A salesman and a developer go on a bear hunting trip.

I love the insight by Daniel Tenner here. As the sales half of our company, I’m constantly conscious of the difference in mindset between sales and engineering.

We’ve been lucky enough to organically find a point of equilibrium, however in a larger company there is often an unbridgeable gap between the two. Forget about the philosophical differences, they probably aren’t even in the same building. Or country. It’s much harder to empathise with someone you’ve never met.

This duality is expressed everywhere in the world, consider it the yin and yang of doing business if you will. Both parts are vital to the whole, but it doesn’t make understanding the other side any easier. The only way to cross that gap is communication, before the proverbial hits the fan.

Next time an engineer is reluctant to give you a ball park estimate on an “easy project”, or the account manager makes that extra little promise to seal the deal, I invite you to pause for a moment.

Think about how many months the sales team may have worked to build that relationship. Consider that with out sales, there aren’t any new customers and without customers your prospects of job security aren’t pretty. And you Mr. Sales, before making an extra promise that bends too far the laws of physics, economics or common sense, spare a thought for the hours of thankless overtime your engineering team is going to have to put in to deliver.

If your company can get this right, your engineers will push past their comfort zone and achieve things they may have considered impossible, at the same time your sales team is going to stop promising things that are actually impossible. If the yin and yang are balanced, everyone is happier, including most importantly, the customers. Don’t ever forget, the customer is the reason you are here in the first place.