[floridaorange]

Do you like your sales job?

Im interested in getting back into sales, I'm clueless where to even begin. I've done commercial real estate brokerage, life insurance, solar panels, teleahealth, lots of retail, and now I'm curious what might be out there. I know a lot of ppl work remotely these days, so are you in sales, do you like it? Do you have any suggestions? Was considering maybe looking into cyber security…. possibly even luxury boats/yachts.

Thank you.

[Tommy-G]

Street pharmacist?

[Alfisti]

After 20 years in Ops I just changed to account management and sales. I am not a natural sales guy, I am a "find a way to fucking get it done right and on time" guy. So i am more a natural at account management than i am at pitching or trying to create a relationship from nothing. I will say that so far it is a SHIT TON less stress, being responsible for a department with 25 full time and 400 part time staff has it's moment I tell ya what.

[infinitekidM2C]

Originally Posted by Tommy-G

Street pharmacist?

He's thinking of selling Florida oranges off the freeway exits.

[F30lolz]

ABC!

[zx10guy]

I made the transition from being the grunt in the data center setting up systems to being a sales engineer in 2011. Walked away from a 12 year career when I made the change. It was a major culture shock as I hate sales people; which is probably why I've been able to get my customers to relate to me. Also making the move from being a Federal contractor was a big adjustment. Many things that happen as part of the sales motion would be very questionable working in the Federal world.

You have to focus on an area where you have a genuine interest. What do you want to do? Be a straight sales person/account exec, be an inside rep, or a technical sales resource. All of these positions are very different. You mention cyber. Do you have any IT experience? Are you ok with quotas?

I have to say I'm not sorry I made the transition. I'm still a sales engineer. The position allows lots of flexibility with my work schedule. I do work from home but I do have to visit clients (prior to the shut down).

[floridaorange]

Thank you - that is helpful feedback… I think I like the idea of sales better than the process to be totally honest. But I do see myself in some kind of sales position over the next 3-5 yrs. Some of the absolute best salesman I've been around are just great at follow up and being the kind of person clients enjoy hearing from. Often the kind of person is not very sales focused at all, so i'm not surprised to hear that the 2 of you who have responded don't have a background in sales per-say.

[zx10guy]

You have to weigh the good with the bad with sales. A lot of it boils down to the company you work for. You'll learn to love or hate Sales Force. Sales Force is the universal application used for all things related to sales. I hate it with a passion. My first employer forced all of us sales engineers to practically live in that app. Later, I fortunately had account execs that handled all the backend sales admin BS for me. They let me focus on what I am good at which is being laser focused on the technology and to be able to have the freedom to work with our clients. The managers at said company got lazy and used Sales Force as their primary means of understanding the business versus actually talking to the individual sales teams and visiting any of our clients in person. They much preferred to sit in their ivory tower and hit a button on their screen to view a report.

Also, there is this thing called a success tax. What this means is if you do well or blow out your number, count on your next year's quota to go up substantially. This is done for a number of reasons mainly around controlling the amount the company pays out in commissions.

I say all of this so you're careful with being selective of which company you end up working for in a sales capacity.

[Bunnny]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

You have to weigh the good with the bad with sales. A lot of it boils down to the company you work for. You'll learn to love or hate Sales Force. Sales Force is the universal application used for all things related to sales. I hate it with a passion. My first employer forced all of us sales engineers to practically live in that app. Later, I fortunately had account execs that handled all the backend sales admin BS for me. They let me focus on what I am good at which is being laser focused on the technology and to be able to have the freedom to work with our clients. The managers at said company got lazy and used Sales Force as their primary means of understanding the business versus actually talking to the individual sales teams and visiting any of our clients in person. They much preferred to sit in their ivory tower and hit a button on their screen to view a report.

Also, there is this thing called a success tax. What this means is if you do well or blow out your number, count on your next year's quota to go up substantially. This is done for a number of reasons mainly around controlling the amount the company pays out in commissions.

I say all of this so you're careful with being selective of which company you end up working for in a sales capacity.

My last employer made us use 'Sales Farce' too. It was the biggest joke given that we were a huge technology company, and had to use that POS to log everything that we were doing / already did into it, dispite NONE of our systems communicated with it. I too loved my sales job, but when they started piling this shit on without clearly advising how it works, and no one knew how to use it properly for the first 6 months, it became monotonous.

My advice is research who you want to work for, and what you want to do with them. Also, start up companies promise the world but they can fall flat in a day.