If your buyers are developers, they're likely to ignore outbound emails or LinkedIn messages from salespeople. Instead, they evaluate your product by trying your solution, reading the documentation, or exploring open-source projects. Open-source platforms are crucial in their evaluation process, offering insights into the flexibility, scalability, and community support of various tools—key factors for long-term technology investments.
What's really important to developers is being able to talk to a real person who can give them straight answers, not just automated replies from a chatbot.
Developers prefer to contact someone directly from the company to ask quick questions. They are unlikely to fill out a form or send an email. If you provide a direct messaging option (from a real person, not a bot), there's a high chance developers will use this route. However, any minor inconvenience or time waste can drive them away.
🌎 GitHub has a global user base exceeding 100 million.
📌 The platform attracts about 14 million daily visitors, with each spending approximately 7 minutes per visit, indicating high engagement.
💰 It’s utilized by 90% of Fortune companies.
The buying journey of a developers usually start by looking at the product's documentation or its open-source info to see if it fits well with their current tech and if it will actually make their work easier. What's really important to them is being able to talk to a real person who can give them straight answers, not just automated replies from a chatbot.
The Developer's Buying Journey
There's a common belief that developers don't like talking to salespeople and would rather try out software on their own. But research from OpenView tells us something different:
Developers are picky and don't want to waste time.
They are not willing to try a tool out unless it made their “top 3 list”.
OpenView: Developer Running through a mental checklist before trying a product
Checklist item | Description |
Solves need | Users weren't willing to try a tool out unless it made their "top 3 list" based on the website description. |
Social proof | 50% of prospects wanted to see what other companies used the tools we interviewed them about. |
Integrations | The developer stack is huge and interconnected. Prospects want to be sure your tool can fit in. |
Pricing | Buyers at smaller orgs wanted to see a pricing page. |
Source: https://openviewpartners.com/blog/developer-buyer-journey/
Integrating Knock with GitHub
The integration of Knock with GitHub allows you to add engagement buttons to GitHub open source projects. This no-code solution can be implemented in just 10 seconds.
[https://start-chat.com/slack/knock/r9iJjb|Get my magic link]
Watch now to see how easy it is to add the Knock button.
