The salesman and the developer
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The salesman and the developer
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Re: The salesman and the developer
#2The main problem is when you're going bear hunting and they bring back a stampede of wolves. Wholly impossible to kill with the gun you brought, but if you tweak it just a little, you can kill them as well. Then the next time it's a an antler, that you can't kill like that due to regulation, but with just a few tweaks again.
Great sales people are a game changer. People that can sell your vision and convince the audience that the problem you're solving is the biggest issue their business faces. They're completely indispensable. Bad sales guys, the type I've usually come across, bring too little domain and product knowledge to the table, and end up selling the completely wrong thing if they sell at all. Like Ben Horowitz said, great sales people protect your business [1], they don't wreak unnecessary havoc on it.
[1] http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/29/the-right-kind-of-ambition-2...
Re: The salesman and the developer
#3Great post. I thought it was going to be a "builders rule, sales jocks drool" post - until I kept reading till the end. At the end of the day, it's important that founding teams recognize the obstacles of every person's job, and keep the common goal of team success above else. It's not about how many bears he lures into the cabin using himself as live bait, not about how heroically the builder slays each monstrous bear. When everyone is celebrating getting to the fur market (?) in one piece!
Re: The salesman and the developer
#4Awesome post. So true.
Re: The salesman and the developer
#5Developer's need to stop thinking "If I build it they will come".
Even the "dream" companies like Dropbox mentioned here had someone on that team who knew how to sell even if they were working as a developer.
Selling doesn't always mean knocking on doors sometimes it means figuring out how to make the first couple of deals with investors or working with a smart person who can help you develop a viral referral model etc.
Thought experiment: Today think about all the physical items in your life and how they came to be in your life. Beside the people most of those items were sold to you by someone or you bought them because you saw marketing about them. Very few of them did you buy because you woke up one day and said "I have to fly to LAX and buy a Widget".. You had to know that Widget was there and realize you wanted it before you could take the first action.
Re: The salesman and the developer
#6Reminds me of the joke that goes:
What is the difference between a salesperson and an engineer? An engineer knows when they are lying.
Re: The salesman and the developer
#7Another silly generalization of developers and business people (here called sales men). Maybe the drawn stereotype matches many folks out there but this view is aged and not valid anymore.
Both the pure biz guy will die soon in the woods without any technical mindset and the dev will die soon when just waiting and hacking at the campfire. And together they won't be stronger. The picture the OP draws is from the past or taken from large corporations.
Successful entrepreneurs are both sales and technical. Non-technical people are considered illiterate nowadays and won't achieve anything as people who can not hunt. Best proof is Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. And that's what is so great about Hacker News—here you find the highest density of tech founders both business-driven and technical.
So, if anybody still wants to talk in stereotypes then distinguish between hunters and non-hunters and not between tech and non-tech.
Re: The salesman and the developer
#8developer and salesman: I miss the marketing guy from this story. (Or at least either the developer or the salesman should also wear the hat of a marketing guy.)
I think the rule of thumb is this: if you sell to the 'masses' you need great marketing, if you sell to only a few clients you need great sales.
I think of Steve Jobs more as a marketing guy than a salesman.
Re: The salesman and the developer
#9This story sounds familiar. Are the names of the salesman and developer Bear Claws and Jeremiah Johnson? :)
Re: The salesman and the developer
#10There's something about the story that, in its telling, feels a little leaky.
The developer is getting the cabin in order, the salesperson is out bear-hunting, and we assume the bear is the potential client.
While the developer is still building, the salesperson is trying to find bears. He then lures the bears into a cabin which, from its description, was not built for the purpose of capturing bears.
So why was the salesperson hunting for bears when the more appropriate target might have been deer? Or other hunters needing a place to stay? Oh... he got bored before it was even finished, so doesn't know who the ideal client is.
By the same token, why was the developer unpacking everything nice and tidy when they were going bear hunting? Shouldn't he be at least partly aware of how the salesperson works, or what he's going to do? Did he know to prepare the cabin for a bear, or for themselves (or other hunters), or just make the assumption?
There's a clear problem with communication, that has led two people, aiming to do the same thing, down two very different paths. The trip was bound to fail right from the start.