Sales vs Engineering: The Itchy & Scratchy of Corporations
Ask an engineer, and they will say salespeople are unqualified simpletons who promise the world without having a clue how to deliver.
Ask a salesperson, they will say engineers are emotionally challenged narcissists who cannot understand the slightest nuances of the world around them.
The act of developing complex products is radically different to the act of developing a business for said products. And in that difference lies one of the longest feuds in any organization selling technology. I haven’t had the pleasure of working in any organization where you couldn’t feel the tension in the air between sales and engineering.
The level of coupling between the two plays a big part. When you go to a car dealer to buy a BMW, you do not consider the chance of asking for a feature that is not included in the car’s existing variants. Picture a conversation like this:
— You (sitting in a BMW iX in the showroom): Does this car have moon dust in its paint?
— Car seller: No
— You: (visibly disappointed) Ah, can you ask the engineers back in Germany if they could add it? Please tell me how long it would take and how much it would cost.
Of course you wouldn’t ask. The car is like it is. There’s a wide air gap between you, the car dealer and the BMW R&D team whatever in Bavaria it might be located. Once the brand new car is out of the factory and loaded in a lorry, off it goes. Take it or leave it.
Now when you narrow the gap and sales and engineering sit under the same roof, that’s a different story. And because certain projects natively allow or even demand quite some customization, that is when the mouse and the cat start chasing each other, when salespeople promise what’s not there and engineers get triggered. Or, equivalently, when engineers are reluctant to develop what the market is signaling that is needed. There is no real right or wrong in this; both have valid points on their own:
A reasonable engineering team must adapt to the market forces
A sound sales team must filter signal from the noise; not every random request can reach the far ends of the engineering dungeons
As much as you would like to be like BMW, spitting shiny, finished products out of a conveyor belt, if you are a project-oriented company you need to accommodate a lot in order to make business, so there has to be a corrective force keeping Itchy (sales) & Scratchy (engineering) at bay, applying chancla every now and then as necessary.
The feud only gets worse with desperation. When the business is languishing—and considering the fact salespeople tend to work on commissions and bonuses—this may create a fertile soil for promising the world and beyond.
I once worked for a company that had visible rankings of the sales team posted on a billboard in the kitchen. From top seller down to the worst, with names, photos and all. It was tough to see the guy at the bottom of the ranking wandering around the office. In all fairness, he was securing himself a comfy spot down there by always bringing the wildest/most impractical projects ever. On the contrary, the top seller was an overconfident chad. I have always wondered if their personalities were the cause why they were at extreme positions in the ranking or if being at extreme ends moulded their personalities.
Last but not least, there is this misconception that selling a technical product requires very deep knowledge about it. According to this view, only the product designers—the ones fully knowing how it works—would be theoretically qualified to sell because they would understand better the nuances and deltas needed to make the product work in different contexts and scenarios. This is of course utter crap, mainly because selling requires soft skills—good communication, diplomacy, charisma, a sense of business opportunity—which are not traits you would easily find among technical people. There are too many companies out there led by engineers, making no business at all. Sales and engineering need to coordinate in order to convey the right amount of technical knowledge necessary to keep the sales process reasonably self-sufficient and kicking and negotiate that, should things need a deeper take, the techies will sit around the table. Horses for courses. Engineers need to understand that they are always working for a product and for a market, not for pure, abstract engineering on its own.
The fact is that Itchy and Scratchy need each other badly. They are nothing without the other half. The best product in the world will not sell if there isn’t someone ready to connect with potential customers and install in them the idea that their lives cannot go on without buying the product. Equivalently, the most charismatic sales team ever will still starve to death if there is no technology to back the promises provided.