{
  "id": 3425982,
  "title": "Vembu has a precious advice for techies, docs",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/26/vembu-has-a-precious-advice-for-techies-docs",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-08-26T03:50:48.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Economic Times",
    "slug": "the-economic-times",
    "url": "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/zohos-sridhar-vembu-has-advice-for-engineers-scientists-and-doctors-do-sales-get-rejected-repeat/articleshow/133528483.cms"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Zoho's Sridhar Vembu, the chief scientist of the company, has offered some advice for engineers, scientists, and doctors who aspire to build businesses. According to Vembu, the first step for these professionals should be to make sales calls. He emphasized that facing rejection and persisting through it is crucial because it builds better communication skills and respect for salespeople. Vembu believes that selling something is essential for any business to succeed.\n\nVembu's advice is particularly relevant for a generation of engineers and researchers who often view sales as something performed by others. India, he noted, thrives on technical talent that prefers building products over pitching them. Engineers love the elegance of clean solutions, scientists revel in data, and doctors are trained to diagnose rather than persuade. To them, selling feels beneath their expertise or a task they were never taught and have no time to learn.\n\nWhen Vembu's post went viral, the internet reacted in three distinct ways. One group of people agreed with his message, sharing their own experiences of building successful businesses by personally making sales calls. Another group disagreed, arguing that sales teams should not involve engineers in the process. They claimed that having technical people in front of customers often leads to more feature requests, slowing down deals. The third group saw rejection as valuable data for the brain, forcing epistemic updates or adjustments in understanding the market. They argued that stepping outside the building and confronting rejection is necessary to learn what's broken in the pitch, whether it's communication, positioning, or the product itself.\n\nVembu has been active on social media lately, discussing topics like AI displacing coding jobs, whether tech valuations are detached from reality, and the importance of engineers becoming domain experts. His message on the necessity of selling is a recurring theme, suggesting that technical skill alone is insufficient for success. Instead, understanding the actual problems customers face and being willing to sit across from them as they critique your solution is more valuable. Whether or not engineers will heed Vembu's advice and make their first sales call remains to be seen.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}