JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. If you work in sales, product, or operations for a technical company, you'll encounter it constantly. Here's what you need to know.
What JSON Looks Like
{
"customer": {
"name": "Acme Corp",
"email": "billing@acme.com",
"plan": "enterprise",
"monthly_spend": 15000,
"active": true
}
}That's it. It's just a way of organizing data using curly braces {}, square brackets [], keys, and values.
The Building Blocks
Objects use curly braces and contain key-value pairs:
{ "name": "Vijayshree", "role": "Sales Ops" }Arrays use square brackets and contain lists:
{ "skills": ["CRM management", "lead qualification", "API basics"] }Values can be strings, numbers, booleans (true/false), null, objects, or arrays.
Reading API Responses
When a sales tool or API returns data, it usually comes back as JSON. For example, when you look up a lead in an API:
{
"id": "lead_12345",
"company": "TechStartup Inc",
"status": "qualified",
"score": 85,
"tags": ["api-interested", "enterprise", "payments"],
"contact": {
"name": "Jane Smith",
"title": "CTO",
"email": "jane@techstartup.com"
}
}You can read this naturally: the lead is from TechStartup Inc, they're qualified with a score of 85, they're interested in APIs and payments, and the contact is Jane Smith, their CTO.
Why This Matters
If you can read JSON, you can:
- Understand API documentation without needing an engineer to translate
- Debug issues in your sales tools by reading error responses
- Have more meaningful conversations about data and integrations
- Set up and troubleshoot webhook payloads
You don't need to write code. You just need to be comfortable reading structured data. That alone puts you ahead of most people in non-engineering roles.