Growing up in the Bay Area, you didn’t even need to like sports to be a fan.

The 49ers football team, for example, had a multi-decade dynasty, smoothly handing off from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another.

And then there was baseball. We had two teams to choose from and they even met each other in the World Series one year.

I’m still a fan of the A’s and Giants. When it looked like Oakland was losing its team (to Las Vegas via Sacramento), I scheduled a trip to see the last homestand.

And it was a great night for baseball:

The Coliseum, the hunk of concrete from the 1960s where they’ve always played, does not hold up to modern ballparks. But it evokes a certain nostalgia, so I stayed for about an hour after the game was over. Lots of others did, too.

Several vendors were selling hot dogs when I exited the gate. Other fans were milling about, so I bought one and stood around taking it in.

The hot dog set-up itself was a flexible little stand. Each seller had a small wheeled cart holding a grill and a disposable fuel can. They could move to another location without a lot of rigamarole. Just a normal amount of roll.

Check it out:

As I stood outside with my dog, talking baseball with other fans, I watched them do exactly that. See the vendors surrounded by customers in the image? Two minutes before this picture was taken, that was a group of fans who didn’t know they wanted hot dogs.

The vendors had been closer to the exit but wheeled the cart over and started making sales.

Like the fans enjoying the post-game revelry, developers are doing their own thing. They aren’t thinking about your product.

Before developers discover your product, they are doing something else: solving a problem, learning a skill, or chopping down some of their issue backlog.

You need to wheel your cart over and—here’s the part that might differ from a hot dog vendor—unobtrusively—let developers know of your presence.

That can be attending a developer event, chatting authentically in a community, or posting a technical article that shows you understand them.

In each of these circumstances, you’ll ​show you put developers first​. If you mean it, that will build trust. The kind of trust that might eventually get them to buy your hot dog equivalent. Or at least try your dev tool.

Are you able to put devs first? Do you need help showing up in the right way?

Tap reply or ​see how EveryDeveloper can help​.