Where Do We Go From Here? The Next Level of DevRel Value
A presentation at DevRelCon Prague 2022 in in Prague, Czechia by Matt Stratton
Where Do We Go From Here? The Next Level of DevRel Value @mattstratton
It’s Rough Out There @mattstratton
The Cynical DevRel The cognitive dissonance between “DevRel is good and pure and unsullied by filthy capitalism” & “The company has to generate revenue and DevRel is part of that” @mattstratton
Who gets to stick around for the encore Build the Thing Sell the Thing If you’re not connected in a measurable way to either of these things…. @mattstratton
Get Over Ourselves We aren’t the frontman for Depeche Mode But even Dave Gahan doesn’t think he’s better than the rest of the band. @mattstratton
Sales and Marketing Are not bad people @mattstratton
Get over yourself @mattstratton
Common Perceptions of Sales Folks Not technical Dishonest All about money Don’t understand a technical product and only skills are relationship-based Will use shady tactics and promise things a product cannot do They’re “coin-operated” @mattstratton
The Sales Org Isn’t (Totally) Evil No matter what your job is, you’d do it better if you understand how your company makes money. And you’ll do that even better if you understand the sales function in your org. There are toxic people who work in sales. There are also AEs and SAs who know more about how our technology products and organizations work than a lot of the detractors do. Getting to know how sales and marketing work (and heaven forbid, collaborating with those folks) might teach you a thing or two about your products and users. @mattstratton
Marketing Are Also Pros User Research If we join forces, the sum is greater than the whole of its parts @mattstratton Get Your Voice Heard Turns out folks whose job is to get a message heard…know how to do that
Get over yourself @mattstratton
Do things that require less imagination to show value @mattstratton
One for them, one for you Sometimes, you might need to do some top of funnel content I mean, even Iggy Pop had a song in a cruise ship commercial @mattstratton
The best part about selling out? …you get paid @mattstratton
How To Sell Out …but keep your soul intact @mattstratton
DevRel Plus Sales, Safely ● Meet with customers and prospects - not to demo the product! ● This is something special being offered to them ● The SA or AE can follow up later with how this topic/meeting connects to the product. @mattstratton
“The most effective salesperson at Chef was Nathen Harvey (VP of Community)” —Someone Famous (me) @mattstratton
“Work as Imagined” Vs “Work as Done” Now is the time to focus on the “work as done” part @mattstratton
DevRel as BizDev Your network is vast DA to DA partnerships @mattstratton
Show value but also set boundaries @mattstratton
Boundaries can be flexible and situational Examples of some boundaries ● “I’ll call in a favor from someone - ONCE” ● “I will share some promos on my social media, but I will use my own words” ● “I will write about a new feature only after I’ve gotten to use it, and it will be my impression, not necessarily regurgitating marketing messages” @mattstratton
Go Be Awesome… together @mattstratton
Thanks Newsletter - news.mattstratton.com Mastodon - @mattstratton@hachyderm.io GitHub - mattstratton Slides - speaking.mattstratton.com LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/mattstratton @mattstratton
Video
Resources
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
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Demystifying developer advocacy - Angie Jones
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DevRel Done Well with Matt Stratton (Screaming in the Cloud podcast)
Episode of Screaming in the Cloud that covers a fair bit of these topics as well
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