---
title: "From Programmer to Sales Master: A Journey of Mindset Transformation"
description: "A former programmer shares his journey of transitioning from a technical role to sales, discovering the fundamental formula for making money (product + selling), and realizing that sales can be divided into two types: brute-force selling (push) and strategic marketing (pull). He emphasizes the importance of understanding both and using strategy to achieve better results with less effort."
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published: "2014-07-25"
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# From Programmer to Sales Master: A Journey of Mindset Transformation

> A former programmer shares his journey of transitioning from a technical role to sales, discovering the fundamental formula for making money (product + selling), and realizing that sales can be divided into two types: brute-force selling (push) and strategic marketing (pull). He emphasizes the importance of understanding both and using strategy to achieve better results with less effort.

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From Programmer to Sales Master: A Journey of Mindset Transformation

0. Introduction
I studied science and engineering in college, and after graduation, I gradually became a programmer. Every day, I faced a computer and typed code line by line, which we programmers jokingly called "bricklaying," because what we did was essentially the same as migrant workers laying bricks to build walls—we moved piles of code from one place to another, then tweaked them to look good on the surface and be sturdy in use, and that was it.

After six years in technology, I gave up the skills and achievements I had built, and started from scratch in sales. Through my efforts, I eventually became a master at doubling sales performance, achieving considerable success. To date, my best two records for doubling performance are: (1) In 9 months, I increased a company's revenue nearly tenfold (from less than 500,000 RMB annually to 4.893 million RMB); (2) In 8 months, I expanded another company from 1 store to 11 stores and a 2,000-square-meter processing plant.

How did I do it? What difficulties and challenges did I encounter when transitioning from technology to sales? How did I overcome them? This article vividly records my experiences and unique mindset during the initial period of my career change. I hope my story can be helpful to you.

1. I Like Money, Do You?
Since college, I have always liked money. I tried many ways to earn more, and although I took some detours, I achieved some results.

I studied science and engineering in college. Upon graduation, most of my classmates went into technical work, so I followed suit and became a technician, working for six years. In those six years, my technical work was quite effective, bringing me three direct results: First, I earned my first house; second, I got my household registration transferred to Shanghai through talent introduction; third, with my technical strength, I entered a very good company, participating in and witnessing its growth from small to large, and its glorious journey to Nasdaq.

After these achievements, I continued to research and practice how to earn more money. Later, I discovered the importance of selling, so I switched to sales. As sales work deepened, it helped me earn my second house.

In this process, I enjoyed earning my money happily. However, I encountered unprecedented opposition, some of it very strong, which made me particularly sad. During that period, I was once very confused.

At that time, I had a friend who disapproved of my value of liking money and strongly criticized me. He said I shouldn't like money so much, shouldn't always think about earning more. He also said he didn't like money, that money wasn't important to him, and that besides money, there were many other things, like love, that were more important. Later, I realized that during that time, he was enjoying the romance of love.

During that period, he often strongly opposed me, believing that my thoughts and actions of liking money were wrong, unhealthy, and should be corrected immediately and thoroughly. His opposition and criticism caused me great confusion and pain for a long time. I didn't know if he was right or if I was right. I wanted to know if others liked money as much as I did, and if they were also studying and practicing how to legally and openly earn more money through hard work and dedication. I wanted to know if my liking money was really wrong, and if I was the only one with such so-called unhealthy thoughts. During that time, I kept reflecting on this issue, but I couldn't find an answer.

2. A Person Who Doesn't Like Money Gets Very Excited When Finding Money
One afternoon, the sun was shining brightly. I was crossing the road with my friend who didn't like money. We were walking in a crowd, and I felt him suddenly pull me, then he quickly ran to the other side of the road.

When I crossed the road with the crowd, I found him holding a few hundred-yuan bills, waving them at me in the wind. His face was blooming like a flower, his cheeks flushed, his eyes shining, extremely excited.

In his excitement, he leaned close to my ear and whispered that when crossing the road, he noticed a small red thing on the ground, quickly bent down to pick it up, and found it was three hundred-yuan bills neatly folded together.

He excitedly told me that he had never picked up so much money at once. That day he was extremely excited, and for a long time afterward, when walking on the road, he would pay special attention to red things on the ground.

Seeing his excitement, I wasn't infected at all; instead, I was very puzzled and couldn't understand. I asked him, "Don't you not like money? Why are you so excited when you find money?" But in his excitement, he didn't pay attention to my confusion and didn't answer my question.

Later, another time, he went to a bank to withdraw money and found a hundred-yuan bill on the floor under the ATM. He immediately picked it up quickly, didn't even do what he needed to do, and hurriedly left the bank. For many days afterward, when I passed that bank with him, he either walked quickly or left me alone and took a detour. I asked him why. He said he was afraid the bank security guard would recognize him from the surveillance footage and ask for the hundred yuan back.

His answer made me laugh, but I was still extremely puzzled and couldn't understand his behavior.

Logically, if he didn't like money, he should have not picked it up, or picked it up and given it to the police, or simply thrown it away, or given it to me. That would have been reasonable. Because he didn't like it! Who would treasure something they don't like? At least he shouldn't have been so excited. But his actual reaction was not only not that, but extremely excited.

I was puzzled by the contradiction between his words and actions. I thought hard about why, but I couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation.

3. The Real Meaning of Not Liking Money
During that period, he still occasionally strongly criticized me. My heart was still full of pain and confusion, and I continued to think about what was right and what was wrong. So, when I met acquaintances, I often asked if they liked money and discussed whether liking money was right or wrong.

This state lasted for a long time. I earned money while being criticized, and discussed and thought about this issue.

After much discussion and summary, I found that most people actually like money to some extent. The difference is that when faced with money and other things, they re-evaluate gains and losses, or choose what they think is more valuable or important based on their values. If the two choices are not contradictory, or if there's no need to choose, and they can directly get money without any strings attached, or if getting money doesn't require too much extra effort, or if the same effort yields more returns, then most people will still accept it without hesitation and be willing to work hard for it.

My friend's view that money isn't important and love is important only meant that at that stage of his life, money conflicted with love, so he had to give up money, or it meant he wasn't willing to work as hard as I did for money, not that he really didn't like money.

4. Liking Money Without Being Obsessed with It
When I figured out these issues, I realized that liking money itself is neither right nor wrong. The right or wrong lies in the way you like money, and how you earn and use it.

If you don't just appreciate "money" itself like the Grandet characters in literary works, but instead legally earn more money through your wisdom and hard work, and then make yourself, your family, and the people around you live and work better because of you, and let your company create more wealth for society, and make our homeland and country better, then such liking of money is healthy, should be advocated, and is correct.

Since I understood this principle of liking money without being obsessed with it, I focused more on researching and practicing my money-making philosophy. In my later work and life, I discovered and summarized many effective methods to rapidly increase sales performance. I applied these methods to the people around me and the companies I served, and they all had obvious effects.

These efforts and results have come together to form this book.

5. Trying Various Ways to Increase Income
While still in college, I was already trying to find and explore various ways to increase income. My undergraduate major was applied electronic technology, a technical field. Besides my major courses, I read almost all the books, magazines, and newspapers on economics and management in the school library. Looking back, those efforts indeed helped my current achievements, at least laying a solid foundation and broadening my horizons.

While studying, I also practiced various ways to earn more money. I tried selling cold drinks, published articles for royalties, and played the stock market. After graduation, most classmates went into technical work, and I followed suit. During this time, I developed many projects, helped others with cases, and sold office software I developed. During this period, I mainly relied on my technical skills for a living.

6. Discovering the Basic Model of Making Money: Product + Selling
In these efforts, I practiced, summarized, and thought about how to earn more money.

After long-term observation, thinking, and summary, I noticed a simple phenomenon. I found that any form of making money has a common rule: find something, sell it, collect the money, subtract the cost, and the remainder is the profit. Of course, it's also possible to lose money if costs are too high. So the key is to find or create such a thing and sell it well enough.

I summarized this into a formula, which I call the basic model of making money in any form:

Money = Product + Selling

The product can be something that already exists, or something you create from scratch, or a combination of existing things packaged into a new one. It can be a product, or a skill service, such as consulting or technical service. If you have nothing to sell, then sell yourself and your services, like selling your labor for work income. In short, you need something, then sell it.

Products can be common, but selling them well is not always easy. Different people selling the same product get different prices. Why do some products make more money when sold, while others make less or even lose money? Why can some people sell their services for 1 billion, while ordinary people's services only fetch a few hundred to a few thousand?

This is another crucial factor in the money-making model—selling. It is this selling that determines how much money you ultimately earn.

From this perspective, everyone, no matter what they do, even an ordinary office worker, should study "selling" well, at least to sell themselves and their services at a better price.

7. Two Puzzling Strange Things
Since I discovered that "selling" is so important, I worked hard to study it, understand it, and master it. I also gave up six years of technical accumulation and switched to sales to practice selling skills.

At the beginning of my sales career, I found two very strange things.

The first thing was that on the same street in front of my house, there were two different shops. One had very good business with high foot traffic, while the other was cold and had few customers. One restaurant was booming, while the other had almost no business and had to close soon.

Even now, I often see this situation. There are several large supermarkets near my home, and I used to go often. But I found that one had very good business, often with long queues at the checkout and crowded, while the others were cold and not as good. I kept thinking, why is there such a big difference between shops, supermarkets, and selling things?

The second strange thing I found was that for a while, my team and I worked very hard, but our sales performance was poor. We couldn't sell much and didn't earn much. Our products were hard to sell; as soon as people heard about them, they said no. Before this, I had worked with Chen Tianqiao at Shanda Network, and our products sold very well; we didn't need to push hard, customers scrambled to buy. I wondered why the contrast was so big.

Moreover, when I worked with Chen, we could easily earn a lot of money, but selling other things was tiring and hard, with little profit, and some salespeople in our team even had to work hungry because they couldn't earn enough.

I also noticed that some excellent salespeople around me claimed they could sell anything to anyone at any time and place. They were definitely more hardworking than Chen Tianqiao, but they earned far less than him.

I even doubted whether my earlier view that "selling" is so important was correct. Because if Chen Tianqiao sold the same products as us, in the same situation, as long as he didn't say he was Chen Tianqiao and others couldn't recognize him, I estimated he might not sell better than us. But in real life, he was the richest.

So during that period, I kept thinking, why is there such a big difference in selling the same things, and why is all this happening?

8. Several Painful Reflections
These two strange things plunged me into painful reflection. I also discussed these two things with people around me, but there was no complete, reasonable explanation. I had to search for answers alone, as usual.

During that time, I focused on the following questions:

First, is selling the only way to make money? Can I do without sales? Is selling more important than technology? If selling is important, why did I earn more money doing technology than sales? I could live well doing technology, without being so tired. So, can I just do technology and not sales?

Second, can sales definitely make a lot of money? Why don't those so-called sales masters have much money? Why don't those sales myth masters have as much money as Chen Tianqiao? If Chen Tianqiao and those sales masters were in the same situation, selling the same products, Chen might not sell as well as them, so why does he have more money?

Third, is sales really important? Theoretically, selling is important because you can only earn money by selling, but reality seems contradictory to theory. Why? Is selling not important?

During that period, besides work, I was almost instinctively thinking about these questions, even in my subconscious when sleeping, on the commute, while reading, and doing everything else.

This state lasted for several months. During this time, I continued to lead my team to sell our products, but I still couldn't figure out these questions. All the confusion seemed simple, but I couldn't sort it out or find a reasonable explanation.

9. An Important Moment of Enlightenment
One day, as usual, I hit a wall in sales, selling nothing, and even no one was interested. I felt particularly sad. After dinner, I lay alone on a chair on the balcony, holding a book and flipping through it casually.

That day, I was reading a history book that recorded the difficult entrepreneurial process of Chairman Mao leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising troops to Jinggangshan.

The book said that when Mao and his comrades were sleeping in the early morning, the troops were attacked by local reactionary landlord armed forces. The troops were forced to fight hastily, and due to unfamiliarity with the terrain, they lost the battle and had to retreat urgently. During the retreat, the troops were temporarily scattered, and the initial few hundred people were reduced to just over forty. The soldiers were tired and hungry, with nothing to eat.

My mood was sad because of the sales setback, but seeing how Mao and the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, despite suffering such severe setbacks at the beginning of their cause, still led the soldiers to overcome numerous difficulties and firmly strive for the liberation of the Chinese people, my heart was filled with strength. Connecting this to the revolutionary troops' setback, I wondered: Were Mao and his comrades also afraid of fighting back then? Were they inexperienced and not good at this kind of battle?

But in fact, Mao was a great military strategist. How could a great military strategist be afraid of fighting? Isn't that contradictory? I put down the book, lay on the chair, and quietly pondered.

War, fear of fighting, great military strategist, sales, fear of sales, the pain and failure of first arriving at Jinggangshan, bravely facing challenges—these things were intertwined in my mind, a mess. I lay on the chair, closed my eyes, and gradually calmed down.

Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind like lightning, and I suddenly became enlightened. My whole heart was clear and bright. In an instant, I realized I had found the answer I was looking for. The confusion that had troubled me for months was suddenly all resolved.

10. The Mystery Unraveled, It Was So Simple
I discovered that there are two forms of warfare: one is hand-to-hand combat, where two forces fight directly until one defeats the other. The other is strategic warfare, where the goal is also to defeat the opponent, but regardless of the method, even without direct combat.

Mao and his comrades might have been afraid of hand-to-hand combat, but Mao's strategic warfare was superb and unpredictable, which allowed him to defeat the enemy in battles and ultimately win. So he was indeed a great military strategist!

From this, I suddenly realized that selling, like warfare, also has two different methods. One is brute-force selling, which involves introducing products or services to customers one by one, addressing their doubts, persuading them to pay, and successfully collecting money. The other is strategic selling, which relies on skills, techniques, and methods to sell more products to more customers with less effort and more ease, and collect money.

Brute-force selling is what we usually call push selling, while strategic selling is what we usually call marketing, also known as marketing. Brute-force selling is like hand-to-hand combat in war, while strategic selling is like strategic warfare. Hand-to-hand combat relies on hard fighting, while strategic warfare emphasizes wisdom and strategy, achieving the final result through intelligence and relatively easy means.

Since I understood this principle, all the questions that had troubled me were resolved, and all confusion had reasonable explanations. The mystery was unraveled, and it was so simple.

11. Months of Confusion Fully Understood
From then on, all the pieces in my mind connected, and the confusion that had troubled me for months became clear. Reorganizing, it became even clearer.

First, selling is not the only way to earn income; other jobs can also earn income, such as technology, programming, or even office clerk, administrative, and logistics positions. If done well, these jobs might earn more than selling.

Second, if a person wants to earn more money and significantly increase their income, learning and mastering sales is essential and necessary. This applies to any job or activity, even if they are just doing technology or ordinary clerical work, because doing technology or clerical work is also a form of selling—selling your skills and services. When selling services, why can some people sell at high prices while others can only sell at low prices? It's because the level of selling is different.

Third, selling, like all other jobs, is just a skill. Having this skill doesn't guarantee making money; it depends on how you use it. Used well, you earn more; used poorly, you might not earn or even lose money. For example, sales masters only indicate their skills are good, not that they necessarily have a lot of money.

Fourth, selling, like other things, has two types: one is instinctive hard fighting, and the other is strategic, clever, and skillful. The latter method achieves the same result with less effort. Not everything must be done in the most clumsy way. But if you can't think of a clever way, then you have to use the clumsy method. In business, some people use strategies and skills to sell well, so their business is good; others passively wait, so they do worse. So, on the basis of clumsy methods, try more clever methods to achieve the same effect.

Fifth, Chen Tianqiao is also a top-level sales master. The reason Chen became the richest person at that time is not only his marketing but also his push selling, which was equally brilliant. Because he could sell a piece of paper contract to several major suppliers, which would be difficult without top-level selling skills.

12. Several Terms: Selling, Sales, Push Selling, Marketing, Doubling Performance
So far, we have become familiar with a series of concepts related to selling. It is necessary to clarify the meanings of these concepts in this book for accurate understanding.

• Selling—Selling something. This is what we usually call sales. In this book, selling is often used to replace sales, or sales to replace selling.
• Sales—Divided into two forms: one is hand-to-hand push selling, the other is strategic marketing.
• Push Selling—The most basic form of sales. In this book, sales is sometimes used to replace push selling.
• Marketing—Marketing in English is called Marketing, often called 行销 in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and 营销 in mainland China, also known as market marketing. In this book, marketing broadly refers to all methods and techniques that make products easier to sell and sell more with less effort.
• Doubling Performance—In this book, it refers to using push selling, marketing, or all appropriate skills, techniques, or methods to rapidly increase a company's revenue by several times.

13. Sales and War
When I understood that sales, like war, can be divided into two methods, I further compared the commonalities between sales and war, and found that using the laws of war to explain sales yields many unique insights. More importantly, these clear insights can in turn promote better sales work.

I summarized at least the following aspects worth considering.

I. Classification and Selection of Commanders
A senior general commanding an army can be divided into three types based on their nature and skills:

(1) Martial General—A brave warrior.
This type of general excels at hard battles, tackling tough problems, and daring to face any opponent without fear. A typical representative is Zhang Fei from the Three Kingdoms period.

(2) Civil General—A wise and scholarly general.
This type may not be good at hard battles, but excels in wisdom and strategy, often appearing unexpectedly and winning by surprise, leaving opponents unable to respond and eventually defeating them.

(3) General with Both Wisdom and Courage, Capable of Both Civil and Martial Skills.
This type combines the advantages of the previous two.

This classification is very important for selecting sales team leaders, understanding what kind of leader can lead a sales team well, and how a sales leader should combine their own strengths to lead the team.

In the past, it was often thought that a sales team leader must be good at push selling, with rich frontline selling skills and extensive practical experience. From the perspective of military general classification, this view is somewhat one-sided, because it's like saying only brave generals can be commanders. In fact, this is not the case. In military selection, it's entirely possible to use civil generals to lead troops. There have been many classic cases in history, such as Zeng Guofan, who had no prior experience leading troops but could command and train an invincible army. This shows that a person with no selling experience can also lead and train a capable sales team. In my past sales experience, this has indeed been confirmed.

Therefore, in a sales team, the leader's personal characteristics and whether they excel at hand-to-hand or strategic warfare should be considered, and accordingly, battle tasks and strategies should be adjusted to maximize overall effectiveness. This is also about knowing people and being good at leading troops in a sales team.

II. Division and Cooperation of Military and Political Work
The purpose of war is to defeat or eliminate the opponent. A military's combat capability is the fundamental guarantee of victory. However, political and ideological work in the military is very important for mobilizing soldiers' passion, uniting the troops, and improving combat effectiveness. So in the military, military and political work are separated and assigned to different commanders. This division and cooperation makes political work another strong guarantee of military victory.

This method of division and cooperation between military and political work also has important implications and guidance for sales teams.

Sales work, like military work, is judged by results. In this process, sales team members also face various pressures, difficulties, and even traumas. Political and ideological work can relieve pressure, heal trauma, mobilize passion and enthusiasm, unleash creativity, gather collective wisdom and strength, unite to overcome difficulties, meet challenges, and achieve sales results more effectively. This is something many sales teams that only focus on sales results but lack political and ideological work should learn from.

In typical sales teams, high turnover or over-reliance on certain salespeople are typical manifestations of only valuing sales and not valuing political and ideological work. So a good sales team should also value political and ideological work, which is equally important for ensuring sales results. This is not easy to see from a purely sales perspective, but it's obvious from a military perspective. It seems that the business world is indeed a battlefield, and using military thinking to guide business warfare can yield good results.

Political and ideological work can not only be applied to sales teams but also to other departments in the company, allowing colleagues and the company to develop together in unity. We will further discuss the application of this political and ideological work in enterprise management in Chapter 6 on team management.

III. Team Coordinated Operations
Modern warfare often consists of a series of battles, during which various branches of the military coordinate operations to achieve final victory.

This idea of team coordinated operations also has good guidance for sales work. If conquering a customer is seen as a war, then there is a series of work to do, such as pre-war analysis of the enemy and ourselves, situation consultation, adjusting action strategies based on the latest progress, coordinating various forces during the war, and timely summary and analysis after the war. In this process, every step requires the team to work together to maximize effectiveness.

This team coordinated operation is different from individual solo operations. In actual sales work, many companies still use solo operations, which greatly reduces sales efficiency.

14. Based on Hand-to-Hand Combat, Develop Strategic Warfare
When I understood these concepts and their relationships, I added another question: Is push selling or marketing more important? Should a company's sales work prioritize push selling or marketing? Should a salesperson spend their most precious time desperately pushing sales, or should they calm down, use their brains, and cleverly sell more with less effort?

Answering this question correctly and timely was important for our team's direction at that time. Because before me, the team focused more on push selling, advocating hard-fighting sales, but with little effect. I vaguely felt this method was not a long-term solution, and that there might be easier ways to achieve the same effect. But the operational approaches of these two methods are completely different. Facing this situation, I couldn't determine which method should be strongly advocated.

Just when I was confused, I suddenly thought of the relationship between sales and war, and immediately understood.

From a war perspective, is hand-to-hand combat or strategic warfare more important? Which should be prioritized in a war? This is a settled question. The famous military strategist Sun Wu, in "The Art of War," gave a brilliant summary: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting; the next best is to break the enemy's alliances; the next is to attack the enemy's army; the worst is to besiege fortified cities, which is a last resort." According to Sun Tzu, the best way to use troops is strategic warfare, and the worst is hand-to-hand combat to attack cities, which is only used when absolutely necessary.

So hand-to-hand combat is a last resort, and "subduing the enemy without fighting" is the highest realm of war, which a commander should first strive for. This is the most ideal result of war.

From the perspective of economic input and output, this strategic warfare of "subduing the enemy without fighting" should also be prioritized. Because to achieve the same result, strategic warfare is the strategy with the least input, least loss, and greatest benefit. So to maximize benefits, strategic warfare should be the first choice.

Since strategic warfare is so important, is hand-to-hand combat completely unimportant? Can we only develop strategic warfare and abandon hand-to-hand combat?

This can also be answered by observing the laws of war. In war, strategic warfare is indeed extremely important, but good strategic warfare is built on strong hand-to-hand combat capability. Only with a large army and invincible combat effectiveness can you deter the opponent, making them dare not act and have to give up resistance, achieving the effect of "subduing the enemy without fighting." So, although an army will prioritize strategic warfare in actual war, its daily hand-to-hand military training is still essential.

Similarly, proficient push selling skills are the guarantee for marketing to achieve the best results. So sales work should be based on hand-to-hand push selling, develop strategic marketing, combine push selling with marketing, and let marketing enhance push selling, working together to maximize sales performance. This is the fundamental way of selling.

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