Engineers can be great at selling, given one major caveat. They must learn to communicate with people who are less sophisticated then they are without being condescending.
I was (shockingly) successful at selling for 3 simple reasons.
1 - I know what I'm talking about.
2 - I tell the truth.
3 - I don't care what other people think of me.
If you can share ideas well, and have prior three traits, you'll stand out. The biggest issue I had was confusion about what selling is. Selling is not 3 martini lunches at strip clubs, or schmoozing with execs. Selling is about sharing a story about how you can (or even more important, cannot) help a person/company solve a problem.
Note, this is a rather different type of selling than so called cold-calling (I can't imagine a more perfect personal hell, than doing that).
My suggestions to my engineer business partner is to talk about actually using our products not coding them.
1. Please don't use the YOU word to the customer. e.g. You need, should, could use this to help you do this. Instead my suggestion: I build this to help me solve this would it help you.
2. Please don't explain the tech functions. I don't want to build it, all I want is to push a button and have it work.
3. Tell me how long you've been using it or been needing it, not what it takes to build it and write the code.
I was (shockingly) successful at selling for 3 simple reasons.
1 - I know what I'm talking about. 2 - I tell the truth. 3 - I don't care what other people think of me.
If you can share ideas well, and have prior three traits, you'll stand out. The biggest issue I had was confusion about what selling is. Selling is not 3 martini lunches at strip clubs, or schmoozing with execs. Selling is about sharing a story about how you can (or even more important, cannot) help a person/company solve a problem.
Note, this is a rather different type of selling than so called cold-calling (I can't imagine a more perfect personal hell, than doing that).