5 Key reasons why sales should be a core skill for you as a CTO:
1. You have to sell to customers:
As the driving force behind a company’s technological innovation, a CTO must be able to not only design and develop cutting-edge products and technology, but also effectively communicate their value to potential clients and customers.
2. You have to sell to the C Suite and board:
As a CTO you set the tech strategy to deliver the company objectives. If you can’t convince the board that this is the way to go, you’re unable to lead engineering to achieve the business aims.
3. You have to sell to your engineers:
Just as you have to sell the tech strategy to the board, you also have to sell it to your teams. Your engineers need to be inspired and engaged to deliver the strategic aims — they need to be sold on it!
4. You have to sell to external engineers to join your company and department:
Scale-ups in particular can struggle to recruit the best people because they don’t have the brand pull of Google or Amazon. In order to recruit the best people they have to buy your story: what are you building? What for? Unless they buy into it, you’re not going to recruit the best people for the job.
5. You have to sell to investors:
It’s all nice and good for your CEO to pitch to investors, but often they want to check that the tech is sound. They do this either via a due diligence tech review or a tech strategy check. Either way — you have to be able to sell to the investors why your way of doing tech works or will work!
When it comes to being a CTO, technical expertise is a must but having excellent sales skills is just as important.
What other ways do CTOs have to sell that I might have missed?
