Why Formic Fired All Their Technical Salespeople (And Grew Faster)

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Saman Farid, CEO and Founder of Formic, shared one of the most controversial decisions his robotics company ever made: firing technical salespeople.

Most robotics founders would consider this heresy. When you’re selling complex hardware deployed in manufacturing facilities, conventional wisdom says you need salespeople who understand the technology. People who can speak the language of engineering specs and integration requirements.

Formic believed this too. Then they discovered they’d been making an expensive mistake.

The Robotics Sales Orthodoxy

Every robotics company hires the same profile: former engineers, people with manufacturing experience, technical experts who can discuss torque ratings and sensor fusion. “I think a lot of people really believe that in order to sell something as technical as a robot, you really need somebody who can understand manufacturing, understand robotics, understand all of the technical aspects of it,” Saman explains.

The logic seems airtight. Your prospects are VPs of Operations dealing with production lines and quality control. How can someone without technical background possibly relate to their challenges or build credibility?

For Formic’s early existence, this question had only one answer: hire technical people.

The Pivot That Changed Everything

“I think one of the most important go to market decisions we’ve realized is that hiring technical salespeople is a bad idea,” Saman says. “In robotics and automation, that’s quite controversial.”

This came from watching their sales motion struggle despite technically competent people in the field. The problem wasn’t that technical salespeople couldn’t sell. It was that they were solving the wrong problem.

Formic sells robotics-as-a-service. Manufacturers pay hourly for robot capacity, just like hiring human workers. The business model makes robotics feel like hiring labor, not buying capital equipment.

But technical salespeople naturally start selling the technology. They talk about robot capabilities and technical advantages. That’s not what the customer needs to hear.

What Customers Actually Buy

Manufacturing facilities face a crisis unrelated to robotics technology. “There’s currently one and a half million unfilled jobs in manufacturing looking for people,” Saman explains. “10,000 baby boomers per day are retiring out of the manufacturing industry and are not being backfilled.”

VPs of Operations aren’t thinking about robotics technology. They’re thinking about twelve unfilled positions, production lines at 60% capacity, and overtime costs destroying margins.

When technical salespeople talk about robot specifications, they’re answering questions nobody asked. They’re trying to sell robotics when customers need solutions to staffing crises.

Formic built a product that solved labor problems but hired people who wanted to talk about technology problems.

The Counterintuitive Solution

Formic’s solution inverted conventional wisdom. “We really pivoted towards hiring much less technical sales people, but instead focus on salespeople that really understand our customers and where they’re coming from,” Saman says. “And it’s made a world of difference.”

This doesn’t mean abandoning technical expertise. They made a structural decision about where that expertise lives. “We can supplement our salespeople with technical solutions engineers,” Saman explains. Solutions engineers handle technical questions and deployment specs. But they’re not leading customer conversations or building relationships.

Salespeople focus entirely on understanding operational challenges. They speak the language of staffing problems, not robotics capabilities. They understand manufacturing operations because they’ve lived in that world as operators or managers.

Why This Actually Works

The pivot succeeded because it aligned how Formic sells with what they actually sell. “What we can’t afford is somebody who doesn’t understand our customer and our customers pain points and our customers needs,” Saman says.

When selling labor replacement, the conversation isn’t technical. It’s operational. Prospects need someone who understands losing three workers in one week with no replacements. Someone who gets the downstream effects on delivery commitments. Someone who can discuss the total cost of understaffing, not robot specifications.

Customer empathy can’t be faked. Either your salesperson has lived these challenges or they haven’t. Technical knowledge is supplementable through solutions engineers, documentation, and support structures. Genuine understanding of customer pain is not.

The Broader Principle

Formic’s experience reveals a principle beyond robotics: match your sales hiring to what you actually sell, not what you technically do.

Selling labor replacement? Hire people who understand labor problems. Selling compliance solutions? Hire people who’ve dealt with compliance pain. Selling developer tools? Hire people who’ve felt developer frustration.

Technical aspects are table stakes. Prospects assume you’ll answer their technical questions. But that’s not why they buy. They buy because someone understands their problem and can credibly solve it.

This matters especially in categories where past failures created skepticism. Manufacturing facilities have robot graveyards full of expensive equipment that didn’t work. In this environment, technical credibility is necessary but not sufficient. What breaks through is operational credibility—showing you understand their world.

Making the Transition

For founders with technical salespeople, start by assessing what customers actually care about. Are deals stalling because of technical concerns or because prospects don’t see how you solve their real problem?

If it’s the latter, restructure. Move technical expertise into solutions engineering. Hire salespeople who’ve lived your customers’ pain. Let them lead with empathy and support them with technical resources.

Formic now operates across 100 factories with high conversion rates once prospects understand what they do. The company that almost hired for technical expertise instead found massive growth by hiring for customer understanding.

Sometimes the most important decision is recognizing which conventional wisdom to ignore.