While chatting with my friend who leads a Sales team for an Open source startup, during the discussion, we spoke about developers, their usual disinterest, and hostility towards the Sales profession.
Developers are naturally averse to Sales roles for many reasons, starting with the thought that selling is easy and not so exciting part of work, lack of innovativeness, sales targets, etc.
For a long time, I used to think the same. Until one day, I realized how vital Sales function is for a company, just like engineering. Selling is hard; it is an art that includes science 😅
A developer might think I could build a simple solution to the most complex problem. So why can’t I sell it? Well, for starters, selling is not just demonstrating technical prowess. It includes many other traits like telling a story to customers, talking about why your solution never fails their business, how strong your customer support is, and the future roadmap.
There are many good
videos on this topic. If you want to be an indie hacker (a developer building & selling his small idea), you can join the
Indiehacker community, which offers great tips & resources on the topic.
Nevertheless, I also agree with developers disinterest in this profession. So many sales tactics irk them, like doing sales pitches at the wrong time, value-less campaigning, etc.
Lastly, if you want to deep dive into the subject of sales, here are some podcasts:
