Geoffrey James, who I did not know blogged for BNET, posted some tips on selling to engineers. While I think the article underestimates the capacity of engineers to see through the sales tactics of meathead software salespeople to the software itself, he makes some valuable points, especially in Rule 3 (admit your ignorance, intelligently).

As a software developer for a comparatively small company, I tend to balk at very large companies who try to sell us things. Since their salespeople know we’re not going to be a huge account, they often ignore these seven wise steps and just tell us why we should use their product and blow us off when we ask questions. I had a notably offensive sales demo with a company peddling overpriced web statistics software recently.

NB: For those of you not in the know, Geoffrey James wrote the very famous, often cited Tao of Programming.