February 17, 2012 at 6:40 am
I want to put a slightly different slant on my answer.
From the point of view of "value to the company" OF THE SALARY, a salesperson who is out in the world visible to customers and competitors must LOOK successful. E must have a nice car, nice clothes, eat at nice restaurants, etc. E must do this because that appearance of success is valuable to the company, and that appearance costs some money. The programmers in the basement are much less recognized (by the public) as representing the company and thus, don't need to project that appearance.
The fact that production and sales are both necessary is a bit irrelevant. The fact is that paying the sales people more brings more revenue to the company than paying the programmers more.
--
JimFive
(E is my suggestion for a 3rd person gender-neutral personal pronoun)
February 17, 2012 at 6:40 am
The stereotypical distinction:
- programmer/developer has the job of coercing the machine into doing something it is perfectly capable of doing, although the programmer may have difficulty in divining the right orders.
- the sales (engineer/rep/etc.) has the job of coercing another person(s) into buying something s/he perfectly capable of doing without, since they're doing just fine now without it. It is widely believed that lying without shame is a necessary component; having been on both sides, yeah.
- the solution is thought to be: "build a better mousetrap, and people will beat a path to your door", but aside from Apple currently (and one may argue that Apple's products are mostly toys) that doesn't happen much.
February 17, 2012 at 6:49 am
This is actually a pretty interesting thought, it's almost a "chicken or the egg" type of question. Both professions can bring long-term benefits or damages to a company when the job is performed well or poorly. I would have to say though if you can sell something, you're more valuable to a company than the person who builds the product. I hate to say it as a database programmer, however it doesn't matter how well you can administer systems or how clean your code is, you have to have customers to be able to make a living performing your craft. My vote is that the salesperson is more important.
February 17, 2012 at 6:49 am
shodgin (2/17/2012)
I would agree that it takes REALLY good sales people to sell a piece of crap product, but not so much if the product is good.Salesperson: My tech guy is going to demonstrate our product.
Customer: Hey, we likey.
Salesperson: Sign here.
Doesn't usually work that way. Techies are often terrible about
1) explaining the concept especially if it's new
2) explaining what it will do for the customer
3) making the customer comfortable with spending money on it.
That's what a good sales person does.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
February 17, 2012 at 6:53 am
RobertYoung (2/17/2012)
- the solution is thought to be: "build a better mousetrap, and people will beat a path to your door", but aside from Apple currently (and one may argue that Apple's products are mostly toys) that doesn't happen much.
I would argue that Apple is an example of a massively successful sales program. The product is good, but there are other good products. Apple has sold their image, their mindset (some might argue 'cult') with Steve Jobs as an American icon, and created a demand where people will wait in line to buy a new product sight unseen.
While we're on the subject, this is a fascinating read from a psychological perspective:
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-a-car-salesman.html
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
February 17, 2012 at 6:59 am
I think both roles are necessary, definitely, but would argue that good support staff (including programmers, but not exclusive to) bring more overall value to the company.
It's the 80/20 rule, if your sales people continually bring new customers, but those customers never repeat business, then you're spinning your wheels. If your support staff and product are of a quality where once the customer buys, they're yours for life, then this adds much more value long-term.
Good sales pitch is required to get them in either way, but if you have a large, devoted customer base because you have a good product, it's much easier to bring in new customers.
Similarly, if you have a good up-front sales pitch, you may get them in initially, but lose them once they actually have to deal with your company for a problem. Case in point, ask Steve about his Toshiba laptop.
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February 17, 2012 at 7:34 am
Our company sells commercial insurance. Our salespeople generally have degrees in accounting or finance and are paid very good commissions. Our DBAs generally monitor and tune software from outside vendors. Development is mostly integrating those packages. No doubt our sales folks should come out on top.
I once worked for a software developer where the Friday all hands meetings included the ritual question, "Who here works in sales?" If you didn't raise your hand, you were either new or about be unemployed. There were moderate commissions, even for techies who help out with presentations and did customizations, but over time it was the sellers who prospered while the good developers moved on.
The real question is, "What motivates best?", and in my experience you don't get the same answers for both groups. Salespeople respond best to money and status, but tech companies are famous for their extravagant, often oddball perks to keeps their stars happy.
In other words, you can't just limit the disussion to salary.
February 17, 2012 at 7:48 am
I've done both.
Commodity salespeople, by which I mean the guy on the floor at Best Buy who asks if he can help you with anything, not someone who sells "commodities", are a dime a gross (a dime for a dozen of them would be a massive overprice). Commodity IT people are higher value.
But, for almost any business, a star salesperson is MUCH more valuable than a star dev, DBA, or other IT role.
The only reason most people think a salesperson can be replaced easily is because most companies haven't the faintest clue about how sales happen, and think that they can throw anyone who can speak reasonably clearly at a sales job, have them memorize a few talking points, and have a successful salesperson. There's at least as much science to being good at sales as there is to being good at IT, but most companies are pretty fuzzy on that. Software companies are often the worst at that.
Here's an example that might bring it home, of the difference at one end of the bell curve:
Bill Gates was an IT geek. He founded a company with a technical culture and no real sales/marketing skill. He's rich, but spent most of his career villified, even hated, by millions of people, while helping to provide the world with a technological revolution comparable to the printing press or even writing itself in magnitude. PR was a millstone around his neck, and indeed still is.
Steve Jobs was a marketing and sales genius who stole every technical idea he ever had, presented them successfully as innovation, and ended up with a company that's got more than twice the market value of Microsoft. (I realize any Apple fans out there will consider my statement about him stealing ideas as blaspheme that requires burning me alive at the stake, but I can defend that statement with facts if I have to. Shouldn't need to, as the data is publically available.) What he was good at was presenting his (copied from others) technology in a form-factor that was easy to sell, and providing sales and marketing campaigns that generated fanatical product loyalty, even when the products were of lower quality and higher price than competing products (check out Mac computers in the late '90s for proof of that).
Gates has been succesfully replaced. His successor will be replaced one day. If the company fades, it will be a marketing and sales and PR failure, not a technical one.
Jobs? Nobody is sure months after his death what that will do to his company in the long run. They're already running into problems in China, Europe, and other areas. Samsung just beat Apple's sales figures on smartphones for the first time last month, and nobody is sure how they'll get back to number 1. If the company fails, it will be because of the loss of Jobs. There's no valid replacement for him. His cult of personality is continuing on momentum alone, and already losing energy less than a year later.
Gates was a piece of Microsoft. Apple was a piece of Gates. One was a tech guy, one was a sales/marketing/PR guy.
Extreme example? Yes. But it illustrates the point.
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February 17, 2012 at 7:50 am
There are high value IT developers, salespeople, support staff, and executives; these are people who would have a high replacement cost if they left the company, and the cost would be even higher if they were to accept a new job with a competitor. Really, what makes a high value employee is a combination of talent (tech skills, people/sales skills, etc.), industry knowledge, product knowledge, and of course work ethic.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 17, 2012 at 7:52 am
This is an age old question. All I can say is "it depends".
1. Before a few years ago most sales people were not dependent upon technology. Today is a whole new story though. I came from a place that provided tablets to sales people to do demo's with and do their sales documentation on. They are expected to sync at least daily to transfer their information back to corporate to provide sales leads and other data to the home office. They are also the first line in understanding their equipment when it fails to work in the middle of a demo. There is nothing more embarrassing to the company than having a failed demo and a customer lost because of it. In this scenario I believe that the really good sales people would warrant a commission.
2. It also depends upon the goods and services sold by the company. Some companies can migrate more to an on-line presence and allow the customers to place their orders and support requests. At this point I would see where the sales staff going to straight salary.
I have also come from a company who did bonuses for all IT based on personal performance and the company meeting specific goals associated with major projects a number of companies only offer this to senior managers within IT.
3. I would agree that most companies are ready to training people for sales jobs within the first 2-3 weeks of employment. They also hire those people based on personality tests and the person's ability to communicate with others.
4. IT people on the other hand are hired with the expectation that they already know the task they are being hired for. There is little training and companies raid other companies for the more experienced staff. I doubt that a sales person could do the technical work of a DBA or developer. On the other hand most IT people do not have the desire to socialize and communicate the same way sales people must and become very uncomfortable when forced to do so.
February 17, 2012 at 7:54 am
I started as a programmer and you would think that I am biased. However, I think it is easier to replace the programmers than to replace high-performing salespeople. The good ones are worth every penny paid.
The difference is in time -- with a developer, you have the lifecycle process that allows you to find problems and fix them. The poor or mediocre programmer can be hidden within the process and still not impact the finished product. With a salesperson, they are "on stage" from the second of introduction and there are few ways to fix a relationship if it is messed up in the beginning, like you can with development.
Relationships and programs both usually get better with age and attention, but you can't test out relationship bugs.
Regards,
Joe
February 17, 2012 at 8:17 am
Great discussion.
We're all salespeople to some extent. We've all had job interviews where we tried to sell ourselves or first dates where we tried to paint a great picture. Those geeks with no social skills we like to generalise about? They got jobs; they sold themselves well enough for that.
Not everyone has the logical and analytical mind that, in my experience, marks out (good) programmers from the masses.
I'd use the above to agree with Steve's general claim that it's easier to replace salespeople than technical people.
I wouldn't necessarily use the above to say one is worth more than the other. My initial, gut feeling was that programmers are worth more, simply because I believe those who create the product are worth more. But, as many answers here attest, it's not that simple.
A real-world example: I recently developed and released an iPhone game. I had all the skills to do this, and the game launched to resounding failure. I'd glady have shared 50% of the income with someone who could have made the game sell. In fact, I'd probably have gone higher if it meant my goal of self-employment could have been achieved.
As I said, great discussion.
February 17, 2012 at 8:19 am
In fact, I'd like to add more. Those that are on the side of sales people - and have done a great job of "selling" that point of view here - have really given me some ideas on how to realise my goals.
Thanks for that 😀
February 17, 2012 at 8:31 am
This is the classic Chicken and the Egg. You need a good development team to create products to sell, but you need a good sales team to sell the products otherwise there does not need to be the product. So how to best manage these two? Since both positions are arguably, required by the company and should be compensated equally on that point, then the question becomes how? Since both depend on each other, I would suggest that the pay be based on the performance of each group. Sales and Developers get paid based on how well the product does. Motivation now become the factor. How do you motivate someone to do a good job whether it be sales or development. Some will argue that money is the best motivator and those will say commission is the best method. Other will point to recognition, promotions, time off, awards etc. But everyone of us is different in what motivates us, so no one answer will be valid in a given situation. We are back to which came first the Chicken or the Egg.
Raymond Laubert
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MCT, MCDBA, MCITP:SQL 2005 Admin,
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February 17, 2012 at 8:37 am
As my salesman father told me, "Nothing happens in business until some body sells something."
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