Doing Both Development and Sales

Doing both development and sales,

I'm steadily becoming a chatterbox.

Lately I've noticed I talk a great deal, in all sorts of ways. I used to be on the quiet side, but since starting the business and doing both development and sales myself, I've become far more talkative than before. At first I figured it was just from meeting many people, but on reflection the reason was fairly clear. Development and sales look like entirely different jobs, but both are, in fact, the work of endlessly converting what's in your head into language.

When I develop, I talk to myself constantly. Why this feature is needed, where users will get stuck, what breaks if I restructure it this way, whether what I've built is truly what the customer wants — I keep asking and answering in my head. Code is the artifact you see on screen, but before that code exists, countless sentences and hypotheses pass through first. The longer I develop, the more I find myself explaining thoughts in words. Because if you can't explain precisely what you're building, you often don't precisely know what you're building.

Then, development done, I meet customers — and a different kind of verbalization begins. This time I must not speak in the way I understand. I have to re-translate into the language the customer understands. Talk of servers, data structures, and models mostly doesn't matter. What matters to the customer is, in the end: “so how much easier does my work get,” “how fast can you build it,” “how much money do I save,” “does the problem I'm living with actually get solved.”

So I end up explaining the same product differently several times a day. While developing, in the language of technology; meeting customers, in the language of problems; discussing price, in the language of value; and back alone again, I translate the conversation into the product's structure. All day long I convert thought into speech and speech back into structure, over and over.

That's probably why the words keep multiplying.

Since I started doing sales myself, especially, I watch people's reactions far more. Whether they understand immediately when I say something, where their expression changes, at which explanation they nod and at which they ask again — I observe continuously. Talking a lot doesn't just mean I have more I want to say. It is also the process of throwing words in several directions to find the point where the other person understands.

The fun part is that this process feeds back into development. A feature that takes ten explanations for a customer is often complicated inside the product too. Conversely, a feature explained in one sentence is often simple to use. I discover product problems while selling, and discover sales sentences while developing. Doing both, the product and the language stop moving separately.

I used to half-believe that if you build a good product, people will recognize it on their own. Now I think a bit differently. However good the thing you build, if it can't be explained, it's close to not existing. And conversely, if the words are good but the product doesn't follow, it can't last. In the end you need the ability to build and the ability to explain, together.

So a person doing development and sales at once becomes a slightly strange creature. Hours in front of the computer without a single word — then suddenly, meeting a customer, hours of talk without a break. Agonizing over data structures one minute, listening to a person's worries a few minutes later. And on the way home, analyzing today's conversations alone all over again.

Which means that in daily life, too, when a thought forms I increasingly speak it aloud. Thoughts I once finished inside my head, I now organize by talking. “Why is this set up like this?” “Wouldn't it be better changed this way?” “Why did that person say it like that?” — the questions come out naturally. To others, I probably just look like a chatterbox.

Well — true. I really am becoming one.

But one thing differs from before: words are no longer just words to me. Speaking, I build thoughts; thoughts become structures; structures become products; and the product gets explained to people again. Sometimes my whole work feels like one long conversation.

Doing development and sales both, I now understand a little why a person ends up talking this much.

I seem to build all day, but really, I've been explaining all day.

And there is one problem.

Meet me as a close friend and you may, without realizing it, find yourself attending a forty-minute seminar on life and business.

Sorry in advance.