Close the deal you have, and then work on any new or additional things.
Practically every significant real-world interaction involves judgment calls, heuristics, and personal feelings. They feed in to you taking your best guess based on your limited information.
So adding more time to the process doesn't always make it better. You may learn, for example, that the person seems untrustworthy. "Selling past the close" implies that the person doesn't understand the situation, and is pursuing more contact for some reason other than your own best interest. The disconnect suggests that you may not understand what's going on, and it may be in your best interest to break off a deal that may not be what you think it is.
Humans do practically everything on the basis of very incomplete information. They use timing and word choice, among many other things, to try to close that gap.
This is a very important lesson. This isn't a case of humans failing to be logical. It's a case of incomplete information, and if you treat it as if it were a complete-information game, you're going to lose. That's illogical.
If it were a job that we could send computers to, we would. We can't, because we can't define the job well enough for the computers to do it. And this is a lesson for all programmers as well: most of our job is not talking to the computers, but talking to the humans to figure out what they actually want. If they could have said it in complete and logical terms, they'd have written the programs themselves.
But it is in itself an irrational thought, focusing on some ideal platonic "what should be" which is eminently not observable anywhere in the real world. NONE of us are hyper-rational creatures of pure logic. Myself too, holding that thought of "shouldn't we converge on strictly logical optimal resolution", were in fact influenced by emotion, timing, personalities, circumstance, and other carp going on in my life. As was everybody else.
Now, though I'm not in sales, I'm in people management role, and I've learned quickly that timing and choice matters. It matters in sales, but it also matters in architecture, requirements gathering, solution design, project planning, everything. No matter how technical or sales your role, you eventually HAVE to deal with people, they need to agree/approve/confirm, and people ARE people. If you have a goal in mind, it is only rational for you to take into account the personalities involved and realities of the process, and be aware of timing and emotions and words.
Note - This is what I say now; I'm still struggling to implement it fully myself - the decades of sciencey-techy are still strong in me :D
If you're buying an appliance, and you already agreed, and then the salesperson gives you additional info, you might change your mind ("oh, I thought the failure rate was 0.1%, you said it's 1%") even if in reality this may be a perfectly good enough appliance for you and a good sale for the seller. Optimal would probably be getting the sale done - even if that depends on untrue assumptions in your head not being challenged. Not getting the sale done means your back at square one, depending on what else you want to be doing with your time, that's not good.
When interacting with another party you have a mental model you build to try to figure out what they're thinking, but it's very incomplete. Adding information can change your mind, and even not necessarily in a "true" way - imagine you're on a date, it's going well, both parties want to hook up... and then they say something that makes you think maybe their political views are offensive to you. You might be making a wrong assumption based on what they said. Or they might just disagree with you that much. But you're probably not going to have as much fun tonight anymore! You may have a more "true" outcome but is that what you wanted?
We all choose paths forward with uncertainty both about what is desirable and about how each path might get us there. The perceived trustworthiness of the people pitching each path factors into that decision, precisely because of the uncertainty involved.
Calling people "rational" or "irrational" doesn't make sense if there isn't an end goal to measure us against.
The goal is rarely (almost never?) to find an optimal solution (if that's even possible).
Also why would you assume outcomes would converge? That is not a given in most situations.
You’ve never gotten tired of a conversation with someone that didn’t know when to stop? If so then you are exceptional in you're curiosity. I am a very curious person, but I have plenty of topics that are like nails on a chalk board to me.
Plus, every conversation burns energy, and at some point, people will get tired or bored or both, so continuing indefinitely does not rationally lead to better outcomes. Continuing past that point will lead to worse and worse conclusions.
We're not evaluating an arbitrary collection of facts, we're evaluating a flow (ie time varient) of information from a source of unknown trusthworthyness and as such we are looking for more information than just taking everything stated at face value.
During work event we all took a personality test and the tech were scored "yellow" and we tech "green" in other words we were different. Pretty much people in technical jobs have an aptitude for technical and sales for selling.
So reading what you wrote I can see the salesman just doing what is his nature. It's the same for a technician we don't turn it off it's a personality trait than a job or a skill we have.
I disagree. Stop over-selling, maybe, but at the end of a sale, there's a buyers remorse window. And you need to make sure you're communicating with the "buyer" and strengthening their resolve so they don't get cold feet. This applies with selling, hiring (esp after the candidate signs), etc.
A good way to do this is to make sure to remind them of why they bought in the first place.
In most B2B sales that I have been involved in, you can summarize it down to a certain amount of budget, and a set of needs. If you can fill the needs within the budget, it's an easy sale and there is no buyers remorse. This is an oversimplification, but I think in many cases buyers remorse is rooted in the buyers realization that making a particular purchasing decision is going to reduce their overall cash reserves, and thus eliminate other potential decisions. The way most corporate budgets works is more of a "use it or lose it" scenario, where the buyers have more incentive to make actual purchases.
In regards to your last sentence, yes, nothing wrong with reinforcing the decisions that led to the purchase decision. But that is much different than introducing new factors (eg: we should buy this other company too) or altering your buyers perception (this other company or product is even better than what you agreed to purchase).
Edit: found the link for those interested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826437
Not sure what impact he wants these tweet threads to have, but if all you know from him are those tweet threads, it doesn't paint a very positive light.
I'd like to replace TL;DR with TT;DR: Tweet Thread, Didn't Read.
But that was the Yahoo era. He then repeat the same mistake with Steve? And Apple has a history of not paying much for M&A. It was really well known even in 2008. And $300M for P.A Semi was considered a very big deal back then.
They're notable stories and helpful to others who might make the same mistakes.
I'm more concerned that you are bothered by his honesty about past mistakes.
Now a better approach would be to ignore Steve and negotiate with the deal team (and let them argue with Steve).
But the outcome could have been the exact same.
Steve had said "yes" and said Eddy Cue would take it from there, and was preparing to leave the meeting. Then Ali decided it would be good to start negotiating price right then and there.
Steve might have really been offended by Ali bluffing the sale price he could command. Or he could have been offended that this guy was such an obvious amateur.
From the thread the difference was when he followed up his "I think we're worth $150M" with a corrected "I know we're worth $150M".
Jobs probably balked at the "I know" part because he knew Apple was one of less than 5 companies that had tons of extra cash in a financial crisis (2008) and had the strategic alignment to make the acquisition.
Plus Jobs undoubtedly already had internal estimates for cloning the company.
I don't think Jobs was being a dick, I think Jobs was just defining a strong negotiating point by telling this young entrepreneur that he sets the market price for acquisitions, not the startup. Sometimes aggression is a good negotiating tactic.
They apparently continued to negotiate after that, so it wasn't like it killed the deal.
Thinking you're worth 3x what your investors and your target acquirer thinks you're worth is what kills the deal.
Negotiation can happen later.
Perhaps his tolerance, and aptitude for risk-taking, which seems crazy to us (talking carelessly right before deal has been formalized) is also what lead him to success in the first place.
Yes, you can argue that he could have just kept his mouth shut and still honestly taken the Yahoo deal, but he said what he thought was right and gave Yahoo some good judgement about pg's team.
I recently interviewed with a number of firms, and the ones that give off the best impression are the ones who ask to integrity at some point in the process. Hopefully this won't turn into the next "what's your greatest weakness" of interview questions. But firms doing the same thing in the same industry can often have a very different feel to them, and this is one of those things that might change your impression.
In fact the latter can lead to exactly the opposite of integrity.
Citation needed :-)
Don’t give unsolicited advice.
Not only was this advice to buy a different company not asked for, it was presented in a vague way: “They’re better than us”.
If I was the CEO of Yahoo on the receiving end of that, I’d be thinking a few things:
1) You don’t know my business well enough to be giving me unsolicited advice.
2) You’re passionate about subjective opinions: “They’re team is better than us.”
3) You appear to be lacking confidence by buying into this subjective thought that another team could be “better than” yours.
4) You don’t lead with the important information, about why you think they’re better: Are they more efficient? More experienced? More creative? More careful?
5) Your passion and attention is placed on the future rather than the present and the more important task that I’m paying you for which is integrating your business into our ecosystem.
The list probably goes on, but the phrase “They’re team is better than ours” raises a lot of red flags IMO.
Looks like it ended well in the end as they sold for 2x to Microsoft just 6mo later. A great example of “failing up”, which happens to a lot of successful entrepreneurs.
The instinctual "Why are you shit talking yourself? What did you just let slip that I don't know?!?" Is just as valid a red flag.
I'm not understanding your instinct here. My first thought would be "this guy I trust enough to spend 100m is super confident about another team too, even better to keep him around for further insights"
I feel personally attacked !!
There was some reply there that was basically "I lost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars because of a dumb decision too but I have no regrets". Seriously? That's immediate retirement money for me, my immediate family, and then enough left over to pursue pet projects, volunteer work, and non-profit(s). This guy in the posted Tweet made an idiotic decision that killed an opportunity for himself and his employees, and he seems okay with that and even fond of the decision. Kind of weird to me.
> Yahoo offered $125 million
> As a financially-insecure immigrant, I knew this deal would change my life.
I enjoyed how he specifically qualified that this was a lot of money for a "financially-insecure immigrant." Um... no. This is a lot of money for 99.999% of human beings on the planet.
A good read though.
What is it with this guy and his desire for a hero narrative? First he took credit for the Like button, now this... His cousin Dara is totally insufferable in his lackluster position as CEO of Uber, but at least he’s honest about their very privileged upbringing.
Is this a prelude to a political career or something?
LOL, that's practically every SV CEO. They all want us to believe that a) they were the underdog, and b) they were the hero in their own story.
What I can never tell is which ones are doing it deliberately as part of a PR strategy and which ones simply lack the perspective to realize they're doing it at all.
(not that I'll ever be in that situation in the foreseeable future anyway)
(pg's answer in this thread: "Whoah, I had no idea about any of this till now...")
It’s not just literal sales call. If your meeting is to get the signed contract, run out the door once it’s in your hand. Don’t push for the P.O. in that moment.
If you have a call with a prospect to set up a meeting, you’ve got that scheduled hang up and prepare for the in person meeting.
Etc etc.
> run out the door once it’s in your hand
Resisting the urge to add something at the door is crucial, more than one good meeting was ruined there (at least for me).
It would be interesting for me to know what he meant by “better”. More efficient? More prestigious? More collaborative? More visionary?
> The lessons proved helpful 6 months later when Microsoft offered $265M for LinkExchange.
Edit: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449858706750033921.html
Also looking at you reddit, "this thread can be read in the app". Thank the kings and queens for 3rd party viewers (using Slide).
(This is how I stopped using YouTube)
Look at what the company did (renege an offer) and you will understand what they were also doing behind the scenes.
A little bit of a hot take, but I don’t think $125 mil goes out the window because someone said something over drinks (especially something as benign as an exaggerated flattering compliment).
I often give similar compliments when others undermine someone I know well, but respect me. I always say ‘look, that person is a better person than me’, all I’m trying to convey is if ‘if you respect me, know that I respect them, so take that into consideration’. I don’t literally mean they are a better person, that’s not for me, or for you to judge, so let me flip this notion on its head for all of us.
It may not be that the other company really is that good, but if the CEO is so comfortable underselling their own team, that suggests the company is not as attractive as initially thought. Especially in a space where hype is the norm.
I'll try to keep this in mind whenever I realize that I'm overexcited (which I tend to be).
“Whoah, I had no idea about any of this till now...”
This is ridiculous. I can hardly believe such requirements are legally allowed to exist.
I mean, taking him at his letter.
It is all a lie though.
Immediately calls to mind two phrases of advice I've found very useful over the years related to sales and deal making.
"Quit drilling - you struck oil", as in don't try to keep selling once your counterparty agrees - you can only cause harm at that point (and even if there are more great things to discover, no harm if they get happier after the deal closes.)
And, one of the the most frequently applicable ones in life (& once seen l, it's amazing to see how much unhappiness comes from not heeding it):
"The deal's not done until the check clears."
Were the engineers objectively "better" than yours, or was there still something your company offered that the other did not? If the other company was essentially better, than you're lucky Yahoo didn't realize and you got that deal in the first place.
> My intentions were good, if naive. I helped both Yahoo and Viaweb. Business isn’t just about winning; it’s about helping others.
Tells me that he's a decent chap.
I mentioned in another post, that today's culture doesn't reward "decent chaps."
In my own case, I don't care. I do my best to be a "decent chap," even though I'll never get rich that way.
I'm clean-shaven, and it's important to be able to look myself in the eye every morning, or I'd cut myself to ribbons.
-- Daniel Ricciardo
