Wait, *I'm* in sales? No I'm not!

Yes, you are. If you talk to customers. Or potential customers. Or do anything that is seen by either of those groups.

When I was a full-time tech writer, I occasionally got invited to give talks at various conferences. That was fun. One of my favorite talks was “Think Like a Podcast Ad Salesperson.”

The point I made in that talk was that every interaction you have with customers, or potential customers, is sales. (And don’t forget, being a salesperson isn’t a bad thing.)

App developers who ship features are selling. Shipping is selling. Explaining why features don’t exist is selling. Answering support emails is selling.

Those feel more obvious to me. What is maybe less obvious — and I believe was the conference attendees’ favorite takeaway from this talk — was that even release notes are selling. Or, they should be. They’re an opportunity to sell. This, to be clear, is not selling:

This, however, really truly is!

Even just that last line is a far more fun way to say “General fixes.” It’s selling, my friends.

The speed at which you reply to customer emails is selling. The features you offer, the conversations you have, the places you choose to run marketing campaigns, your pricing — it’s all sales.

You want success, and success means closing more deals. More deals means more cash. That’s a nice thing. That’s how business works.

Using the mental framework of remembering that any customer-facing or even customer-adjacent job is a sales job helps focus your thinking. Is what I’m doing in service of winning more customers? There can of course be other important factors to consider, but a customer-centric approach, a customer-friendly and affectionate approach, will almost certainly serve your customers — and thus your business and you — well.