Archive for October 27th, 2008
Startup Hacker, it’s not the new Technology, it’s the Sales skills that you need to learn next
Few days ago I posted a thought on Twitter –
Actually, the same thought also applies to Marketing and Business Development as well. Let me explain what I mean by that.
For me, as a programmer, I found every new programming language, platform or development tools difficult, until I learn it and then practice it. Once I make my hands dirty on it and learn enough skills to build something real, I get that confidence that I can do this stuff. I may not become master in it, but at least, I'm not scared anymore. I know if I spend more time on it, I can be a master as well.
So once you learn something, then there is some certainty that you can produce some expected result. Of course, you will see some hurdles while you are building it, but eventually you'll get there. Your technology development is rarely dependent on any customer, market situation or financial crisis.
On the contrary side, Sales, Marketing and Business Development are the kinds of skills, which are not certain to produce the same results every-time you apply those skills. I think even though you are a salesman by birth, or you've mastered those skills in your MBA program, it's very hard to predict that you'll close the potential deal the same way you closed the previous deal. But of course, the more you practice those skills, the probability of you closing that deal is more compared to someone less-practiced person closing that deal.
For Sales, your skills are important, but you are also primarily dependent on your customer's buying mindset. And that's a huge variable factor. Same is the case with Marketing and Business Development. They are heavily dependent upon market conditions and financial crisis. And these kind of dependencies make these jobs even more challenging. Of course, technology is a challenging field, but in my opinion, Sales and Marketing fields are more challenging because of their dependencies on other factors.
And those are the skills that we as an programmer, who also wants to become an entrepreneur, should learn and master to improve our chances. Recently, Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror also mentioned –
Not how to type, not how to write, not how to design a programming language, but marketing.
This is painful for developers to hear, because we love code. But all that brilliant code is totally irrelevant until:
1. people understand what you're doing
2. people become interested in what you're doing
3. people get excited about what you're doing
So in a nutshell, for a programmer, it's not enough to master only programming skills. If he also wants to go entrepreneurial route, he also needs to master how to sell himself, his code, and his idea. And these skills can not be learned by sitting in front of the computer or in the cube. We need to go out, talk to more people, try selling our idea, get them excited about what we're doing, and more. It's a work that needs to be done in the battlefield, not in the boardroom.
That's exactly what now I'm going to start doing it. I've spent enough time in the boardroom to code and build my idea. Now it's the time to go out and sell my idea and vision to more people to improve my salesman skills, and also to get more inputs from the real people. And I'm sure it will be very challenging task and I'll learn hell lot of things.
I hope you also believe in this point, and will start selling your ideas, your code to more people. Wish you very all the best!
