People who work in sales: how do you like it?

No experience? May try starting out as a sales development rep or business development rep, same thing. Farm the leads for the AEs but you learn the ropes and will find out quickly if you like carrying a quota.

Many moons ago I was a Field Engineer for a California based technology company. I was basically an installer and repairman for the hardware and software.

Then moved into sales with the same company. I enjoyed it much more, worked harder, and make more money.

ask lots questions of open ended questions and listen with intent to understand/learn rather than respond with solutions. Be honest and deliver on promises. Servant mentality and you will separate yourself as an asset more than than a salesperson.

Takes about a year of patience and head pounding to make “your mark”.

If you are motivated by money, sales is a great path.

Not sales personally here, but I can give you a finance's POV of sales within a company. I work with our salespeople pretty close from a finance pov helping come up with commission plans, payouts/calculations, etc...

We have 2 distinctly different sales groups in our company, but they are paid roughly the same just on wildly different types of plans. Main thing I have to say is understand your compensation plan, because a lot of our salespeople tend not to or dont want to understand it - or a sales plan that they all agreed to ended up being so complicated (this wasnt my plan ) literally almost nobody could figure out how they were getting compensated with commissions.

If you can get a good base salary - do it, you'll thank me later. Literally every sales person in our company, even the best ones, go through hard times where they are not selling much and even have $0 commission months at times. So if you can secure a good base salary, it will be worth it to you as a security blanket. Dont be that guy that lives off all that commission you get and when it dries up for a short period of time and come crying to executives/finance you need an advance. It doesnt go over well, almost ever. Live off that base salary as much as you can and treat the commission as gravy as much as you can. Too many times I've seen salespeople overleverage themselves when they start making some bank, go out and finance a 2nd home, boat, $80k truck, etc...then when things return to normal, or have some hard times, are in a really bad spot.

So if you're finding jobs with little to no base/salary pay, I'd be highly skeptical, because it means the moment things slow down, or you're in a dry spell, it could be really tough on you. Most of our salespeople get between $50k-$80k base salaries with some exceptions. So that's not tough to live on especially for you if you're making $60k-$75k right now. We have salespeople who only make a few thousand, maybe $10k or less a year in commission (and tend not to last long) and some other are rock stars and have made more than our CEO has in a year (this is a medium sized company ~600 employees).

For a newbie I'd definitely get a healthy base pay a s safety net, everyone thinks they are good salespeople until they arent or times get tough. I'd honestly say maybe 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 salespeople at our company would last long term on a low to no salary plan. We've taken a few salespeople on those types of plans, and for them it never worked out, but those people were mostly unproductive for a period of time and getting "nudged" to do better. We actually had 1 salesperson who had a $100k base, and he sold 1 really big fairly long term deal he would get commission on (2-3 years). He basically sold nothing for almost a year after that, and we moved him to $50k base from $100k to motivate him more, still nothing after another 6 months and he got taken to $0 salary after that, and he still sold nothing for another 6 months, and then got let go. This was all just due to laziness though on his part, not because things got dried up for 2 years in a row. He was sitting happy making $100k base and another $100k/yr from that big deal he booked.

True.

That is why my first response is that sales is for people who like money.
Managers will never need to motivate someone who wants to earn more.
And it doesnt feel like work when compensation goes up year over year (i.e. getting better, more efficient, more productive in time balance and focusing on the green activity).

Sales is all i know. Ive seen 2 plus decades of business cycles. Managers getting cut. Marketing getting cut. Trainers getting cut. The only time sales gets cut is when the company is filing bamkruptcy or the entire division is being closed. A good sales rep may actually be the most consistent and reliable job out of any.

I fricking love it. I was in pharma advertising account management for 17 years and was making really good money, but finally got burned out (as everyone in the agency world does). Was able to parlay that experience into a digital sales/content marketing role in the pharma/healthcare space, and my quality of life has improved by 100%, this year I'll make about 3x what I made my last year at the agency, my boss doesn't know the first thing about selling so he leaves me alone, my phone rarely rings, and I can spend the bulk of my day doing what I need to do to be successful. It's on me, and I'm no longer beholden to 10 other people doing their jobs to succeed.

quote:

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quit my sales job because I refused to work for the salary bonus bullshite.

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Salary is a drug they give you so you forget about your dreams. A bunch of dweebs from pharma just joined my company a year or so ago and they are all about this bullshite salary + bonus. They call it commission but we all know it doesn’t work like commission and is more like a bonus. If they pull that shite, I’m out.