This is Part 2 of my 6-part series on business literacy for DevRel. Start with Part 1 if you missed it.
Let's talk about sales folks. And I need you to stick with me here, because I know what you're thinking.
You've got a mental image, don't you? The stereotypical sales rep ... smooth-talking, coin-operated, willing to promise anything to close a deal. Someone who doesn't understand the product and just wants to hit their quota so they can get their commission check.
Yeah, that person exists. I've met them. You've probably met them too.
But here's the thing: that's not most salespeople. And holding onto that stereotype is hurting you, your DevRel work, and honestly, the developers you're trying to serve.
Get Over Yourself
I'm going to say something that might ruffle some feathers: if you're the kind of DevRel person who gets mad when people say "devrels are people who can't code and just travel around to conferences," but you also make snarky comments about sales reps or marketing professionals, you're kind of a hypocrite.
You can't demand respect for your discipline while simultaneously disrespecting others. Sales and marketing aren't bad people. They're professionals doing a different job than you, with different objectives and different measures of success.
And guess what? The best account executives and sales engineers I've ever worked with knew way more about how our technology products and organizations worked than a lot of the people looking down their noses at them.
What Sales Actually Does
At its core, sales exists to convert prospects into paying customers. That's it. That's the tweet.
But how that happens varies wildly depending on your company's business model, your product, and your market. The person selling enterprise software to Fortune 500 companies has a completely different job than the person selling SMB deals on a self-service platform.
In most B2B tech companies (which is probably where you work if you're reading this), sales tends to be consultative. The best sales reps aren't just trying to push a product; they're trying to understand a prospect's pain and figure out if your product can actually solve it. There's a name for this - it's called The Challenger Sale. And guess what - it is a lot like DevRel.
When done well, sales is helping people. It's connecting a real problem with a real solution. And if you've ever spent time in a painful, legacy system wondering why your company doesn't adopt better tooling, you've experienced the flip side. That's what happens when sales doesn't reach people who need your product.
Meet the Sales Team: Roles and Titles
Let's deconstruct the org chart, because understanding who does what will help you figure out how to work with them.
SDR/BDR (Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep): These are usually the folks making cold calls and cold emails. They're looking for prospects who might have a need for your product. Their job is to qualify leads and book meetings for the Account Executives. If you're at a conference and someone from your sales team wants to book meetings with prospects while you're in town, they're probably working with an SDR/BDR to set those up.
AE (Account Executive): These are the folks actually running the sales cycle and closing deals. They take the meetings that SDRs book, run demos, handle negotiations, and ultimately get the contract signed. When people say "sales rep," they usually mean the AE.
SA or SE (Solutions Architect / Sales Engineer): This is the technical person on the sales team. They can do deep technical demos, answer the hard technical questions, and generally provide credibility that yes, the product actually does what the AE says it does. Fun fact: I spent two years in this role at Chef, and it's where I learned that I could translate between technical and business folks.
CSM (Customer Success Manager): Technically post-sales, but important to understand. Once a deal closes, the CSM is responsible for making sure the customer is successful with the product. They're trying to prevent churn and identify opportunities for expansion/upsell. If you're doing DevRel activities with existing customers, you're probably working closely with CSMs.
Sales Leadership: Your VP of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), or other sales leaders are the folks setting strategy, managing the team, and (critically) forecasting revenue. They're the ones in the room with the CEO and CFO explaining whether the company is going to hit its numbers.
The Sales Pipeline: What It Is and Why It Matters
Here's where things get interesting for DevRel. The sales pipeline is basically a visual representation of all the deals that are currently in progress, organized by what stage they're in.
A typical pipeline looks something like this:
- Prospecting/Lead - Identified a potential customer
- Qualified - Confirmed they have budget, authority, need, and timeline (sometimes called BANT)
- Demo/Discovery - Showing them the product, understanding their needs
- Proposal - Sent them a formal proposal with pricing
- Negotiation - Working through the contract details
- Closed-Won or Closed-Lost - They either became a customer or they didn't
Each opportunity (or "opp") in the pipeline has a value attached to it - how much revenue this deal would bring in if it closes. Sales leaders use this to forecast revenue and figure out if they're going to hit their targets.
Here's the important distinction: the pipeline includes every opportunity a sales rep is working on, regardless of how likely it is to close. The forecast is a subset of the pipeline - it's the opportunities that are likely to close within a specific timeframe (usually a quarter).
New Logo vs. Expansion
You'll hear salespeople talk about "new logo" versus expansion deals. A new logo is a brand new customer - a company that's never given you money before. An expansion (or upsell) is selling more to an existing customer.
Why does this matter to you? Because the marketing and DevRel activities that influence a new logo deal are different from what influences an expansion. A new customer needs to be educated about what you do. An existing customer needs to see new value or new capabilities.
Essential Sales Terminology (That You'll Hear All The Time)
Let me give you the vocabulary you need to not look confused in meetings:
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue): The yearly value of all your subscription contracts. If you have 100 customers each paying $10,000/year, your ARR is $1 million. This is the number SaaS companies obsess about.
ACV (Annual Contract Value): The average annual value of a customer contract. If your contracts are all different sizes, ACV helps you understand your typical deal size.
TCV (Total Contract Value): The full value of a contract over its entire term. If someone signs a 3-year deal worth $30,000/year, the TCV is $90,000.
Opportunity: A potential deal in the pipeline. When someone says "we have a $250K opp in negotiation," they mean a potential sale worth $250,000 that's currently in the negotiation stage.
Deal Velocity: How quickly deals move through your pipeline. If it takes 90 days on average from first contact to closed deal, that's your deal velocity. Faster is generally better.
Win Rate: The percentage of opportunities that actually close. If your AEs win 25% of the deals they work on, that's a 25% win rate.
Where DevRel Impacts Sales (Whether You Realize It Or Not)
Here's the part where I tell you that you're probably already impacting sales, you just might not know it. And more importantly, you might not be communicating it effectively.
Technical Content Builds Credibility: That blog post you wrote explaining how to solve a tough technical problem? A prospect found it, realized your team knows what they're doing, and it gave them confidence that your product is built by people who understand the problem space. That's pipeline influence.
Community Creates Trust: When a prospect sees that you have an active, helpful community, it reduces perceived risk. "If I get stuck, there are people who can help me" is a powerful buying motivator. That's helping close deals.
Developer Advocates Provide Technical Validation: When you jump on a call with a prospect to answer technical questions (not to sell, just to educate), you're de-risking the purchase. You're helping deals move faster through the pipeline.
Events Accelerate Deals: That workshop you ran where customers and prospects attended? Those conversations and connections can absolutely accelerate deals that are currently in the pipeline. Sales teams love this.
Product Feedback Influences Sales Conversations: When you channel developer feedback back to the product team and features get built, that gives sales new things to talk about. "Based on feedback from our community, we built X" is a powerful sales narrative.
How To Work With Sales (Without Losing Your Soul)
I know some of you are getting nervous right now. "Wait, are you saying DevRel should do sales?"
No. That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is that DevRel and sales can have a mutually beneficial relationship that serves developers and supports the business. Here's how:
Meet with customers and prospects, but not to demo the product. You're offering something special to them - technical deep dives, architecture discussions, real talk about challenges. This is valuable time that you're offering, not a sales pitch. The SA or AE can follow up later about how that conversation connects to using your product. You stay authentic, they get to do their job.
Share competitive intelligence (gently). When you hear at a conference that developers are struggling with Competitor X's approach to something, that's useful for sales to know. You're not being a spy; you're sharing market intelligence.
Help create technical content that educates. Sales is always looking for content to share with prospects. If you've got killer technical content, that's gold for them. Just make sure it's educational, not a thinly veiled sales pitch.
Facilitate connections. Your network is vast. If a sales rep is trying to get into an account and you know someone there, making an introduction can be hugely valuable. But set boundaries - you'll do it once, and they need to respect the relationship.
The One Quote That Changed How I Think About This
When I was at Chef, I always used to say: "The most effective salesperson at Chef was Nathen Harvey (VP of Community)."
Nathen wasn't doing sales. He wasn't on sales calls pitching the product. But through his community work, his advocacy for developers, and his authentic engagement, he built trust and credibility that absolutely influenced people's decisions to adopt Chef.
That's the power of DevRel done well. You're not selling. But your work sells.
Set Boundaries (But Be Flexible)
One more thing: just because you understand sales and can work effectively with sales doesn't mean you become a tool for sales. You need boundaries.
Some examples of boundaries I've set:
- "I'll call in a favor from someone in my network - ONCE."
- "I will talk about new features on my social media, but I'll use my own words and my honest take."
- "I will meet with prospects to discuss technical challenges, but I won't be on sales calls or do product demos."
Your boundaries might be different. That's fine. The key is to be intentional about what you will and won't do, and communicate that clearly.
And here's the thing about boundaries - they can be flexible and situational. Maybe you generally don't want to be pulled into sales calls, but there's a strategic deal with a company that could really benefit from your product, and you genuinely want to help. You can make exceptions. Just make them intentionally, not because you couldn't say no.
Do Things That Require Less Imagination to Show Value
I'm going to level with you here. Some DevRel activities require stakeholders to have a lot of imagination to connect them to business value. A blog post about a cool technical topic? A conference talk about a new framework? These things have value, but the connection to business outcomes requires some imagination and trust.
Other things require a lot less imagination. Meeting with a prospect who's evaluating your product to discuss their technical challenges? That's directly connected to a deal. Creating content that sales can use in their conversations with prospects? That's clearly valuable to the business.
I'm not saying you should only do the things that are obvious wins. But I am saying that in uncertain times, having a portfolio of work that includes some "obviously valuable to the business" activities gives you more stability.
What This Means For Your Work
Understanding sales doesn't mean becoming sales. It means:
- You can have informed conversations with sales leaders about how DevRel supports their goals
- You can identify opportunities to collaborate in ways that serve developers and support the business
- You can articulate the value of your work in terms that sales leadership understands and cares about
- You can spot when your DevRel activities are actually influencing pipeline, and communicate that
Next up, we're tackling marketing. Because if you thought sales was misunderstood, wait until we dig into what marketing actually does (and why DevRel is definitely not just "developer marketing").
Questions? Confused about pipeline? Want to argue with me about whether DevRel should ever talk to sales? Drop a comment!
Previously: Part 1: Why Business Literacy Matters
Next up: Marketing 101
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