Only coders work in tech, right?
Wrong.
When you think of people who work at tech companies, you probably think of programmers, hackers, coders, engineers, designers, and developers—all the jobs that involve sitting behind a computer screen and staring at columns of green code that look like The Matrix.
But there’s far more that goes on inside a tech company other than just, well, tech stuff.
Let’s start by thinking about the most fundamental business scenario: a startup.
A founder has an idea. First, he goes to investors for funding or bootstraps the funding himself. Then he hires (or partners with) an engineer to build it. And then what?
This point in a startup’s life cycle is called “go-to-market.” In other words, rubber hits the road and the product or service is supplied to the market to test for demand.
“Build it and they will come” is often wishful thinking.
So a marketer is usually the next logical hire.
If marketing is successful, leads will start to come in from various sources:
- The phone will start to ring
- Email and chat inboxes will fill up
- The website landing page will capture contact info
- The e-commerce platform will track abandoned carts
And finally, the moment we’ve been waiting for …
It’s time for sales!
Because prospects require hand-holding.
Even if they engage once with marketing, there is no guarantee that they will buy the first time or ever come back once they leave.
They will bounce off the website, ignore automated follow-up emails, and scroll past retargeting ads.
Some startups can get away with a self-serve checkout system (like Amazon) where sales are automatic thanks to a user-friendly e-commerce interface.
But remember, tech isn’t often that easy. Because brand-new tech products aren’t commodities that the market already understands.
Prospects will have questions:
- How does it work?
- Is it better than the one I already have?
- Why is it so expensive?
- Can I cancel my subscription anytime?
But there’s one question that’s more important than the rest:
- Why the heck should I buy this?
And this is precisely where salespeople come into the picture.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford
Tech salespeople are the communicators responsible for translating complex (and often expensive) technology into tangible things that businesses and consumers need (even if they don’t know it yet).
Tech salespeople are the messengers that speed back and forth along the information highway between Tech and the larger business consumer markets.
They are the storytellers who build excitement and paint a picture of how great life could be with a product that customers have possibly never heard of before.
New tech products are coming out every day:
- Cybersecurity
- 5G
- The Internet of Things
- Big Data
- The Cloud
- Artificial Intelligence
- Virtual Reality
- Machine Learning
And the list goes on …
All of these have the potential to unlock massive value for businesses, consumers, and the economy as a whole, but they are also often complicated. These products need salespeople to communicate their value to the market.
Here’s how many salespeople are employed by the biggest tech companies.
According to LinkedIn data (gathered in April 2020), Amazon employs 26,599 salespeople (8% of total headcount), Apple employs 17,855 salespeople (11%), and Google employs 10,138 salespeople (6%).
Some of the other companies mentioned in the table below have even larger salesforces. Oracle employs even more salespeople than Amazon, despite being half the size. 45% of Yelp’s total headcount is in sales. And Salesforce, well, it’s Salesforce.
| Company | # of salespeople | % of total headcount |
| Oracle | 26,139 | 16% |
| Amazon | 26,599 | 8% |
| Apple | 17,885 | 11% |
| 10,138 | 6% | |
| Salesforce | 9,516 | 23% |
| 3,905 | 19% | |
| Yelp | 3,758 | 45% |
| Adobe | 2,672 | 11% |
| Box | 550 | 19% |
| 513 | 16% |
Source: LinkedIn Insights, April 2020.
The future of tech sales.
The current tech boom hasn’t just created a surge in demand for software developers and engineers; it’s also created a surge in demand for salespeople.
For every new tech company that hopes to bring their product to market, they will need salespeople to sell it (just as much as they need engineers to build it).