Think about the best technical work you've ever done. The project you were most proud of. Now, be honest: did it actually have the impact it deserved?
After coaching countless leaders, I've seen a painful pattern emerge when the answer is 'no'.
The reason for that gap between effort and impact is rarely technical. It’s not about the code, the elegance of the data model, or the choice of cloud provider.
It’s a missing skill that most of us were trained to view with suspicion: the ability to sell.
Now, I know "sales" is practically a four-letter word in many technical circles. It conjures images of slick pitches and a world far removed from the elegant logic of a well-designed system. Now, let's clear it up: this isn't about becoming a manipulative salesperson. It's about becoming a powerful advocate for your team's work. It's about translation, not transaction. It’s about building genuine belief and alignment, not playing political games. When product, engineering and data leaders learn to "sell" with integrity, they don't lose their authenticity; they amplify their impact.
A Tale of Two Projects
This misunderstanding is the single biggest blocker I see holding back incredible leaders. The story I hear over and over always takes the form of a tale of two projects.
On one hand, there's Project A, the technical masterpiece. The code is pristine, the data pipelines are incredibly efficient. The team is immensely proud of what they’ve built. But it languishes. The dashboard goes unused, the API struggles for adoption, and the business case is never fully understood. It eventually becomes a painful memory of squandered potential.
On the other hand, there's Project B. Technically, it's just "good enough." But the leader of this team is a master storyteller. They translate technical wins into business impact and connect their work directly to customer pain. Project B flies.
This isn't an argument for style over substance. The ideal, of course, is Project A's technical excellence combined with Project B's influential leadership. But in the real world -
a well-communicated 'good' project often has more impact than a poorly-advocated 'perfect' one that no one understands or uses.
This ability to sell is the invisible engine of impact. For technical leaders, it's not a single skill, but a journey of expanding influence that progresses through three critical levels.
Three Critical Levels of Selling
Level 1: Selling the Roadmap - From Idea to Initiative
This is the foundation. Before you can build anything great, you have to convince others it’s worth building. This is the daily, crucial work of getting buy-in for your plan, advocating for investment in data quality, or securing headcount for a new feature. You aren't just presenting a list of tasks; you are selling a credible path to a better future for the company.
The essential skills here are about translation:
Business Acumen: You have to translate "a 5% lift in model accuracy" into "millions in incremental revenue" or "faster data availability" into "quicker, more confident business decisions."
Narrative Building: You must craft a compelling story around why this project matters to the business now, not just why it’s technically interesting.
Stakeholder Management: You need to understand the motivations and language of your audience - finance, marketing, executives - and tailor your message to what they care about.
This is what gets your project off the ground. But an approved plan is just the start.
Level 2: Selling the Solution - From Feature to Value
A funded roadmap is worthless if it doesn’t solve a real problem for a real person. The next level of selling is to move beyond being an order-taker and develop a deep, visceral empathy for your end-user. This is where you translate your team's output into tangible, human value. It means digging into user analytics not just for metrics, but for the story behind them.
The critical skills here are about understanding:
Active Listening: The goal is to understand a user's problem better than they understand it themselves. When you can do that, you stop being a service provider and become a strategic partner.
Problem Framing: It’s about articulating the true pain point. A stakeholder might ask for another dashboard, but what they really need is a single, clear insight that saves them five hours of analysis a week.
Value Proposition: You must be able to clearly and simply explain how a technical solution translates into a meaningful benefit for the person using it.
This is how you ensure your work actually matters. But to build something truly lasting, you need to sell one more thing.
Level 3: Selling the Mission - From Team to Movement
This is where you transcend managing projects and start leading people, aka, "make people around you better". This is the most powerful form of selling, because it’s not about a feature or a roadmap - it’s about purpose. It’s how you recruit top-tier talent, retain your best people through tough times, and get the entire organization genuinely excited about the future you are all building together.
The skills here are about inspiration:
Visionary Storytelling: You have to paint a vivid, compelling picture of what the world will look like because of the work your team is doing.
Inspirational Leadership: You must connect the day-to-day grind of debugging a pipeline or tuning a model to a larger, meaningful purpose.
Authenticity: Ultimately, people don't follow a roadmap; they follow a leader they believe in.
This is the ability to sell a mission so compelling that people will run through walls to make it a reality.
The Sales Books, Re-Engineered for Tech Leaders
The sales world has spent decades perfecting the art of persuasion, and we can adapt their best playbooks for our own context.
Instead of "The Challenger Sale", think "The Thought Partner". Don’t just build what stakeholders ask for; teach them a better way. Challenge their requirements with deeper insights and a superior technical vision.
Instead of "SPIN Selling", use it for your roadmap. Sales professionals use a framework called 'SPIN' - asking questions about Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff. Before committing to a project, ask these questions to ruthlessly prioritize and build a rock-solid business case.
Instead of just reading "To Sell is Human", live it with your team. Daniel Pink highlights three key qualities: Attunement (understanding others), Buoyancy (resilience), and Clarity (making the complex simple). Is that not the perfect job description for a technical leader?
Finally, remember that the most effective selling is selling with integrity. It means grounding your vision in a credible plan, being transparent about risks, and always prioritizing the long-term trust of your team and stakeholders over a short-term 'win.' The goal is to create belief, not hype.
Your First Steps on Monday
This all sounds great, but where do you start? Here’s a simple, low-risk plan to begin building this muscle this week.
Start with Translation. Pick one metric your team is working on (e.g., "reducing query latency by 50ms"). Schedule 15 minutes to write down, in plain language, how that metric connects to a business outcome (e.g., "This means our customers get their search results faster, which we know reduces frustration and bounce rate"). Practice saying it out loud.
Listen with Intent. Join one customer call with your CX/Business team or user feedback session. Your only goal is to listen, not to defend the product. Write down one surprising thing you learned about the user's real problem, not just their feature request.
Reframe One Update. In your next team meeting, don't just list what your team did. Start with one sentence that connects that work to the larger company mission. You're not just closing tickets; you're advancing a purpose.
And for the product, engineering and data leaders out there -
Code without buy-in is a technical liability. Data without a narrative is just a sea of numbers. Your career as a leader will not be defined by the elegance of your architecture or the sophistication of your models, but by the impact of your influence.
Stop thinking you're just a builder or an analyst. You're a seller.
You're selling the roadmap that turns an idea into an initiative, the solution that translates a feature into real value, and the mission that turns a team into a movement.
So, my question to you is this:
What are you "selling" this week? Is it a new technical strategy, a candidate you’re trying to hire, or the vision for your next product? And how will you frame it to win?