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Anyone from a sales roll care to speak to this?
by genghisjahn 9mo ago
Anyone from a sales roll care to speak to this?
- carefulfungi 9mo agoSales gets fired (or not paid) for missing their estimates (quotas, forecasts) and often have little empathy for engineering being unable to estimate accurately.
- genghisjahn 9mo agoAre you in sales or have you ever worked in sales?
- carefulfungi 9mo agoI've been a CTO (with a lot of pre-sales engineering responsibilities) and a VPE responsible for engineering - sales relationships; I've participated in hundreds of prospecting and customer calls and many years of sales planning/strategy/deal review meetings. I can tell you from first hand experience that sales (and marketing, to a large extent) are both strictly measured and held accountable to forecasts. Forecasting a buyer's behavior, or a lead gen pipeline, or deal timing is not easier than forecasting the construction of a new feature.
- mcfly_c-137 9mo agoReally interesting topic. (I’m actually somewhere in between sales and dev - doing Req. Engineering, Concepts and planning). Personally I consider it more important to constantly narrow down any uncertainties over time, than having an initial estimate that holds. The closer it gets to any deadline, the less uncertainty I want (need) to have because the less options remain to react to changes. And frankly, this usually not only applies to estimates but also to things that these estimates rely upon. The longer the timeline, the more room for circumstances and requirements to change.