Practicing Your Selling Skills

As a Software Developer, your coding output depends on your technical design skills. Good technical designs are good if your teammates agree that they are good. A design review is a great tool for getting feedback from your teammates. You and your teammates share the same code, the same working environment, the same manager, the same risks - use your teammates to approve your design and getting better in the next one.

When your technical design is ready, convince the team that your design is good and fit the requirements. But, is your team is ready to support you and the project? Reviewing a design takes time, and developers hates meetings. Sending the design brief by mail is an option, but would it trigger a real deep discussion around the design? The feedback you are getting in mail may be valuable (if it arrives), but it’s not the same as selling your design face to face.

Sending the design by mail may prevented you the opportunity to stand in front of a crowd of professional developers and defend your design. Who knows, maybe in the future you will need to use this skill for raising money from investors. Practice on convincing others about your ideas, selling your thoughts, building a story, is one of the main skills I learnt that a good developers needs to have. Responding to unexpected questions and confronting (politely) with others about different agendas is critical for your future success. Your persuasion skills may define whether you are a leader or a follower. Lecturing in front of people will help you build your self-confidence and it’s one of the most fundamental skill if you want to make an impact and lead.