What I've learned about selling (as a developer)

[rgrieselhuber]

For me, learning how to sell was simply a matter of survival.

Twelve months ago is about when I started my company, and I now alternate between coding and selling. I consider "selling" anything related to marketing (I know there is a distinction), lead generation, sales calls, product demos, quotes, contract negotiation, etc.

The most important lessons that I've picked up so far are:

- Get good at networking. Events are a big part of this.

- Networking is hard if you're not doing anything interesting. If you are, then it's quite easy.

- If you're doing something interesting and start meeting a lot of people, then leads seem to come your way.

- Leads are your lifeblood, so getting your network to provide a majority of these for you vs. you going out an hunting them yourself is critical.

- Most developers I know (including me) are a bit rough around the edges even if we're not dicks. We just tend to be more straightforward about almost everything. You have to learn how to smooth that over, but most of the smoothing process just comes from screwing up by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and then not doing it again.

- A corollary to being a bit rough around the edges means there is probably a lot of subtext that you are missing. It took me several months to pick this up, but executives and sales people who are used to interacting with high-octane clients seem to read a lot into slight gestures, certain phrasings, etc. that I previously would have thought nothing of. As it turns out, quite a bit hinges on these subtleties so it behooves you to pay attention.

- Acquiring the skill of situational awareness (also related to above). When you walk into a new client's office, there is a lot that you don't know. Your job is to learn as quickly as possible about their business, pick up their vocabulary, listen for the subtexts, discern cliques in the customer's team, and more. Beforehand, you can learn a lot about your prospect by reading their financial statements (if they're public), website, executive bios, social profiles, LinkedIn Profiles, etc.

My own situation is perhaps a little unique as I went from being a developer / development manager in San Diego to an entrepreneur in Japan in less than 30 days, so I've had to do the above in Japanese, which has its own complexities, of course. But in some ways, I really appreciate the Japanese market because prospects are generally very courteous and interested in ideas / technologies from the West.

I'm still quite a beginner in sales and probably not that good but I love it and, well, I'm still here. :-)

[physcab]

One aspect of "selling" that is often under-reported is the importance of making good presentations. I am constantly astounded at how bad some people are at conveying their ideas. Even a brilliant mind can seem stupid if they do not master the way in which they convey that information.

Here are a couple tips:

- Stick with pictures. If you put up a paragraph on a slide, then I have to choose between listening to you or reading what you wrote. Sometimes I get confused and end up thinking about my next lunch break.

- Tell a story. Don't jump into specifics and don't generalize. Make sure your content is a happy medium between the two and it flows in a way that makes sense to the average person.

- PRACTICE!!!! Oh god how I can't stress this enough. There must be a linear relationship between how many "Um's" and "oh's" and "ah's" in a presentation and how long you spend practicing.

- Improvise to social queues. This is difficult to master, but when you give a presentation you have to be observant about what is happening in the room. Do people look bored? Try to relate the content to them. Do people look tired? Keep them informed how much longer you will be presenting. Are people squinting? Emphasize the concept and not the detail.

Bottom line: If you can master the presentation, your chances of making a deal go up dramatically.

Who are good presenters? Watch a few talks on TED.com, look at Duarte Design (used by Al Gore), and read up on Edward Tufte.

[rgrieselhuber → physcab]

Thanks for adding this. Presentations are another thing that I'm spending a lot of time on to get right and it _really_ takes a lot of time and practice.

I just bought the book "slide:ology" of Duarte Design (above) and I highly recommended it.

[petercooper]

Networking is hard if you're not doing anything interesting. If you are, then it's quite easy.

This is the biggest take away point from the post above. If what you're doing is really interesting (and not just interesting to you) and you have passion about it, people will chew off your arm to hear more.

[jonmc12]

Thanks for sharing - this was a great writeup on getting start in selling software.

One word of caution from my own experience: networking is not a sustainable way to build a business, but it is a great way to bootstrap your sales process.

3 reasons:

1) If you want to grow larger, it is necessary for the sales process to be bigger than your own set of relationships and abilities. At some point you have to make a break from the comfort of being yourself in a networking environment, and implement a more robust marketing plan that involves PR, advertising, other sales people, etc.

2) Networking itself has a limited (though sometimes highly targeted) audience. This is perfect when you start, but limiting at the point you need to grow.

3) Even if the goal is to remain a small consulting firm, automation of at least some aspects of lead generation and sales is necessary for efficiency. For instance, putting a process in place to hit up your existing customers for leads.

[rgrieselhuber → jonmc12]

Thanks for the advice. Makes a lot of sense. I started out with consulting but am transitioning to a SaaS company, so this sounds like good advice. From an operations perspective, I am making use of as many tools / process automation as possible.

I mentioned it in another thread, but the book "The New Solution Selling" does a great job of outlining the benefits of a strong sales process.

[twoz]

日本語を知っていますか？

Not to be nosy, but could you go into some detail about how you ended up in Japan of all places? :)

I find intrigue with any "developer turned entrepreneur moving to Japan" story.

がんばっていょ!

:)

[rgrieselhuber → twoz]

It's kind of a long story but basically we moved here for family reasons. I'm building essentially an enterprise SaaS company, but building my first customer base here in Japan.

[patio11 → twoz]

This may sound like a mini-rant, if so my apologies in advance:

I work at a software company in central Japan.

On a day to day basis Japan is a lot like England, with rather less white people and much more expensive cheese. The language is a language, the people are people, the business challenges are business challenges, and it is all rather less exotic than people make it out to be. But I get the "of all places" vibe a lot whereas I don't think I'd get it if I worked for a big ol' publicly traded firm in London.

Its not exactly rocket science getting a job here. We have big freaking companies which do lots of business with international customers. This is sort of a necessary prerequisite for being an economy of Japan's size.

Many of these companies have significant need for IT. The percentage of local engineers who can speak English is truly abysmal -- not quite as bad as the number of American engineers who can speak Japanese, but its still far below the requirements of industry. So when you need an English-speaking engineering services, how do you get it? The same way Japan gets every other resource they can't make locally: buy it from abroad.

Step one to getting a job as a professional here: achieve proficiency in the Japanese language, where proficiency means "I can read a design document written in Japanese and extract the business requirements from it, then defend my implementation choices in oral Japanese to my colleagues" and not "I watched anime and learned some phrases すごいよね".

Sidenote from my personal version of hell: Imagine the worst tech interview you have ever participated in. Now imagine that the interviewee has less working vocabulary than a second grader. Now imagine he is damned proud of it.

Its difficult but a lot less impossible than routinely made out to be. I recommend studying at university, if you have the opportunity.

Step 2: Network. This primarily consists of figuring out a way to get your business card into the hands of someone who will be asked the question "Do you know of any engineers who speak English?" The ROI on a set of $20 bilingual business cards is truly stupendous. There are hundreds of Japanese companies with business in America, hundreds of American companies with business in Japan, and tens of thousands of people routinely flying between the two countries on business. These might be good folks to chat up. You have a built-in edge because people who are bilingual in English and Japanese are rare and people who are bilingual AND can perform as developers are as rare as hen's teeth.

Technical skill is also a requirement, obviously, for engineers -- exactly what technical skill depends on the particular industry and company's requirements are. I'm hired to write CRUD apps for universities, not to work for some amorphous Japan, Inc. The most popular developer job in my town, on the other hand, is writing embedded software for cars. Their technical requirements are not my technical requirements.

[raju]

Great post. I would like to add to skmurphy and physcab comments here.

skmurphy bring up the point about networking, and that networking is about aiding other to succeed, which in turn will help you succeed. Keith Ferrazzi's book "Never Eat Alone" IMO is a great read and he brings up some really good topics.

physcab talks about presentations as a good way to sell, and I admit, I agree. I just finished reading (and am still digesting) Garr Reynolds "Presentation Zen" (He also lives in Japan). This is a phenomenal book on some good ideas and tips on how to give a great presentation. Its a quick read, but his lessons are invaluable.

I wish you well. Is there anyway I can follow your lessons learned, perhaps from a blog? I followed up your profile, and that takes me to your company's (???) website, but maybe a link, in your profile?

[rgrieselhuber → raju]

I'm in the process of launching a new blog to specifically document this, which will be linked from my profile and firewatchingmedia.com site. Thanks for asking!

[skmurphy]

Good questions sell. Listening sells. Networking is helping other people: carry more than your own card and connect folks who will benefit from talking to each other.

[dawie]

I think it helps if you build a product that sells itself, through word of mouth, like 37 signals. I also think that is why PG says: "Make something people want". If people want it, it won't be a hard sell.

[prateekdayal → dawie]

If 37 signals had not written SVN blog and released rails, do you think as many people would have come? I would put that also into the "marketing" category

[dasil003 → prateekdayal]

37s was a very well known usability consulting group for years before hiring DHH and building Basecamp. Not only is SvN good marketing, but 37s had the kind of powerhouse targeted niche brand that is nearly impossible to obtain.

[symptic → dasil003]

I disagree with the "nearly impossible to obtain" concept. That's suggesting they're something special or inhuman that your average person can't obtain, while it's quite the contrary. 37S is a great example f what busting your ass can accomplish; which I've found is the key to most cases of success. A good idea helps, but until you really take it to heart and live with the devotion it takes to succeed, you won't get very far with any product, no matter how revolutionary.

[dasil003 → symptic]

Statistically speaking, hiring a good marketing person is going to be much more effective than a long term strategy of becoming a thought leader in your target market (how many target markets have thought leaders anyway?) and then exploiting your massive popularity for an instant word-of-mouth network effect when you launch your first product. Even 37s themselves did not engineer this success. Instead they focused on doing what they do well. They did not get where they are by picking some outlier to emulate.

[petercooper → dasil003]

If anyone cares for ancient history, one of the biggest attention getters for 37signals was their manifesto which made up the entirety of 37signals.com before they revealed what they actually did. I still remember seeing it for the first time and it went huge (yet I can't remember HTF things went viral online back then... :)).

[speby → dawie]

Selling itself is a misnomer. Nothing "sells itself." Selling just means a combination of things you need to do communicate well to other people about what your service/product does, why it does it better than anything else, and how you're helping people solve a problem or gain some kind of entertainment or value. So selling could be in the form of a very well defined sales funnel (a la 37signals), writing/publishing content as a loss leader (a la 37signals), releasing open source content (a la 37signals), and ultimately building up a base of users/customers because you were able to get good at communicating with them. Or, even as Jason Fried has said (and I do agree) selling is almost like teaching others something. If you can teach well, you've got a shot at selling (and communicating well).

But yes, being able to "press the flesh" and meet face-to-face, do deals with large customers, sell custom contracts or whatever is also selling. It might be that kind of selling that the geeks often struggle with.