I’m wondering where I can find someone with sales / marketing skills to compliment my development/design skills.
I’m a freelance web ninja, finding and managing clients is certainly not where my passion lies. Building apps and sites is.
I feel the only difference between myself and the companies I contract to is that someone goes out to pick up work for their company and manage those client relationships.
There must be people out there looking for a product or service to take to market, no reason that my web skills couldn’t be that model.
There must be people out there looking for a product or service to take to market, no reason that my web skills couldn’t be that model.
The whole “not good with people – makes great stuff for people to interact with” thing is a common refrain, but there’s a little wrinkle. That’s why most software and far too many websites have trouble relating to the affairs of humans.
They look pretty. They just don’t get along well managing human affairs.
The lesson not learned by the tech bubble crash is technology is the commodity, and getting paid for cranking out technology is the trick.
Marketing and sales is a people thing. The sites (smart) marketers and sales people want are ones which get along well with people. Well enough to make sales and position the company in the mind of users.
What I’m talking about is user testing. Not flashing people into an epileptic seizure with gimmicks.
Get good with human factors in technology, you’ll be able to attract marketers. Because you’ll be able to develop sites which support marketing. Otherwise, with the technology as be-all end-all, the marketer sees working with the programmer as akin to pulling teeth.
You think you could just as well make anything anybody says. Trouble is “Homo Logicus” develops human repellent. They simply don’t grok – I mean completely can’t conceive – why and how the people issues directly result in human-computer interaction issues.
You don’t think that. You are offering “solutions,” no human problems required. But marketers find that a great big yawning chasm of misunderstanding they just won’t take the time to explain the reason why for.
Yeah “Oh, but I do Web 2.0 style, Jquery …” You’ve already missed the point.
That’s a big, big difference. There are tons of ‘freelance ninjas’ out there and you can’t just match one up with someone who ‘goes out and gets/manages work’ to form a business.
You are hoping to find a counterpart who will bring in biz and do client service so that you can be ‘in business’ but still be doing what you are doing now. The main way to do that is to go out and simply get a job. Otherwise, you aren’t bringing anything special to the table that would make you a partner rather than just a developer. But, keep your eyes open because you never know where business alliances come from.
In general, things will go the opposite way - people that are hoping to start a business or grow one will be looking for developers when they are ready. So, if you can network in with those people you increase your chances.
Despite what many developers think, it’s the strategy, new business, client service, marketing, advertising, etc. that all combine to make a business - the developers create the actual product/service and nothing more. When I am involved in starting a project, we spend tons of time planning the business and only look at getting developers are the very end.
If you want to stay a freelance ninja, you can learn ways to better market yourself to keep busy. If you want to be part of a business, you can learn to find people who are starting/growing businesses and seek partnership as a great developer (although this is tough).