What's It Like For a Developer To Go Into Sales?

An anonymous reader asks: "I've worked for a single, very large technology company since graduating from college in '89. My degree is in Computer Science, and I've written everything from embedded machine code for big iron to applications with Smalltalk. I'm still in development, but since '99 my programming tasks have been replaced by project management, some customer-facing work (technical-ish presentations, demonstrations, training, and the like), helping our marketing people position my team's work, and other things that programmers generally don't like to do. Are you a former developer who went into sales? If so, what were your experiences like from a professional and personal perspective? What advice would you give to a developer considering a new career in sales?"

I find that I enjoy the broad, technical perspective that comes from working in the field, and I'm thinking about moving out of development and into technical sales. Moreover, I've interviewed several techies in my company who are now in sales and all tell them they love it. Several have reported that a techie can make more money in sales. However, I do have several reservations: I am an introvert and a full day of face-time can really sap my energy, many sales people I've worked with are 'sharks' (which I simply cannot be), and I don't like the idea of putting part of my salary at-risk.

Interesting choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Developer vs Salesman, thats like a dog becoming a cat... Sure the dog can think its a cat, it can walk along the back of the sofa and try to balance on the arm, can make a pathetic attempt at purring and rub up against your leg when it wants food. But in the end he is still a dog, still cocks his leg to pee, still barks when the mail man comes and still chews bones. Do you want to be hated by your fellow developers for joining the ranks of people who sell what you have yet to even think of writing?

I have a friend who went from being a developer into product design, sitting somewhere in between whats sold and whats developed. He loved that move.

Give it a try, you may find you love the life... And its not a permanent change, if you decide you hate it then come back to the ranks of developers.

And you want to go into sales?

[hal2814]

"...project management, some customer-facing work (technical-ish presentations, demonstrations, training, and the like), helping our marketing people position my team's work, and other things that programmers generally don't like to do."

If you don't like the last two things on your list, you'd be making a big mistake getting into sales. The big question is "Are you a salesman?" That's all that's required to be in sales. I know it sounds simple but it's a very important question. Can you sell the product? Can you go out and find the customers willing to buy the product? It's a hard job and while they may be lazy at other aspects of their job, salesmen work their tails off to sell. I used to train salesmen on the more technical aspects of what my former company sold. As a general rule, salesmen can pick up what they need to know about a product to sell it faster than someone familiar with the product can pick up the sales skills needed to sell it. I'm surprised your company even offers you the opportunity to get into sales.

Re:Dare say no

[putaro]

Amen. Not only that but many customers ask for things they don't really want, they're just kind of curious. If the product does do it then they're happy but if it doesn't no big deal. If the feature *is* a deal breaker, telling them yes when it's really no just means that the deal will get broken later. Even worse, if they though that the feature was a deal breaker, you tell them "no" but they like the product or company, they may rethink a bit and decide that it's not a deal break.

Lying catches up with the company eventually. Unfortunately it often does not catch up with the salesperson doing the lying.

Re:Interesting choice

[Gr8Apes]

To be honest, at a previous company, I think both the customers and the developers would have loved to have had salesmen that actually understood the product they were selling. Given the products that were being sold, that meant you had to at least be conversant in software development, as buying the software was only step one of many that included additional development to actually experience the ROI the software was capable of delivering. Instead we had empty headed fast talking imbeciles without half a clue selling some of the most sophisticated software on the planet to customers that wound up having long discussions with the developers post sale to figure out what they needed to do to realize the promised savings, and what the additional costs were going to be.

An introvert should NOT go into posting.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's just one small problem with your post. Introvert/extrovert isn't a binary state. It's a gradient.* Also sales just like any profession is a learned skill (several actually). And last "sales" isn't a blob. There are different degrees of sales. The first step he should take is "Know Thyself". Grab a copy of "Zen and the art of making a living: latest edition", and work through the exercises. This will help regardless of what one wants to do with their life.

*It can also change over time.

Technical Sales vs. Sales

[Gybrwe666]

While I wasn't a developer, I made the move full time in 2001 to technical sales from a pure engineering/IT management roles.

The are several issues that arise from this, and they need to be broken out and analyzed separately.

1) If you are talking technical sales, rather than pure sales, those are generally two entirely different beasts. If you look at Cisco, the sales folks are true sales guys, while the technical sales engineers generally spend most of their time working with the technical groups in the company, demoing new products, working in the test labs, and doing presentations as required to higher management. So being a pre-sales engineer can be very technical and hands on, depends on the company.

2) Are you going to have to actually do "Sales"? When I made the switch, I realized that there are certain aspects of sales that I don't have the ability and/or will to do. For instance, I can't cold-call to save my life. In the pre-sales engineering roles I've had, I've made it very clear to employers that I am not the person who will find new customers. I tell them up front that given a qualified lead, I can convert a well-above average number to customers. My current position is the closest I've ever come to sales, as I am building a new practice within my company and therefore have taken over account management. However, I have several sources for leads, and I don't find new customers. I think the bottom line is to be very clear about what sort of sales role you want and make sure that you aren't signing up for something that you can't/won't be able to do.

3) Any salesperson who lies to the customer is a F@#*$-ing idiot. Period. The truth in the IT business is that your best business is repeat customers, and its a lot easier to get more business from a happy customer that it will ever be to find the 60 new prospects that will eventually convert into a few paying customers. At one job, I supported 5 sales guys, three of whom were ex-cell phone sales guys. One was a former field employee, and one was from a technical engineer/development background. For the three cell-phone guys, I had to force them to stop with the lying/exaggerating that they started out doing. It wasn't necessary. We had a great product, and we were competing in a market where our sole true competitor was a company everyone hates. Hell, I'd tell customers we could do some of what they needed and lay out where we wouldn't be a good fit and they'd still sign just because they were sick of our competition. The bottom line is that if you have a decent product, and you target someone with a need for it, lying will simply get you in trouble. I find that telling a customer the truth is a clear differentiator to everyone else, and more often than not, they come to me anyway. A corollary to this is that with many products, there is *NO* single product that does everything the customer needs/wants. Right now, one of my key products is a network management solution. Truth is, there are hundreds of products in that space, and every single one fails in some way for every customer. It might be too expensive, or lack support for a specific protocol, or require a programmer to maintain it, etc. This list goes on. By telling customers the truth you often win their respect and loyalty because most of them aren't stupid enough to actually believe the lies.

4) Being in sales can be fun. I get to take customers to ball-games, strip-clubs, casinos, expensive dinners, and happy hours. I get to travel a bit. There are definitely perks to having an expense account, and to be honest, its fun.

5) I'm an introvert too. I have a wife and kids, and when I travel, it bothers me to not be home with my kids. But generally speaking my interaction with customers is exactly the same as it was when I was an engineer and a technical manager. I spent all day on the road as an SE, going from company to company, interacting with customers. As a manager, I spent a lot of time on the phone with technical support, a

Re:An introvert should NOT go into sales.

[Jerf]

Only problem on the ride home I would be knackered, an early meeting would leave me useless for the rest of the day.

The best definition of "introvert" and "extrovert" I have seen is than an extrovert is someone who is energized by interacting with people, and an introvert is someone who is drained by interacting with people. This definition especially holds true for large groups of people, but what qualifies as "large" varies from person to person.

(Your post hinted at this, I wanted to highlight it explicitly.)

Deep down, we all believe everybody is "exactly like me", but I'm pretty sure they are both kinds of people in the world.

The nice thing about this definition is that it is fairly value-neutral, and it accounts for reality better than most definitions. An introvert is certainly statistically more likely than an extrovert to be socially inept, but it's not an intrinsic failing, it's simply that the extrovert is likely to have more practice, because they enjoy social interaction more. Nothing stops an introvert from becoming socially capable, and I find definitions that try to work social skills into them fail to model, well, most of the programmers I know, who are mostly introverts, but none of them are totally socially inept, really.

By this definition, yes, an introvert should absolutely not go into sales. Extroverts will likely have a harder time as a programmer than an introvert, because programming has significant bits where it's just you and the computer. However, that's not the whole job and an extrovert can survive on the collaboration parts; I've seen it. But since sales is pretty much 100% dealing with people, introverts should follow some of the most ancient advice, "Know Thyself", and stay away.

Oh, and this is of course a continuum, not a binary distinction.