I’m a software engineer who’s built several side projects that solve real problems, but I consistently struggle when it comes to actually selling them or even just getting people to care.
The technical part is pretty easy for me – the sales and marketing is where things hit a wall.
I’ve been thinking about this gap a lot, especially since my brother is in software sales and I see how differently we approach the same problems. I’m considering building a platform specifically to help technical people learn sales fundamentals, but I wanted to ask first:
- Did any of you struggle with this?
- What helped you improve? Books, courses, mentors, trial and error?
- Would you have paid for structured guidance on this? If so, what form would you want this guidance?
Technical founders: How did you learn to sell your product?
byu/Extra-Shopping-4012 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Extra-Shopping-4012
2 Comments
To answer your question,
I worked in IT industry for more than 5 years and being someone technical people usually don’t have the kind of communication skills sales required. So yeah I did struggle with this a lot and only having the technical knowledge was also hinderance to my growth (bc of the AI revolution)
2. So I learned to speak to people and also learned the art of selling. I picked a domain (SAAS selling) and learned sales around this which actually complimented my tech skills (anyway I was bored with the only technical stuff)
But sales gives me much more than just selling, it actually taught me to grow in a well rounded manner.
3. Yes I’ve invested in learning because I wanted something structured so picked the niche like SaaS selling and then researched and invested in couple of sources that helped me.
yeah this is tough. i went from coding to sales and it was like learning a completely different language. what helped me most was just doing tons of mock calls – i used platforms like gong’s practice mode and hyperbound to rehearse pitches until they felt natural. the key thing i learned is that engineers overthink the “perfect pitch” when really you just need to have conversations and figure out what problems people have. books didn’t help much tbh, it was all about reps and getting comfortable with rejection