I just read a great post by Jeff Stewart of the UrgentGroup on Sales as R&D in a startup.  The article talks about how in a start-up, your sales team is your R&D.

The wrap up to his post echos a lot of what I say to my teams:

Many engineers I talk to have the misguided “if we build it, they will come,” approach to sales.  To this I say: Bull.  In 1999, I had the chance pleasure of meeting most of the Google sales team in a hotel bar.  Let me tell you, they weren’t talking about algorithms.  While the PHDs at Google deserve a lot of credit for building a great product, we can’t forget that the innovations of the sales team developed for the company.  They are very responsible for getting Google to where it is today.

Since I started writing this blog, I’ve looked for sales lessons in everyday life. I blogged a few months ago on sales lessons in a chick flick.  This week, I was treated to a very nice sales lesson from my seven year old daughter.

The other nite, my wife called me and asked me how long it would be before I got home from work because that nite, Erin, my seven-year-old daughter had to go to the PTA board meeting in town and my wife wanted to know if I could watch the other two kids, while she took Erin there.  I wasn’t going to make it home in time, but determined that if we met each other at the school, we would arrive just as the meeting would start.  We could meet there, Erin could do what she needed to do, and then we could all grab a quick dinner.