Dunning Krueger Series #1 - Or 3 Reasons Engineers Struggle in Sales
Dunning Krueger is often cited as a catch all for "you don't know what you're talking about". It's more complicated than that.
As I’ve covered previously, sales and product are where you should focus 90% of your effort if you’re bootstrapping a project.
If you’re smart, it means your team is lean and mean. In an ideal situation you can do a division of labor between tech and sales. However, the real world is messy and you may need to blur those lines.
There is a chance that you’re either an engineer who needs to know how to sell or someone on your team is. I have personally been in this situation.
This post will cover the pitfalls I’ve seen when engineers try to sell & how you can avoid them.
Reason #1 - Succumbing to Dunning Kruger..But Not In The Way You Think
The Dunning Krueger Effect is often cited when observing someone who has little experience and they overestimate their skill level.
That is certainly a problem in other contexts.
But when it comes to engineers trying to sell, there’s a more subtle oft ignored aspect to Dunning Krueger. You see, Dunning Kruger is multi-faceted:
At Low Skill Level (Left Side): the cognitive error is *internalized* meaning that you have a tendency to overestimate *your own* ability.
At High Skill Levels (Right Side): the cognitive error is *externalized* meaning that you have a tendency to overestimate *other people’s* abilities.
How does it come into play? When you’re head down engineering a product, getting intimately familiar with its every detail you’re going to quickly become a subject matter expert.
With that, comes the danger of poorly communicating the basics of your product. You will have a harder time empathizing with someone who has never seen your product or something like it.
That is one of the biggest reasons engineers struggle to sell and communicate their product to prospects.
The Antidote to #1
Before a sales situation arises, it is critical that you zoom out and take time to reset empathize with someone completely new to your product:
Take 5 minutes to just blank your mind. Meditate if you know how. Pretend you’re not a super smart engineer and instead a normal person approaching your product for the first time.
Make note of the basic fundamentals of how the product works. Focus on the blocking and tackling of your product the basic 1 2 3 of how to use the product & the problem it solves instead of advanced features.
Try to explain your product to your grandma or someone not tech savvy. Take note of the questions they ask and what their sticking points are. Make sure your communication zeros in on those.
Use analogies. One of the easiest ways to get someone to grasp a new concept. Bonus points if you can reduce the entire company to one sentence (i.e. DoorDash = Uber for food, Bitcoin = the Linux for Money etc)
Reason #2 Engineer Struggle In Sales - Difficulty Focusing on Your Product as a Means
Chances are, as an engineer, you got into engineering because you love THINGS and building them.
Your default is to focus on what the product IS.
And what it DOES.
This is the wrong approach. Your product is actually a MEANS to an end for the user & solving his problem.
Example: A Cell Phone
The product IS some silicon inside a plastic/glass case
What it DOES is help you make calls and text
It is a MEANS to help you stay connected with people you care about and love.
Which of these types of communication is most powerful? Obviously the last one.
You want most of your pitch to live inside that head space and occasionally touch on what it *does* simply to assert to the user that it’s possible.
Your product is irrelevant! It is a MEANS to your user’s ends!
The Antidote to #2:
Internalize this mindset:
“I didn’t ask you how a clock works, I asked you what time it is”
Simplify. Simplify. And simplify again.
Cut out the BS and cut to the chase to what the problem is and how you provide a superior or unique solution. Avoid talking about nuts and bolts.
Brevity is your friend.
Reason #3 Product Development Intensifies Imposter Syndrome
When you’re working on a product, you’re under the hood every day.
You know the product’s ins and outs. Its flaws. You probably have a list of bugs in your head that keeps you up at night.
It hogs your bandwidth.
And it messes with your confidence.
Try selling with no confidence. You’re better off pissing into the wind.
The Antidote to #3:
You need to learn to compartmentalize.
There are many techniques for this. Some people invent an alternate sales persona.
Some people have rituals that help them embody a better salesperson.
At a minimum you need to schedule your time so that you have the ability to switch between engineer mode and sales mode.
Conclusion:
The mindset you need for sales and the one you need for engineering are radically different.
There is a reason why there are big gains in division of labor on these fronts.
If you are an engineer that needs to sell take an honest assessment of the three issues above and take action to correct them.
If you’re an engineer and you’ve experienced any of these please share in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
Recommended Reading
Check out the full post here.
TLDR:
#1 - Rework by Jason Fried & DHH- Two Tech Startup GOATs & They’ll Teach You Their Minimalist, Practical Methods
#2 - Atomic Habits by James Clear - Learning the Ins and Outs of Human Behavior Formation Is an Incredibly Lucrative Talent
#3 - High Output Management by Andy Grove - Former Intel CEO Shows You How to Use Engineering Principles to Build a Strong Business
#4 - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink - Former Navy Seal Officer Teaches You How to Build a Team of Doers with Initiative
#5 - Deep Work by Cal Newport - Georgetown Professor Shows You How Connectivity is Massively Overrated, Focus is Underrated and How You’re Currently Fucking Up Your Productivity
#6 - Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou - Game Development Expert Teaches You How You Can Play 4D Chess with Incentives & Accelerate Growth on a Massive Scale
#7 - Don’t Just Roll the Dice- Use sound economics & psychology plus the wondrous flexibility of software to come up with a pricing model that actually works