How do you market your product for a company?

How do you convince an engineering-centric company that they need to hire someone who's more business savvy to bring their product to market?

• Here in the SF Bay Area, we seem to have a surplus of companies founded by engineers that made their fortunes by working at Google, Facebook, etc. and somehow think that because they worked there. Most of them tend to think that either they can come up with the next "big thing" without doing any research, that you need to have "domain knowledge" of their "market" (which is really immature) to make them successful, or worse of all that if you simply slap a bunch of content online (blogs, tweets, etc.) that will make them successful. I have been meeting with a smaller companies that do have funding (they are either self-funded or are given huge infusions of capital because of their supposed "ties" to these companies) , but simply don't get this fact - investing that money into giving bigger paychecks to engineering or hiring sales people that don't have the resources they need to sell their products. In short, how do you work with companies who would rather give an above-market rate salary to a programmer and then give less than half of that to a marketer? Please don't tell me it's a question of supply/demand because it's just as hard to find good marketing help as it is engineers.

• Answer:

  Rapport Need Direction Time line Rapport First things first - they need to like, respect, trust and feel good around you.  Without a foundation in trust - nothing is going to work. Need.  Most engineering centric companies do not see a need for the role of a business savvy/marketing/sales person.   The 'product will sell itself' is their mantra, company X has done it via 'automation', and other phrases which presume that gaining customers is a fairly easy task. All I can say is:  good luck with that.  If the strategy works, well, good for you. Bottom line:  if they do not see a need for you ... move on.   Getting people to change their business-religion is a waste of time. Direction. There are many choices, options and approaches to how to get customers and market your product.  Some work better than others.  You will need to work very hard to go over the options, trade offs, and best approaches to show how your approach is truly the best approach. Time line. Infinite delay is the same as "no", it just takes a lot longer.  Unless your client is willing to put a plan on a schedule (Time line) ... move on.  They are wasting your time.  It is rare when a company comes right out and says "no'.  When someone has the courage and integrity to say "no" and tell me why; I have great respect for them.    Likely is that you will get delay, disengagement, and death by 'let's talk in two weeks'.    Don't buy it.  Call the question - leverage your trust - and when they say 'no' honor their decision.   You can only help people who want your help. Cheers, MW