Vercel COO Jean Grosser's litmus test for a great salesperson is that engineers shouldn't be able to tell they aren't a PM for at least 10 minutes. This requires deep product knowledge, enabling sales to act as an R&D function by translating customer feedback into valuable product signals.
Related Insights
A sales background teaches more than customer centricity. It instills resilience and the fearlessness to approach anyone in an organization to get things done, a vital skill for navigating the cross-functional demands of product management.
At the $1-10M ARR stage, avoid junior reps or VPs from large companies. The ideal first hire can "cosplay a founder"—they sell the vision, craft creative deals, and build trust without a playbook. Consider former founders or deep product experts, even with no formal sales experience.
To move from engineering to product, don't just ask for the role. Proactively demonstrate PM skills by systemizing learnings from customer interactions. Starting an internal 'customer insight newsletter' based on your debugging work proves your value and builds an undeniable case for the transition.
To build trust and deliver value, product managers cannot be 'tourists' who drop in on other departments transactionally. They must become 'locals'—deeply integrated, trusted partners who are regulars in cross-functional conversations and are seen as being 'in the battle' together with sales, marketing, and other teams.
To sell effectively, avoid leading with product features. Instead, ask diagnostic questions to uncover the buyer's specific problems and desired outcomes. Then, frame your solution using their own words, confirming that your product meets the exact needs they just articulated. This transforms a pitch into a collaborative solution.
To build effective GTM automation, hire people who understand both the technology and the sales process. Vercel found success by transitioning its technical sales engineers—who were already former developers—into GTM Engineer roles. This ensures automated workflows are grounded in proven, real-world sales best practices.
Contrary to the popular belief that it's always detrimental, for product managers, context switching is a core strength. Fluidly moving between customer, engineering, and marketing conversations is essential for integrating diverse perspectives to bring a product to life.
This emerging role applies engineering and AI to GTM functions, building agents to automate tasks like lead qualification and personalized outreach. This dramatically increases efficiency, allowing one person, with an AI agent, to do the work of ten.
Great PMs excel by understanding and influencing human behavior. This "people sense" applies to both discerning customer needs to build the right product and to aligning internal teams to bring that vision to life. Every aspect, from product-market fit to go-to-market strategy, ultimately hinges on understanding people.
