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Can vouch that sales team is an immense advocate for customer and frequently pain in the kiester for people who are trying to do stuff. Mind you, you absolutel

Can vouch that sales team is an immense advocate for customer and frequently pain in the kiester for people who are trying to do stuff. Mind you, you absolutely Can get into a negative loop - needy customer with unrealistic expectations who over pressures the sales person, who then over pressures the pm, who then over pressures the team and you end up with unfeasible expectations and conittments. But sanity needs to prevail everywhere, it cannot be focused on the "good kind of salesperson" (I will never ever ever be a sales person; and I share most people's frustrations, but I've also seen what the good ones do for the customer and teams so am slowly starting to understand both the value and necessity :-/)

Aromasin 2y ago
Absolutely. I work with salespeople I despise; ones who actively hamper the company's success because of their demands in pursuit of commission. Trying to explain to them that you're working on a problem faced by a 100M/yr account so don't have time to service their 1M/yr customer doesn't fly, so they jump over everyone's head shouting so loudly that a director or executive tells you to reprioritise to get them off their back. 1:N activities get sidelined, the high revenue but quiet customers get ignored and upset, but sales reach their design-win targets. It's incredibly frustrating and I think if they continue that behaviour despite warnings then they're not a team player and should be replaced. Equally though, the old phrase "we all work for sales" always rings as true now as it ever did. The best engineer with the best product will make diddly squat if they can't sell the product. The best salesperson could sell rocks off the roadside if they're good enough - the product is often irrelevant. Personally, I wish more engineers went into sales because the best salespeople have deep product knowledge and are way more empathetic because we've gone through trials and tribulations.

Aromasin 2y ago

Absolutely. I work with salespeople I despise; ones who actively hamper the company's success because of their demands in pursuit of commission. Trying to explain to them that you're working on a problem faced by a 100M/yr account so don't have time to service their 1M/yr customer doesn't fly, so they jump over everyone's head shouting so loudly that a director or executive tells you to reprioritise to get them off their back. 1:N activities get sidelined, the high revenue but quiet customers get ignored and upset, but sales reach their design-win targets. It's incredibly frustrating and I think if they continue that behaviour despite warnings then they're not a team player and should be replaced. Equally though, the old phrase "we all work for sales" always rings as true now as it ever did. The best engineer with the best product will make diddly squat if they can't sell the product. The best salesperson could sell rocks off the roadside if they're good enough - the product is often irrelevant. Personally, I wish more engineers went into sales because the best salespeople have deep product knowledge and are way more empathetic because we've gone through trials and tribulations.