Designers with SALES experience... In here...
 

Designers: Post if you have ever had any sales experience.

If you are a designer, and have spent part of your career in a SALES environment. B2C or B2B, and your current occupation is being a solo-freelance designer, post your experience in here. (This includes package design, cold calls, car sales... any SALES experience.)

Let's filter out some of the garbage here and see who the cream of the crop is.

If you are an outsource company, fuck off.

Only post, if YOU do the designs that you promote here, and YOU have sales experience.

Be sure to include what companies you worked for, what type of sales you did and how long you did it for.

(I have a feeling this is going to be a very short thread.):2 cents:

It wont even be worth to say "see sig" in this topic :)

I would say MGK - The only sane Canadian I have had the pleasure of doing business with

other than selling my own services I've not done any sales... Though imo that should count as sales experience :D

I guess I have sales experience in porn.. I submit galleries still and sell the product to get great ctr's ... I also feel I have to sell all my clients on design work and a convertng end product.. I did sell icecream as a little girl too haha Not sure that counts..

Does selling drugs count hahaha not that I ever have ...

good luck bud..

Voodoo your gofuckyourself.com signature is the prefect logo for this forum. I'd love to see the forum redesigned based off that logo.

Cream of the crop? Why do you think it is important that a designer have sales experience? I like a designer with Programming and actual Fine Arts experience..

I do think being able to communicate with your client is key but is that really sales?

Or are you talking about sales and marketing experience to work into what you are designing to sell porn?

:1orglaugh

Now that's just messed up.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Leonardo da Vinci did beautiful work, however his work wasn't intended to sell anything, in fact, I am pretty sure if you traveled back in time and took the art of the Last Supper, and added a slogan "Gruel & Bread: It's what's for dinner. Go to your market and buy some greul and bread now!", it wouldn't sell.

I'm not talking about "art", I'm speaking of people who are "Designers" for adult and/or mainstream products & sites. A website is (in most cases) an advertisment for a product or service or to display content. Most mainstream companies have entire marketing departments who come up with concepts and marketing campaigns that they convey to their design team who execute these concepts.

However, in adult, the majority of companies don't have such departments and leave it up to the designers to come up with the concepts, or the owners come up with them. If neither of these individuals have any real sales and marketing experience, it would seem to be a fruitless venture to even have something developed, as it will be a crap shoot whether it actually sells or not.

Sales experience is vital to developing brands, products and the marketability of said products or services.

:)

Now I get where you are coming from. You should have made that post here.

Edit: Eek you made a post the same second as me.

jinx!!!!!

I have an array of different sales experiences.

Ever since I could remember Ive been selling something. When I was young my mother and I traveled and we worked fairs and carnivals. Yes I was a carnie... I sold everything... balloons in the day, light ropes at night. Food stands... I even helped people with knew with their booths. I would work the game booths and entice people to come play. Knowing what would get who to come to you. tough guys, chicks, kids, moms... whatever. No circus freaks or nothing ;) just lots of traveling and selling. I only did that during the summer while I wasnt in school.

A couple summers of that and the mother decided to buy a store to run. So we bought this old convenience store with a gas station. with it came a bookkeeping office that we owned, but did not operate. While we owned it for some 9 years i guess we built a cafe/restaurant adjacent to it. Ground up. I was young yes... But I dealt with a lot of the business that no 10 year old should be expected to deal with. I did everything from maintain the register for hours to dealing with merchants on the phone. If there was every anything dire or important about it, I knew and helped decide. At 10 i may not have decided too much but at 13 and up I most certainly did.

So we ended up selling that whole place and moving on. we just lived for awhile. Then we invested in another restaurant. It was a take over so we didnt start from scratch or nothing. But that alone has a lot to deal with. I helped order goods and chose what dispensor or whatever to go with. I helped with ads that were put out. I promoted us at city functions such as chowder(coastal town) cooks and what not. Getting people in those seats!!!

That actually didnt last too long, Nealry a year... Our partner that we teamed up with turned out to be crooked as fuck. So we split.

I finished school. Lived for a year doing nothing... Well, now that I think, I did help out some ravers and advertise them online and across town. Got people in the door. but nothing really worthy of this.

So thats restaurant and store experience. Mostly justw ork, but I did deal with merchant accounts and ordering product. Some advertisement.

Now for Adult...

I first got into the adult business with my own phone sex company. I was in charge of everything online and a small portion of the bookkeeping. We aquired and have maintained our own merchant account ever since. When involved in high risk adult, that alone, dealing with visa and mastercard is an ordeal in its own. I went through the ups and downs with paypal. I am also looking into aquiring my right to use paypal for adult transactions again. Thats where I started in adult.

When I first broke into the adult world I met 2houseplague and he taught me a lot. He introduced me to Mikie Mike, He got me into submitting. I did that for awhile, learning the ins and outs of a ground floor affiliate. While working with Mikie Mike he introduced me slowly to Niko Bimini, but that comes in later. To Date, one of my best friends!

So I started peddling galleries... mid 2005 area? While doing this I used what design basics I learned in high scool, Photoshop and some premiere. After doing my own thing I started offering my services to others as far as galleries or any other design prohect I was given.

Soon after I started making money with my ground level work I was approached by Mark from E4A. He needed someone to take care of his affiliate management. So I did that for awhile. I helped affiliates get content, place ads, help make their ads more clickthrough worthy or intriguing... I learned a lot and gained quite a few affiliates for them. We brainstormed over icq and the phone a lot to come up with new things to help both the surfer and more so the affiliate. Lots of laughs and good ideas came from our ear sweating phone calls, all dealing with making sales in the end. A few motnhs later I parted ways and continued on down the road with my own things. Mark and I are still great friends and we still trade knowledge back n forth as far as SEO and design n shit...

So for a while I just kept doing my own thing. I think I might even had an offline job for awhile then. But still doing shit online every day.

Then I became closer friends with Niko. It came about because I was promoting his sites a lot then. I made a good sum of money then from him, mayors money and raven riley was booming! I started helping Niko affiliate side. Same stuff I did for E4A. I even built some sites from ground up.

I did that up until Bimini Bucks merged with NSCash. From there The NSCash crew handled pretty much everything fromt here. Once in awhile I come into play to deal with hosting or something. But I havent had to for nearly a year now.

I teamed up with guys at HawtMoney for nearly a year to help in their growing empire. I guess I wouldnt say I was sales involved as the other places, but I would say I did my fair share of brainstorming layouts and enough to do with sales for it to count.

I help out numerous comapanies currently with their every day needs. Peter Romero from POVCash for one. Im sure he would attest to me helping him with every day stuff. Anything from customer service to watermarking photos. Again, long phone calls discussing marketing tactics.

I still receive raven riley checks, ccbill checks, tcg and a couple others check sources that I havent actively promoted for a few months now. Mostly due to dedicating my time to design and other progressing skills, just less traffic pushing. Id say thats a good sales quotation. They are trickling down, but shit be growing elsewhere :)

So thats pretty current. All through there I helped out whoever has approached me. No I wasnt on phones with customers. Nor was I selling directly, well besides my affiliate checks. But networking, knowing how to sell and setting up others to sell well is all sales. One way or another I was making money on my sales or being paid to help others with their sales.

Magnifying clickthrough ratios and methodically placing psychologically color schemed layouts according to specific niches is a good know how as well.

Also, again, as I have many times in the past... I am not just a designer. Thats just what I offer to the majority of the people here. Im an inside guy. I can help in most every area. If I can't, I know who can.

Still Learning and Churning Every Day...


Jesus, can someone get me some mother fucking cliff notes?

Agreed. Still, mainstream business do it for a reason, not just because they have the money to do it. If you want good-looking websites you dont want your designers to start worrying about anything else than communicating the idea and, basically, making things pretty. Ive been there, and once you start worrying about stuff like ROI, CPA, uniques, etc. your 'artistic' side goes to shit and you find yourself not giving a fuck about aesthetics anymore, all you care about is the damn numbers. :Oh crap

I say let the designers take care of making things pretty, and leave the sales and marketing to the more business-oriented ppl. :2 cents:

im not gonna post no long shit in public, but i did telemarketing for years from 15-20. I was working on commission while still in high school and my friends were flipping burgers. cold calls, yeah. what i learned doing that work has assisted in every area of making money online, and is also probably why i have been self employed for going on a decade now. never take no for an answer!

Hmm I would say all my adult expenses are paid in full by the sales I generate... so.. I think I have some experience in making sales.

I was a licensed Realtor in IL back in the early 90's before discovering the web. I was also licensed in FL a few years later but never did anything with that license. I have been to seminars by Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and others. I am proficient in NLP and have mastered the techniques in Unlimited Selling Power (NOT by Anthony Robbins :2 cents: ). I have successfully freelanced as "Zayne E Creations" and was ridiculously busy 2001 - 2004 at which time I decided to use my selling skills to land an in-house job at AEBN (16 hour days, 7 days a week for 3+ straight years was way too much! I never outsourced anything -- all work was done by me and me alone).

From there I used my selling skills to land the Creative Director position at TrustSoft...a position I enjoyed for 18 months. Once that contract expired I went back to Florida and used my sales skills to land a remote in-house gig with PimpRoll/AdultElite/porn.com. Early last year I went back to AEBN here in Charlotte and now I am freelancing again :)

Some of my work is here. Whatcha need Voodoo?

been in the internet industry since early 1996 selling internet connections ie leased line and web design to corporate clients, worked for network solutions as technical sales support, compaq as account manager, and now... i'm a full time web designer who manages my own company, so to speak!

Leonardo Divinci was a sales man.

He made Invented a couple weapons of war and sold them to some duke guy or king.