I've just accepted a BD role with a SaaS company that sells to DevOps teams. My background is selling to marketing/sales teams, and I heard software engineers have a completely different character than sales or marketing professionals.

What's your advice on how to best engage VPs of Engineering/CTOs during the prospecting stage? I really don't know what to expect from my first conversations.

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Selling to marketing/sales can come a bit more easily since there's so much shared language and understanding already. DevOps is customer-focused but not exactly customer-facing the way marketing/sales is. They're thinking holistically about what's happening on the back end as much as what customers see and experience, so expect a bit of a learning curve for your first few calls and refer to your company's provided info on selling points, pain points, etc. At the end of the day, selling is selling - be personable, promise to get back with answers to questions you don't have on hand, and with practice you'll get better at it.

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My recommendation, having sold in the technical/IT/InfoSec realm for over 40 years, is to bring "birds of a feather" together. Start with your VP of Engineering and CTO. Then look at your Advisory Board, Board of Directors and investor community - do any of them have the cache and the insight to provide value to your prospective executives? Of course, you MUST put together a compelling agenda and prepare your people to ensure that the conversation is relevant and worthwhile for your prospects. Don't expect that you alone are going to be compelling to engineering/technology leadership. They don't have a particularly shiny view of salespeople. Add value, develop trust and then ask for an introduction to the people in their organization who might need your SaaS solution.

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