There is a growing approach to developing code in the techie world.  It’s the idea that releasing code early and often, even if it’s not pretty, is the best way to go, especially in the start up world.  The premise, spending lots of money and time building something without the eyeballs of users can be costly and a waste of time.  By releasing code early and often developers have the benefit of user feedback to guide their next release without too large an investment.  It prevents creating features users don’t see value in and allows new features the team didn’t think about to be added. User reaction is the key benefit of releasing early and often.

When code is released early and often users have a say. The product isn’t created in a vacuum and the entire process is more agile.

Sales can learn from this.  Sales is often plagued with similar challenges.  We tend to think we know what the product does and why our customers want it.  Scripts are made. Collateral is created.  Value propositions are taught;  all of which are hard coded, offering no flexibility in message and story.   In these environments, sales becomes dependent on their message and loses the ability to see things their users want or need.  They lose buyer involvement.

Every customer has different needs and buys for different reasons. The original value proposition doesn’t work for everyone. Like developers, accepting this in sales increases the probability of success.

Release early and often in sales means more conversations with prospects and clients before you’re trying to make the sale. Releasing early and often in sales is creating feedback loops for prospects and customers.  It’s free early beta trials.  It’s robust cross functional governance plans. It’s engaging more often about business and less often about selling or buying. It’s engaging more, selling less.  Releasing early and often in sales is about embracing the buyers experience as much as you can. Releasing early and often in sales allows sales to stop pitching value propositions that offer little value. It allows new, unidentified, value propositions to be identified and leveraged. Releasing early and often in sales leverages the buyer experience.

Techies have figured out that success comes from understanding the user experience as early and as often as possible. Sales should learn from techies and recognize sales success comes from understanding the buyers experience as early and as often as possible too.

Who ever said techies can’t teach sales anything?