COMMENTS
Selling to engineers is (I believe) one of the most challenging occupations one can undertake. As you point out there is a general lack of interest in what the sales person says..
• Is the product so difficult to use you need to explain it first?
• Are you a engineer Mr Salesperson? Can you answer anything more than the most rudimentary questions about your own product?
• If no, what use are you to me?
• Why can’t I just get the product to play with, I am an engineer, I can understand anything
And on and on..
To get around this there are a few things you need to do..
1. Hire engineers and teach them to sell
2. Hire engineers and have each sales person travel with a technical counterpart who can talk “engineer”
3. Find ways to bring your community of engineer customers together with your engineer prospects and let them talk about your product with people they understand and respect. If your product is any good you will win customers.
I myself am a product of option 1, an engineer (programmer) who was taught the basics of selling.
Personally I prefer option 3, its cheaper, more scalable and creates buzz around your product
I think there is lot of merit to this subject. Hence, we have tried our engineers make cold calls even to the people they understand (IT) so they experience what our sales team experiences and hopefully it will create mutual respect.
You as a sales person can tell engineers 10 times regarding product feedback or feature. But having a customer or prospect explain why certain features or product feedback is the most important is still the best way to get engineers take action on it :)
Its an ancient problem of engineering & sales. Fortunately the emerging discipline of Product Management as practiced by the folks at Pragmatic Marketing helps make some sense of it. I'll be brief.
Most engineering types believe that all Value derives from good engineering practice. They are incorrect. Inherent value and Intrinsic value comes from good Engineering. $$$ or Commercial Value comes from the market, and even then, only if someone buys it. And for any/all complex product/service transaction, someone had to Sell it.
Sales is the process of converting Intellectual Property (IP) into Commercial Value $$$. So for the professor of these engineers, put that on the Chalkboard and see if you create some insight or controversy. This is but one corollary to what is known as FOD or Field of Dreams Marketing. Build it and they will come - well not likely. Check out the Tech Wreck of the 90's to see the charred remains of many a brilliant technology, idea, or concept that died on the battleground. Cheers, Marty