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Web Developers Can’t Sell. Sorry.
- KevBurnsJr 17y agoI would never tell a salesperson he/she can't code just because he/she is a salesperson. That would be a foolish over-generalization.
- tptacek 17y agoI think she's right. But she's not saying anything 100 other posts haven't tried to pound into our heads.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- CapitalistCartr 17y agoSo many marketers keep writing this article because so many techies keep trying to do marketing, as if it weren't a real skill.
- tptacek 17y agoIt's also the case that if we'd just check our egos at the gate for a little while, we have more to learn from the salesy/marketey people than from yet another web framework developer; after all, most of the devs I know are proud of figuring the dev stuff out for themselves.
- joe_the_user 17y agoShe's not "right", She's just coasting on a generalization. If I say "physicists can't surf", I can probably find twenty examples to prove it but it will still be a ridiculous generalization.
- michellegreer1 17y agoThe best physicists probably can't surf. I'd be shocked if a professional surfer could tell me much about physics. Just because you can, it doesn't mean you necessarily should. I'm a lot more effective as a marketer when I am selling someone else's code versus something I could scrap together.
- nir 17y agoGarrett Lisi is a pretty good surfer/physicist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi
- christofd 17y agonice find! amazing guy.
- diN0bot 17y agothis is exactly why stereotypes and generalizations are a disservice to everyone. there are times when statistics are applicable, eg making business decisions based on market research. maybe it is even relevant when deciding what to write about. however, it is complete baloney when it comes to making a judgment about individuals. For that matter, it makes for a stupid, black-and-white, controversial blog post title...which i suppose is the point.
- ror 17y agogood
- rjurney 17y agoI think most surfers have a more intuitive sense of physics than normal people. We are after all the only ones that actually ride waves - and waves, be they sound or light, are pretty important in physics :) This doesn't excuse programmers from ignoring your advice. We're a stubborn lot, and we make a living diving into situations where we have no idea what the hell we're doing, figuring it out, and carrying the day that way. We try to apply that to marketing, which is why most of our companies fail - it doesn't work that way in other fields. The ability to learn on the fly is usually more costly than it is with building software.
- atkuebler 17y agoI would agree, I am a sales person learning to code, but my coding skills will never be great because that is not my focus. My focus is sales and marketing. In the same way a developer can learn a little bit of sales and do an OK job at it, but will never be great, because that is not their focus. Now if a developer were to stop most of his coding and immersing himself in sales, he could pick it up with time, in the same way I could pick up coding. But that would be a waste of time for the both of us because we have already invested in the skills we have. Not that we shouldn't learn a little bit of the other side, that is very important. But focus on what your good at.
- michellegreer1 17y agoI can't code. Well, I know a little HTML, but I'm a salesperson/marketer. I'd take no offense to this statement. I also know very few good salespeople who can code. This post was written because I had clients who had built software, sold it off, and then were all big in their britches and thought they were marketing gods. The ads they wrote were totally awful and they blamed everyone but themselves for their high bounce rates. Maybe there are coders who are marketing gods. Just know that people have a finite amount of energy, so if they are studying marketing, they probably aren't bothering to write solid apps. Jes' sayin'.
- patio11 17y agoJust know that people have a finite amount of energy, so if they are studying marketing, they probably aren't bothering to write solid apps You are continuing to make statements which are based more in prejudice than reality, and the edgy I'm-joking-but-I-really-mean-it shtick doesn't suffice to make the statements true. There is no rule that says after you know a programming language, learning how to market or write copy will cause a cache eviction from your brain. Look at 37Signals, who are marketing gods by any conceivable definition of the term. One of their marketing coups was taking a sort of obscure computer language mostly used by academics in Japan and popularizing it worldwide on the strength of a not-so-revolutionary-but-still-pretty-nice web framework and the very revolutionary idea of marketing an OSS product aimed at developers. Peldi from Balsamiq is very worthy of emulation as well, and he is also widely viewed as one of the most competent Flex programmers around. P.S. If a marketing god is looking at bounce rates then that should be considered autodemicide. Bounce rates are a terrible metric which are more useful to people outside your organization -- such as Google's search relevance team -- than people inside it. There is almost no conceivable circumstance under which they're more informative than looking at conversion rates, and the work required to extract what precious little signal they have among the noise would be better spent on almost any other task, for example, A/B testing. And look how I said all of that while still knowing what a hashmap is.
- tptacek 17y agoYes, but now you have to go re-learn radix tries. Stupid brain cache! You know your comment isn't totally fair, right? Jason Fried's not exactly Don Knuth. Also, while it's true that every dev should be able to be a B-player marketer or salesperson, the A-players in all our fields are definitely at another level. Watch them price products, or negotiate large deals.
- Confusion 17y agoBut you would tell a salesperson he probably can't code and you when you're upset with your sales team thinking they can code, you might write an article entitled "Salespeople can't code. Sorry". We all make generalizations when we are trying to make a point, because it is the best way to state a point clearly. A title like "Many webdevelopers seem to have a less-than-average capacity to sell" states something so mind numbingly obvious that you'd ignore the article. When someone says "webdevelopers can't sell", you should interpret that as "if you are a webdeveloper, you may be interested in this article, because you may be overlooking some important things that help you sell your app". Interestingly, your type of response illustrates the article: you criticize details, while ignoring the big picture. That's the same as mentioning your features, but not the problem you solve.
- diN0bot 17y agoamen. plus, these kinds of statements, and stereotypes in general, tend to be self-fulfilling: if you think all X's can't do Y, then anyone who can do Y doesn't look like an X to you.
- randomtask 17y agoI think you're getting too hung up on the title. The point of the article is not that all web developers can't code, but rather that often they cannot and do not value the skills of people who can. If anything the title does a pretty good job of getting people to read it. Even if it does that by annoying a significant part of its target audience ;)
- michaelcampbell 17y agoShe doesn't sound the least bit sorry.
- tiffani 17y agoYup...sounds like this from @rishi. http://gettingmoreawesome.blogspot.com/2009/10/examples-around-web-of-focusing-on.html http://gettingmoreawesome.blogspot.com/2009/10/examples-arou... (There's examples here, at least.)
- fjabre 17y ago'Web developers' should be replaced with 'Engineers' and yes, for the most part, engineers aren't known for their marketing skills. And as much as this is drilled into our heads over and over again: keep it coming. It's all too easy to forget the fundamentals.. Point #1: "Lead with benefits, not with features." was great.
- nzmsv 17y agoActually, this "point 1" is my pet peeve. I hate it when shopping for computer parts. In fact, I think most web stores overdo the "explanation of benefits". Every single web store has pages upon pages of meaningless marketing speak on every product page, and the tech specs are either: a) at the very bottom, in small font, b) under a separate tab, or c) broken, inaccessible, and unreadable. When I have to go to a third-party review site to find out what the resolution of a monitor is or whether the netbook I'm looking at has an extra RAM socket, I can't exactly call this a good shopping experience.
- atkuebler 17y agoI wouldn't say your exactly their target customer. This may be a pet peeve but the vast majority of people buying their product see the specs as meaningless, they just want to hear the benefits in a language they can understand. Rule number one of marketing is to write so that a 5th grader can understand it.
- warfangle 17y agoIt might be interesting if you could determine based on, e.g., the search term that lead them to your site whether or not they were a techie or not. If they were, serve them up the benefits with the tech specs prominent. If they weren't, serve 'em up the marketing speak.
- SapphireSun 17y agoI can see why though. The focus of the selling company is to move material. If they provide tech specs, then they are competing on features, which won't provide the same profit cushion as warm feelings most of the time.
- dmillar 17y agoYes, this is called specialization of labor. Plato wrote about it. Good advice, but something any hacker with a lick of business acumen already knows.
- omouse 17y agoUgh marketing.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoI've found that the opposite is true. It is much easier for a tech person to learn selling than for a salesperson to learn technology -- and it's a whole lot easier to sell if you start by knowing what you're selling, and then build a case around that. This piece is surprisingly fluffy. Of the five bullet points, the first is a cliché, and the second are so obvious that they haven't even reached that status.
- Gilson_Silveira 17y agoWell, I know a handless woman that can write using her feets. Knowing that, I don't understand why a developer can't learn how to sell and vice-versa.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- mr_eel 17y agoThis is actually some good solid advice, for _anyone_ selling software. But I look poorly on the use of link-bait titles. It's deceptive and ultimately annoying, particularly when it employs a generalisation. After all, there are a myriad of different people involved in the development of a site. Many stake-holders and many opportunities for mistakes and misunderstandings. The basic point is this; there are many reasons why a site doesn't do as good a job of selling as it could. Blaming it on web-devs alone and their perceived inability to sell is horse-pucky. Frankly, most web-devs aren't employed to sell, they're employed to make things. Why should they cop it?
- michellegreer1 17y agoThis post was actually directed in a passive aggressive way to a couple of developers who employed me, only to completely ignore the countless usability and best practices studies I cited. It was months of pure pain. The simple truth is, I COMPLETELY VALUE web developers because the work they do keeps me employed. I don't code, but I also expect that they value the experience I bring to the table as a marketer as well. This post is essentially a way of saying, "I don't tell you how to code, so please trust me to do my job."
- felipe 17y agoI agree with mr_eel. Your message is good but it would have been much more effective if you have used a less condescending tone. Good web developers DO VALUE the importance of marketing and sales. I think we have a lot to learn from you, but with this kind of post you are helping to alienate developers. Please don't take me wrong, that's just my humble opinion on the matter.
- michellegreer1 17y agoWell, I'm sorry. That was most certainly not what I wanted to do. I actually like developers a lot, and was just a bit frustrated because the developers I was working with at the time were incredibly arrogant. It's a total bummer when you spend your time reading up on marketing best practices and some jerk tells you that Forrester's or Nielsen studies on marketing don't mean anything. I didn't intend for this post to get to the top of Hacker News. I should be more careful next time.
- quellhorst 17y agoI am a coder and I can sell and know plenty of others who can. Learning to sell is much easier than learning to code.
- atkuebler 17y agoI am a salesman/marketer and know how to code. It isn't learning to do the other that is hard, learning to code wasn't hard. It is becoming highly skilled in one or the other that is what takes time and is difficult.
- SapphireSun 17y agoI would really love to see more marketing articles on HN. There's a sweet spot for us hackers who aren't in a situation where we are ready to hire anyone and would like to know more about marketing to cement their plans. By us I mean me of course.
- michellegreer1 17y agoGood for SEO Knowledge: @mattcutts, @dannysullivan, SEObook.com, searchengineland.com Good for Social Media: @mashable, @readwriteweb, @jowyang, @adamostrow, @tamar, http://www.chrisbrogan.com http://www.chrisbrogan.com Overall marketing: @adage Software marketing: @asmartbear PR: @haro, @joshdilworth, @skydiver, @briansolis I hope this is a good starting point for you. :D
- SapphireSun 17y agoWow! Thank you so much!
- xcombinator 17y agoI disagree, I know people who is a "natural" with other people, without studying and have technical skills too. People like them, and buy from them. Working in the industry I met a guy who was a very good mechanic, but really good with people. He started selling products while he worked as a mechanic. He become rich, and he didn't wanted to sell!!! People trusted him because they knew he was not going to trick them.
- cschwarm 17y agoI wish someone would write "Web Designers Can't Sell", for that's probably a more useful reminder for many people who offer goods via a web page.
- mstevens 17y agoOne thing that annoys me about sales people sometimes is that they always talk about "know your audience", but they'll almost never go "this is a technical audience, we need to talk in terms that technical people will respond to".
- NikkiA 17y agoShe fails to heed point 2 herself - know your audience. While management is more likely to write a purchase order for salespeak driven marketing than developerspeak driven marketing, if you're aiming at developers that might not be so true. I'm less likely to buy, or ask for a purchase order for, an online source management system, for example, if it lists 'why we're so great', rather than features. As a developer, I would be looking for the feature set not some bullet-point buzzword list.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- c00p3r 17y agohttp://heroku.com/ http://heroku.com/
- speby 17y agoYep. Classic stereotype and headline generation of an over-generalization to grab attention. Though she's wrong, she's right some of the time. That said, it probably means she herself isn't too bad at marketing since, after all, it certainly grabbed quite the attention span here (and exactly the sort of crowd that would benefit from the knowledge she has shared).