I feel like I’m regularly having to advocate for my existence, and the existence of developers who are like me, within the sales and marketing funnel for many APIs. I sign up for a lot of APIs, and have the pleasure of enjoy a wide variety of on-boarding processes for APIs. Many APIs I have no problem signing up, on-boarding, and beginning to make calls, while others I have to just my existence within their API sales and marketing funnel. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be expected to justify my existence, it is just that many API providers are setup to immediately discourage, create friction for, and dismiss my class of API integrator–that doesn’t fit neatly into the shiny big money integration you have defined at the bottom of your funnel.
I get that we all need to make money. I have to. I’m actually in the business of helping you make money. I’m just saying that you are missing out on a significant amount of opportunity if you only focus on what comes out the other side of your funnel, and discount the nutrients developers like me can bring to your funnel ecosystem. I’m guessing that my little domain apievangelist.com does return the deal size scope you are looking for, but I think you are putting too much trust into the numbers provided to you by your business intelligence provider. I get that you are hyper focused on making the big deals, but you might be leaving a big deal on the table by shutting out small fish, who might have oversized influence within their organization, government agency, or within an industry. Your business intelligence is focusing on the knowns, and doesn’t seem very open to considering the unknowns.
As the API Evangelist I have an audience. I’ve been in business since 2010, so I’ve built up an audience of enterprise folks who read what I write, and listen to “some” of what I say. I know people like me within the federal government, within city government, and across the enterprise. Over half the people I know who work within the enterprise, helping influence API decisions, are also kicking the tires of APIs at night. Developers like us do not always have a straightforward project, we are just learning, understanding, and connecting the dots. We don’t always have the ready to go deal in the pipeline, and are usually doing some homework so that we can go sell the concept to decision makers. Make sure your funnel doesn’t keep us out, run us away, or remove channels for our voice to be heard.
In a world where we focus only on the big deals, and focus on scaling and automating the operation of platforms, we run the risk of losing ourselves. If you are only interested in landing those big customers, and achieving the exit you desire, I understand. I am not your target audience. I will move. It also means that I won’t be telling any stories about what you are doing, building any prototypes, and generally amplifying what you are doing on social media, and across the media landscape. Providing many of the nutrients you will need to land some of the details you are looking to get, generating the internal and external buzz needed to influence the decision makers. Providing real world use cases of why your API-driven solution is the one an enterprise group should be investing in. Make sure you aren’t locking us out of your platform, and you are investing the energy into getting to know your API consumers, more about what their intentions are, and how it might fit into your larger API strategy–if you have one.
