When I attend trade shows, I often have potential customers come and ask if we sell a particular type of technology. I’ve discovered that really what they are doing is asking if we sell the think they they _think_ is the solution to what they _think_ is the problem. It’s my job to figure out what their problem _actually_ is and then figure out if we have something that can solve _that_ problem.
One has to be quite diplomatic in these situations. They certainly know more about their domain, but I know more about technologies to solve their problem. So I need to pry out more information without sounding like I think I know more about their job than they do.
On the other hand, the job often turns out to be knowing the set of problems for which you're selling a solution (which is quite large for some companies e.g. Oracle) and then convincing the potential customer that this is the real problem that they have.
When I attend trade shows, I often have potential customers come and ask if we sell a particular type of technology. I’ve discovered that really what they are doing is asking if we sell the think they they _think_ is the solution to what they _think_ is the problem. It’s my job to figure out what their problem _actually_ is and then figure out if we have something that can solve _that_ problem.
One has to be quite diplomatic in these situations. They certainly know more about their domain, but I know more about technologies to solve their problem. So I need to pry out more information without sounding like I think I know more about their job than they do.
I like that part of the job.