From Engineering to Sales: 5 Lessons I Wish I’d Known Earlier
Notes from stumbling into sales and watching 100+ companies up close
I enrolled in an engineering degree (Electrical Engineering) thinking I’d never have to sell. The first time I did, I felt like a complete failure - honestly, like an idiot. That sting turned into an obsession. For the past two years I’ve been learning to sell while also shadowing the sales processes of 100+ companies - from napkin-stage to >$100M in revenue. Here are the five lessons I wish I’d had on day one.
A quick backstory
- 2020: first “real” job as a software developer. I went all-in on becoming a strong engineer, and within a year I was working full-stack.
- YC startup: the jump to a YC-backed startup forced me to do a bit of everything, but I still lived inside engineering.
- 2022: I co-founded my first company. That’s when the sell-or-die reality hit.
- 2023: at Makers Fellowship I worked with Andrés Bilbao (cofounder of Rappi). He can sell. I got a front-row seat to a very, very execution-heavy sales motion.
- 2024–2025: I co-founded Torrenegra Organization with Alexander Torrenegra and supported 100+ companies, while talking with dozens of B2B sales leaders. I watched what actually works.
1) Nail your ICP - and sell painkillers, not vitamins
It sounds obvious. It isn’t. Most of us waste time pitching to people for whom our product is a vitamin (“nice to have”) instead of a painkiller (“I need this now”).
If your smart band counts steps and calories, it’s a vitamin for most people. For the fitness-obsessed, it can be a painkiller. Sell to the people already in pain. Don’t burn cycles trying to “evangelize” those who aren’t.
Litmus test: can your buyer describe the problem in their own words before you pitch?
2) Sell benefits, not features
We love listing features: dark mode, dashboards, step counters. Buyers care about the outcome.
“Counts calories” → helps me hit my weight goal.
“API integration” → saves my team 10 hours/week.
Translate features into measurable, personal wins.
Rewrite exercise: For every feature, write the sentence “so that you can ___” and finish it with a concrete result.
3) Get to no - fast (give explicit permission)
A massive time sink is trying to convert people who were always going to say no. Your job is to surface that answer quickly.
Use a permission line:
“I don’t want to keep pinging you. If now’s not the right time, just tell me ‘no’ and I’ll stop. If it is, what would make ‘yes’ possible?”
You’ll either get a clean “no” (great, move on) or the real blocker (“budget in 30 days”, “legal needs X”). Both are progress.
4) Daily pipeline discipline - being a pain is a virtue
Most teams say they want more sales, but when you ask about their pipeline, there’s silence. At Makers Fellowship, the discipline was borderline uncomfortable: daily check-ins on new opps, in-conversation, closing soon, and closed.
It was stressful - and incredibly effective. When you review the pipeline every single day, you hit targets more often than not.
Minimum daily dashboard:
- New opportunities opened
- Meetings booked
- Deals in commit/next steps + owners
- Objections / blockers by stage
- Closed won / lost (with reason)
5) Obsess over acquisition channels - do things that don’t scale
Google Analytics won’t tell you what actually tipped a human to contact you. Ask manually and get specific:
- “How did you first hear about us?” (channel)
- “What exact action made you reach out?” (the post, the talk, the DM, the event)
- “What part of that caught your attention - the copy, the image, the offer?” (message)
Go from superficial (“LinkedIn”) to granular (“this post, this line, this offer”). Then double down on what truly moved them - even if it means unscalable work (DMs, 1:1 intros, small events) until you see a repeatable pattern.
Put it to work (today)
- Write your ICP on one page: title, pains, budget, trigger events, “jobs to be done.”
- Rewrite your top 5 features into benefits with metrics.
- Add the “permission to say no” line to your follow-ups.
- Stand up a daily pipeline standup (15 minutes, same time, same metrics).
- On every intro or onboarding call, ask the three attribution questions above and log them.