Ethan LockshinSales at NVIDIA focused on AI adoption

OpenHands’ $19M Series A: Ben Solari on the top mistake sales teams make when selling to engineers!!

Name: OpenHands’ $19M Series A: Ben Solari on the top mistake sales teams make when selling to engineers!!
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T12:13:05+00:00
Duration: 1 min 4 s
Channel: Ethan Lockshin
Description: Ben Solari says the biggest mistake sales teams make with engineers is overselling or trying to BS them. Engineers are skeptical, so successful sellers…

29 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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Ben Solari says the biggest mistake sales teams make with engineers is overselling or trying to BS them. Engineers are skeptical, so successful sellers need technical competence, vulnerability, and honesty about what they don't know. Trust builds slowly over the sales cycle, not overnight.

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What's the number one mistake that sales teams make when they're selling to engineers? Do not BS them.
They are highly skeptical individuals. It makes great engineers great is that they are by nature skeptical people. They also by nature don't trust salespeople. So typically leading with vulnerability, being quick to admit that you don't know what the answer is because even if they're still new to your product, they can smell the BS factor from very far away. So I think the most successful teams and sellers that I've led have been extremely authentic. They've also been technical so that they can actually do some sharing and add value to the conversation. But they're very quick to admit that they don't know something. And you know, all of that kind of underpins like building trust with these technical buyers. And you know, that takes time as well. So I would say the other thing is it doesn't come immediately. You have to kind of do that over the course of the sales cycle and the customer relationship.