Day 22: If you build it, will they come
Friday
各位书友，今天我们一起阅读《Zero to One》第十一章IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME的126-134页。
Tom Sawyer managed to persuade his neighborhood friends to whitewash the fence for him—a masterful move. But convincing them to actually pay him for the privilege of doing his chores was the move of a grand master, and his friends were none the wiser. Not much has changed since Twain wrote in 1876.
《汤姆.索亚历险记》中的主角汤姆.索亚说服邻居小伙伴替他粉刷围栏——是大师级的举动。而让朋友们争相花钱帮他粉刷围栏是超级大师级的举动，他的朋友们都没他聪明。自从马克.吐温1876年写完这本书后，这种说服人们心甘情愿地花钱的销售手法也没有多大的变化。
IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME?
顾客会不会主动上门？
英语共读编辑团队在后台等您来！在后台等您来！等您来！
01 NERDS VS. SALESMEN
技术精英对阵销售人员
In engineering disciplines, nerds are used to transparency. A solution either works or it fails. They add value by becoming expert at a technical skill like computer programming.
在工程学界，技术精英习惯透明直白的方式。解决方案不是奏效就是失效。他们通过精通如计算机编程这样的专业技能来增值。
People overestimate the relative difficulty of science and engineering, because the challenges of those fields are obvious. What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.
人们高估了科技与工程工作的难度，实在是因为这些领域的挑战显而易见。而销售人员在背后要付出很多才能使销售工作看起来容易进行，而这些往往被技术精英忽视。
In Silicon Valley, nerds are skeptical of advertising, marketing, and sales because they seem superficial and irrational. But advertising matters because it works. It works on nerds, and it works on you.
在硅谷，技术精英质疑广告、营销和销售行业，因为这些似乎是肤浅荒谬的。但广告之所以重要是因为它确实有效，对技术精英管用，对你也管用。
The U.S. advertising industry collects annual revenues of $150 billion and employs more than 600,000 people. At $450 billion annually, the U.S. sales industry is even bigger. What could that many salespeople possibly be doing?
美国广告业的年收入为1500亿美元，从业人数超过60万。而销售业的数字更为庞大，年收入为4500亿美元。如此多的销售人员在做什么呢？
02 SALES IS HIDDEN
销售是隐形的
All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word “salesman” can be a slur .
销售人员都是演员：他们的第一要务是说服，而不是真诚。这就是为什么“销售人员”这个词带有贬义。
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
和演戏一样，不露声色的销售最为有效。这解释了为什么从事推广工作的人——不管是销售、营销还是广告——其头衔与工作内容毫不相关。这些称谓的改换大有道理：没有人愿意被提醒自己正在被推销。
The engineer’s grail is a product great enough that “it sells itself.” But anyone who would actually say this about a real product must be lying: either he’s delusional (lying to himself) or he’s selling something (and thereby contradicting himself).
工程师的梦想是生产足够优良、“可以自销”的产品。但是这样描述实际产品的人是在撒谎：他不是异想天开（自欺欺人），就是正在设法推销某种东西（而这会造成自相矛盾）。
Economists attribute this to “path dependence”: specific historical circumstances independent of objective quality can determine which products enjoy widespread adoption.
经济学家将此归因于“路径依赖”：不管质量如何，特定历史环境决定了哪种产品广受欢迎。
03 HOW TO SELL A PRODUCT
如何销售产品
Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. No matter how strong your product—even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody who tries it likes it immediately—you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.
即使产品没有差异，高超的销售和推销自身也可以形成垄断，反之则不行。不管产品如何优良——即使它们可以轻松融入人们已有的习惯中，使使用过的人一见倾心，也必须要有完善的推广计划作为后盾。
Two metrics set the limits for effective distribution. The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) must exceed the amount you spend on average to acquire a new customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). In general, the higher the price of your product, the more you have to spend to make a sale—and the more it makes sense to spend it.
有效推广的界限可以从两个指标判定。在与客户保持联系期间，从每个客户那里赚取肚饿平均总净利（客户生命值价值）必须超过赢得新客户的平均成本（客户获取成本）。总之，产品售价越高，销售成本越高——销售成本也越有意义。
Distribution methods can be plotted on a continuum:
04 Complex Sales
复杂销售
If your average sale is seven figures or more, every detail of every deal requires close personal attention. It might take months to develop the right relationships. You might make a sale only once every year or two. Then you’ll usually have to follow up during installation and service the product long after the deal is done. It’s hard to do, but this kind of “complex sales” is the only way to sell some of the most valuable products.
如果你的平均销售额在七位数或七位数以上，那么每笔交易的每个细节均需要密切关注。你可能需要数月才能与客户建立恰当的关系，用一两年才能达成一笔交易。随后你要在安装阶段跟进，并在交易达成后对产品提供长期的售后服务。这很难做到，但是这种“复杂销售”是销售高价产品的不二之法。
Good enterprise sales strategy starts small, as it must: a new customer might agree to become your biggest customer, but they’ll rarely be comfortable signing a deal completely out of scale with what you’ve sold before. Once you have a pool of reference customers who are successfully using your product, then you can begin the long and methodical work of hustling toward ever bigger deals.
好的企业销售策略是从小做起，这是必然的：新客户可能愿意成为你的最大客户，但是他们很少愿意与你签订远远超出你以往订单金额的大订单。一旦你积累了一群使用你产品的参考客户群，你就可以开始进行长期有序的工作，争取更大的订单。
05 Personal Sales
人员销售
Personal Sales are not particularly complex: average deal sizes might range between $10,000 and $100,000, and usually the CEO won’t have to do all the selling himself. The challenge here isn’t about how to make any particular sale, but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience. Sometimes the product itself is a kind of distribution.
人员销售不是典型的复杂销售：平均交易额为1万到10万美元，而且首席执行官不必亲力亲为地包揽所有的销售。这种销售的挑战不在于特定生意的做法，而在于如何建立起流程，让精悍的销售团队尽可能地广大客户推销产品。当然，某些时候产品本身也是一种销售。
拓展
Distribution may not matter in fictional worlds, but it matters in ours.
销售在虚构世界里不足为道，而在现实世界中却极为重要。
The geek classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy even explains the founding of our planet as a reaction against salesmen. When an imminent catastrophe requires the evacuation of humanity’s original home, the population escapes on three giant ships. The thinkers, leaders, and achievers take the A Ship; the salespeople and consultants get the B Ship; and the workers and artisans take the C Ship. The B Ship leaves first, and all its passengers rejoice vainly. But the salespeople don’t realize they are caught in a ruse: the A Ship and C Ship people had always thought that the B Ship people were useless, so they conspired to get rid of them. And it was the B Ship that landed on Earth.
极客经典作品《银河系漫游指南》甚至将地球的创立归因于要对抗销售人员。因为地球即将被毁灭，人们被迫乘坐3艘巨舰撤离家园。思想家、领导人、成功人士坐上了A船，销售员和咨询师坐上了B船，工人和工匠坐上了C船。B船最先驶离，其乘客欢呼雀跃，却丝毫没有意识到自己是空欢喜一场，他们已经陷入圈套：A、C两船的人已经认为B船里的人没了用处，他们密谋弃之而去。最后，B船降落在地球。
EVEN THOUGH SALES is everywhere, most people underrate its importance. We underestimate the importance of distribution—a catchall term for everything it takes to sell a product—because we share the same bias the A Ship and C Ship people had: salespeople and other “middlemen” supposedly get in the way, and distribution should flow magically from the creation of a good product.
尽管销售无处不在，多数人还是低估了其重要性。我们低估了推广（一个泛指各种产品销售的术语）的重要性，因为我们和A船、C船的人存在着同样的偏见：销售人员和其他“中间人”很碍事，优良产品应该在生产出来后直接被神奇地分销出去。
本月共读《Zero to One》英文版
点击公众号菜单栏“共读社群”立即加入有书英语共读
☞ 领读达人：刘亚南，英语共读负责人，85后
☞ 主播：熊叔（公众号：熊孩子聚集地），别人说我英语讲得像母语，是个美国人，我笑~谁说不出国门就学不会地道美语?，别人说我拥有TESOL国际教师资格证~，我笑~自己只是个教书的逗比小光头罢了。
☞ 设计：刘莹
☞ 编校：陈珺洁
—共读书籍简介—
《Zero to One》涉及哲学、历史、经济等多元领域，解读世界运行的脉络，分享商业与未来发展的落实。该书将帮助我们思考从0到1的秘密，在意想不到之处发现价值与机会。
值得关注的是，这本《Zero to One》绝非学术讨论或者思想大师们的论战，自问世起，它的影响就迅速超越了投资圈，在美国亚马逊图书畅销总榜上跻身前列。