3 Sales Lessons Engineers Can Learn from the Creation of Ethernet

Lessons from the inventor of ethernet

Let me tell you a story about Bob. Bob invented ethernet and got rich.

But he didn’t get rich from inventing ethernet.

Bob got rich from selling it.

The story of how ethernet came to be carries valuable lessons for developers, engineers and innovators who aspire to become entrepreneurs or who want to start businesses.

We may take for granted the idea that if we create something valuable and useful, it will then naturally sell itself based on its own merits.

This story shows that even if the value of something is undeniable, its not true that people or customers will flock to buy or use it.

It is more important to be able to sell something than to create it.

The popularisation of ethernet is interesting because the inventor, Bob or Robert Metcalfe, was an engineer who started a business after creating it and he was responsible for popularising and selling it.

In fact it took a lot more effort for Bob to popularise Ethernet than the initial technical effort to invent it. It was over a decade of overcoming the obstacles which involved industry-wide standardisation, corporate partnerships and marketing.

How ethernet came to be everywhere

The need for a way to connect a large number of personal computers in a local area network (LAN) came to the network specialist, Robert Metcalfe while working at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Within a few months and the effort of a team of researchers including David Boggs, Ethernet was invented in 1973. The first paper was published by Metcalfe and Boggs in 1976.

Metcalfe cofounded 3Com in 1979 to help commercialise Ethernet. It became a commercial product in 1980 after Xerox partnered with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

In total the invention took only a few years and was driven by a small team from 1973-1976.

The popularisation took over 10 years of effort from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.

Selling is Important

What’s interesting about Robert’s story is that he had a lot to learn about selling through his effort to make ethernet successful.

One of his regrets was that he felt that realised too late the importance of sales skills because it caused him to miss opportunities to sell to IBM as he did not cater to their needs or understand their decision-makers. This lead to them creating a competing product.

Not all challenges are technical. There was one competitor product he jokingly called SneakerNet.

That is people didn’t see the need to go ahead and connect all the computers when they could just put information on a floppy disk and walk (using their sneakers, get it?) to the terminal they needed to be at to transfer information.

SneakerNet was not actually a competing protocol or product but all the same it required effort to overcome.

You need to sell to create a business.

Selling is Satisfying

One of the things that makes coding and engineering satisfying is the feeling of solving problems. If the challenge of the problem is great then the satisfaction of solving the problem increases too.

The results can also make problem solving satisfying. In fact the results could be disproportionately fruitful compared to the effort of problem solving.

Here’s where sales and problem solving are similar. The process of selling can be enjoyable. The results of sales can be enjoyed too.

Sales shines over technical problem solving in that the disproportionately large results over efforts occurs more commonly in sales.

One of the things Robert was proud of was increasing the sales from nothing to $1 million a month in 2 years.

If the process does not excite you, then the results certainly should. If you think of yourself as someone who is not wired to sell then you would be holding yourself back by your own limits.

Bob was not a salesman but he made it work. And that should tell you that you can too.

Selling can be accomplished with help

Robert found a mentor in Steve Jobs, who was 10 years his junior. 3Com benefitted a lot from his support through the 1980s. I think it’s noteworthy how Robert was humble enough to accept help from Jobs. The following quote implies that he did have to swallow some amount of pride.

“He was 10 years younger than me, so that was odd. I had a Ph.D. He dropped out his sophomore year in college, but he was my mentor anyway,” - Metcalfe

Accept help where you can. In this case Robert was approached first but he was ready to accept the advice he got. You might have to approach others to get help but make good use of the advice that you get.

There was still more that Robert learned about getting help from others. Jobs impressed on him was the importance of hiring competent leaders.

Founders don’t need to be CEOs. Applying this advice Robert hired Bill Krause as 3Com’s CEO and relied on his board to provide honest insights.

There are many ways to get help with sales whether its direct advice or even delegation. This starts with our first point of knowing the importance of sales. Then you can take the knowledge that it can be satisfying and involve yourself as you would like or ask for help as you need.

You can do it.

Clearly Robert Metcalfe benefitted from adopting a more sales driven mindset. Not without losing any engineering passion, if you listen to him speak about Telnet, or Manchester encoding or the Aloha network it sounds like he still remembers that work very fondly.

He probably would have like to learn sales skills sooner so you can take these insights away if you would similarly like to bring a product or development to adoption and success.

1. Selling is important
2. Selling can be satisfying
3. You can get help with sales