or your ideas as "sales". My remarks below concern product sales, not selling yourself, your ideas or your visions. That's a different game.<p>I moved to pre-sales support. But I've worked a lot with salesmen over the years, which I enjoyed.<p>What I learned about was selling to large organisations. I learned that the deal-cycle is long; it might take a couple of years to clinch a deal. Once the deal comes in, the commission packet is big - colleagues I trained with were driving around in Porsches in a couple of years. But I didn't feel like working for a salesman's basic pay for 2 years; set aside the commission, the pay was crap. I was raising a family, and I wanted regular pay.<p>I worked with urbane, well-spoken and well-informed salesmen, and with sleazy hustlers. I liked all the salesmen I worked with, without exception (doesn't mean I trusted them!)<p>* Selling products on commission is lucrative. If you're good, then most of your pay is commission. If you're not good, then you're on salesman's basic pay, which is barely enough to live on (the employer wants to keep his salesfolk hungry). Sales is a risky trade, but the upside is huge.<p>* Find the decision-maker. Pitch to the engineer, not the oily rag.<p>* Don't be a hustler. The job consists of helping people solve problems.<p>* Find out what problems the organisation is facing. Consultancy firms do this all the time. People will tell you their problems, even if they don't have budget to spend. Listen to them.<p>* Sell the benefits, not the features. This is closely-related to helping the customer. To sell the benefits, you neeed to know what problems the customer needs solving.<p>* Assuming it's the tech field, befriend a tame sales-support engineer. You can install him in the customer premises to help them, while you go off networking. He will help you write proposals. He might organise a pilot project.<p>* Find a useful friend/advocate in the customer's organisation, and look after him. He will introduce you to people with problems.<p>I can't negotiate my way out of a wet paper bag. Negotiating is an important skill. It's not really the same as sales - a big company might bring in a specialist negotiator once you've closed. But in a lot of sales, the salesman has to do their own negotiating.