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Junior sales will say yes to whatever the client says they want; Junior engineer will try to implement whatever the client says they want, say no if it's imposs
by analyst74 13y ago
Junior sales will say yes to whatever the client says they want; Junior engineer will try to implement whatever the client says they want, say no if it's impossible.
Senior sales will try to figure out the real reason of a client's request, and sell them a solution that solves their real problem; Senior engineer will try to figure out the real reason of a client's request, and propose a solution that solves their real problem.
A sales person and an engineer may start from opposite directions, but really good ones think the same.
- mildtrepidation 13y agoThat really depends on your definition of "good" in this context. I've worked in more than one place where a "good" salesperson is one that brings in the most revenue, damn the torpedoes, feature creep, impossible requirements, etc. Sales and engineering have fundamentally different objectives: Sales needs to generate revenue, engineering needs to create a project that satisfies a specification (ideally). There is very obviously overlap and hopefully interplay there, but I don't agree that people who are good at those largely disparate things necessarily think in any particular way, and certainly not the same way.
- analyst74 13y agoWhen the type of sales person you mentioned gets promoted and valued, it's a failure of management, and will eventually lead to failure of the business (it can take a long time for the damages to surface, however). In most, if not all industries, reputation of a company matters a lot. That's how you get repeat and referral business, the lifeblood of a mature business.