Are you a new technical professional?

Harold's introduction to Business Development took place within 3-4 months of being hired as a new engineer.

He attended new employee orientation, where the Director of Business Development made a case to fledgling engineers and scientists about the value of sales. He told a story about how an engineer might spend eight hours in two vastly different ways. In the first instance, the employee would work a full day and bill eight hours to the client, earning the company a whopping $50/hr for a total of $400 in revenue.

In the second instance, that same engineer would visit that same client about an upcoming project. Over a few months, the engineer would take that client to lunch four times, and learn more about the opportunity, spending about eight hours of their time. As a result, the company would win a $50,000 project (this was a lot of money in 1978).  The Director then compared the two ways of spending time.  In the first instance, the engineer made $400 for the company but in the second instance, the engineer landed a $50,000 project. He rested his case for being active in client contact and sales.

I had just completed college, started a new job, and looked forward to a life of technical engineering work. The Director's points hit me like a ton of bricks because they made me realize that I was clueless about the business side of my company. I knew there had to be customers, and they had to pay for engineering. What I did not know how was how we obtained these customers. Obscured by the technical fog of classes, exams, finals, and then later a thesis, it never even occurred to me that there was a method to competing for new work.  

Suddenly, in that brief presentation, the Director educated me on the value of leverage in balancing sales with engineering. When questioned by another newbie engineer about his math, and the possibility that he was comparing apples to oranges, the Director waved it off. He admitted that he couldn’t do math – these details were better left to the company's Chief Engineer. He looked us all in the eye and told us that without customers, there would be no engineering to do. He warned us that it was a competitive world out there, and that even the best engineers needed to sell and win the work before we could do the work.