I would like the opposite article. I'm an engineer type selling to average consumers.
For example, I learned that literally telling people what to buy is sometimes better than a neutral comparison of all options. They don't want the absolute best product. They just want to feel like they made a good purchase.
I also found that engineer types can become really good marketing people if they treat sales as understanding requirements, and highlighting how the product fulfills them. I didn't get better at manipulation; I got better at understanding what people want.
Engineers gets excited by the details of a solution and try to sell on those. But end users typically want the problem to be solved with minimal fuss and effort. Details are off putting because they require effort to understand! Focus on how you will make things simpler.
Am an expert, and I think this speaks to the crux of how bad software sells: you can hide the shortcomings by leaving out details, and a lot of customers are fine (and sometimes happy!) with that. On the other hand, a truly excellent product lets you keep the marketing simple too; so simple in fact, I would argue that the most popular software products out there don't require much marketing at all since they're fully word of mouth now, or even de facto mandated like git and various shells.
Think of yourself in your daily life. You don’t compare features between snap, TikTok, Facebook and instagram. You go on one that feels good, that your friends are on, where there is interesting content. THOSE are the features. Not “we have disappearing videos and the other guy doesn’t”
For example, I learned that literally telling people what to buy is sometimes better than a neutral comparison of all options. They don't want the absolute best product. They just want to feel like they made a good purchase.
I also found that engineer types can become really good marketing people if they treat sales as understanding requirements, and highlighting how the product fulfills them. I didn't get better at manipulation; I got better at understanding what people want.