Sell! Sell! Sell?

Question

Hi folks - this is a question open to general public but I'm a PM, so looking for some PM focused discussions as well.

I'm good at the technical and (some) business aspects of my role (~2 years in). However, I don't have the natural tendency or inclination to 'sell' my work internally (xfunc team, mgr, skip level mgr) and externally (other teams and interviews).

I feel I have survived and thrived (to an extent) in my current job because it's a small team and everyone sees first hand the critical importance of my contributions. I work hard (and learning to work smarter but that's nowhere near achieved). Given a different environment (think big tech/larger, more organized teams than startups), I might not survive/thrive even to this level.

With that context established,

1. Is this an acquired skill (to 'sell' your work)? I guess it is. If so, can you share how you started and grew this skill? My team's small enough that my manager and my skip (CPO) basically didn't need to do this, so there's only so much I have been able to learn from their mentorship

2. Is this an absolute must-have to get into big tech and/or growing/well to do 'startups'?

3. My style of influence / arguing for a certain decision is very objective and data-driven currently. I am a story/passion person but this doesn't tend to come out in my job interactions - there might be some reservations around being expressive and taking that risk. Have you had experience with this, and what steps did you take?

Would appreciate hearing from everyone, and esp. folks who have had to struggle against their natural/status quo tendencies to learn to sell themselves or their work

Thanks in advance!

kjdbfsjhdsk · Accepted Answer

1) Yes it is an acquired skill. You need to start small and expect to fail ( a lot). Generally people “don’t care” about what you do. They care about how your work benefits them and their interests. It is up to you to find a way of explaining the benefits of your work in a way it is easy to understand for them. In this regard it feels pretty similar like talking to the real customers.

Part of this finding the right opportunities to present your work. Often we feel like what we do is nothing so special that is because we do it every day and maybe even that other people know what we do somehow. Guess what, usually it is not the case :). People do not have time to look around so much. You need to let the world know what you and your teams do so they have an opportunity to benefit from it.

HTH

Sell! Sell! Sell?

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