A mathematician sits on a park bench next to a pretty girl.  He wants to move closer but is struck by the helplessness of the situation: he’ll move half the distance, then half of the remaining distance, then half of that, and so on and so on – but will never actually reach the girl because the remaining distance can always be halved.

Later an engineer finds themselves in the same position.  Like the mathematician, he knows its impossible to actually reach the girl, but he realizes he can get close enough for all practical purposes.

(Okay, it is, and has always been, a dumb joke.  But it’s about how engineers think, and that’s what I want to talk about.)

Engineers solve problems.  In order to solve problems, they need to identify them.  They need to get down in the detailed muck of whatever it is at hand so they can see how things work and find a solution.  This is called “getting your hands dirty”.

Most people are afraid of problems.  Problems make them feel like victims – helpless to control their fate.  They’re used to problems making life worse for them, without any available solutions.

Engineers, on the other hand, relish the thought of new problems.  After all, they’re used to having problems fall before their mental prowess – sliced into bits by Occam’s Razor.  The existence of problems is enjoyable to an engineer: it gives them something to do.  To most, however, the existence of problems is upsetting.

And that brings us to salespeople.  Salespeople identify problems that upset people, and they sell solutions to those problems.  (And since this is a web agency post, by “solutions” I mean “websites”).  In theory, people will feel better because their problems have now been solved. The salesperson also feels better because they now have money.

Now what salespeople don’t want to do is dwell on the problem..  They want to talk about the solution.  No problems should escape the solution.  The solution leads to the sale.  Focus on the solution.  Always Be Closing.  Dwelling on problems creates doubt in the mind of non-engineers, and doubt screws up closing the deal.

So, ultimately, the salesperson wants to play down any problems that are not solved by signing the deal, whereas the engineer wants to dwell on them in detail.  Disconnect.

Weird things can start to happen when you bring an engineer into a sales situation; something that is occasionally necessary.  In the web agency world, the art of deal making is that the sale is made long before it’s clear what is being sold.  For n dollars, something will be built that will do something on the lines of solving these business problems.  Sort of.  Give or take.

This is totally backwards to the engineer, who, in their problem solving mindset, wants to be given a problem to solve.  A set of metrics for success.  A clearly defined goal.  But that’s not the way agencies work.  First you pay, later you find out what you get.

In order to close the deal, the salesperson needs to keep out of the details, and basically imply that the website will do everything that the client wants, but without actually promising anything specific.  The danger to the salesperson is that the engineer, being detail conscious, will screw this up.

The danger for the engineer is that the salesperson might sell something that simply can’t be delivered for the specified budget.  Or perhaps commits the engineering team to a ridiculous technical constraint that adds so much risk to the project, or is so onerous, that what started as a simple project becomes a nightmare.

When an agency works well, there’s a kind of dance between sales and engineering, where sales gets deals done without being drawn down into the muck of engineering, but doesn’t create any deals too stupid for engineering to be able to deliver.

When sales and engineering don’t sufficiently trust or respect each other the dance breaks down.  Then sales closes deals that are impossible, and engineering bogs sales negotiations down in details that simply shouldn’t see the light of day until the ink dries on the contract.