Exactly. I once worded at a document imaging "VAR" (except that we added serious value) where my programming was behind half our sales and enabled another large fraction.
But I also had an informal role in sales. Our VP of sales, very much a "suit" (but by no means technically illiterate) was also our "closer", i.e. he was very good at getting sales closed, whoever was the lead salesman. Every once in a while he'd take me to a meeting at a customer's site, me wearing my normal Oxford shirt, black jeans (not ratty) and gray New Balance 90x running shoes.
And I would talk with all the people the customer brought to the meeting, suits and geeks, and convince them that, yes, we can do this. Now, I'm pretty sure what I said was the most important part of that ^_^, but we were very cognizant that by not wearing a suit or even a tie I was signaling "geek cred" or whatever you want to call it. And it worked beautifully.
(Well, being an introvert I wasn't good for anything the next day, but that's a small price to pay for a mid to high six figure sale.)
Come to think of it, I can see another non-dress signal that this sent. In talking to the customer, I would take ownership of some or all of what we were selling to them (the stuff I'd program or sometimes build (I like to build computers occasionally)) and I'll tell them who had ownership of the other stuff and implicitly that they could do it. I also signaled that I was pledging to deliver to them the whole thing, whomever did what.
This also had a good backend/after the sale function: our salesmen never sold something we "geeks" didn't think we could deliver (and we were experienced enough not to get into trouble unless some third party software we hadn't had experience with yet failed on us).
But I also had an informal role in sales. Our VP of sales, very much a "suit" (but by no means technically illiterate) was also our "closer", i.e. he was very good at getting sales closed, whoever was the lead salesman. Every once in a while he'd take me to a meeting at a customer's site, me wearing my normal Oxford shirt, black jeans (not ratty) and gray New Balance 90x running shoes.
And I would talk with all the people the customer brought to the meeting, suits and geeks, and convince them that, yes, we can do this. Now, I'm pretty sure what I said was the most important part of that ^_^, but we were very cognizant that by not wearing a suit or even a tie I was signaling "geek cred" or whatever you want to call it. And it worked beautifully.
(Well, being an introvert I wasn't good for anything the next day, but that's a small price to pay for a mid to high six figure sale.)
Come to think of it, I can see another non-dress signal that this sent. In talking to the customer, I would take ownership of some or all of what we were selling to them (the stuff I'd program or sometimes build (I like to build computers occasionally)) and I'll tell them who had ownership of the other stuff and implicitly that they could do it. I also signaled that I was pledging to deliver to them the whole thing, whomever did what.
This also had a good backend/after the sale function: our salesmen never sold something we "geeks" didn't think we could deliver (and we were experienced enough not to get into trouble unless some third party software we hadn't had experience with yet failed on us).