A lot of young professionals are curious to know how is their day going to look like once they get into the professional world. I had the same questions too. Here’s what to expect:
1. PROSPECTING
What is it like to work in the early mornings in sales??
If you are just starting, it means you are doing a lot of prospecting, which means you are cold calling, cold emailing, adding and connecting with people on social media, especially LinkedIn. When I started working in Chennai, India, I had to wake up early, have something to eat, get to the office and start my networking from start to finish.
There were various pros and cons to this. It had a steep learning curve in regards to dealing with people. The day to day life was fun and challenging but also has a propensity to hurt you as you deal with a lot of rejection and a lot of people were not nice to me (later I realized that this isn’t personal at all). I sometimes also felt like I was bothering them in some ways. Sometimes people were receptive towards me but a lot of times, if I caught them at a bad moment, their attitude toward me was not the best. Regardless of these pros and cons, I had to persevere and keep dialing till I got the relevant information in order to progress to the next step.
Later I found that cold emailing was a better option than cold calling (even better if you can do both in tandem), as it gave me more reach in a shorter amount of time. I could also get away with being more vague in an email than on a call, so this enabled me to cast a wider net at more companies and industries. Also, cold emailing is a whole different ball game than cold calling and definitely one, where most of us are much better at. For one, we have all the time to compose our thoughts, create a whole script for sales and send it without any interruptions. Also, any response we get is more serious and targeted. We also have the presence of mind to take each email on a case by case basis, prioritize which ones are the most urgent and set meetings accordingly, versus the first come first serve, as on the cold calling method. Cold emailing also makes the job easier, as the rejection is not felt over an email. There is only positive reinforcement at the end of the day. Anyhow, generating leads will always be the first order of the day for the starting tech sales job.
2. INTERNAL SALES MEETINGS
The other thing that kept me on my toes, after prospecting, were internal sales meetings. As you know, with every machinery, all parts have to work together in a cohesive manner. This requires a lot of coordination in the department and more so between them. I first had to build the right kind of relationship with people internally and maneuver office politics before I could get to hosting external meetings. My sales managers those days used to call us in a room, lead the meetings and ask for updates from all of us and give us our tasks. This was during the time when my immediate supervisors were sitting in the same country. However, not much has changed in the past 15 years. We still get onto a team call first thing in the morning and get updates before we begin our day. The only thing which is different, we are all in different cities, and countries. I was very lucky to get good mentors and coaches in my career, who showed me the ropes early on, and guided me from making embarrassing blunders. It is a good idea to be on good terms with supervisors and team members as they can guide you, train you and help you along the way. My first friends and allies from my first job are still my mates. Selling technology gets technical, so you cannot be a recluse in your department, especially as you start moving up the ladder and need to interact with different departments and have different conversations specific to that sale everytime.
When you are toward the end of closing a sale and the customer brings his/her tech experts and engineers, you too need to have experts by your side to go over things. These experts are not sales people themselves, but you need to have a good working relationship as they will be there to vouch for your product and sell it to the customer based on their skills and knowledge. Another important thing to keep in mind is that, the world, especially the silicon valley is a global village. You will almost always meet the same people again in your career, so it makes sense to not burn bridges or not maintain a cordial relationship.
3. TECH SALES IS FAST PACED!
Everything in the world of Tech sales is fast paced. Especially if you are working at a startup, where you have to figure out product fit with the new customers, have as many meetings as you possibly can etc. The technology is also ever changing and needs to be kept up with constantly. You need to be out there, testing your product, making sure you are keeping ahead of the competition or atleast differentiating yourself enough to make a marked difference. It might be a little slower with MNCs as it is not about high speed or number of accounts, but more about high touch, where you build good rapport with the certain accounts that you are in charge of and keep a good relationship with that focus, giving your time and resources into the program. This is not to say that they are sluggish. They just require different types of work and definitely have more approvals and paperwork. But then you have a bigger circle of support to help you through it. If the fast paced environment is a factor in your job hunt, just ask the recruiter about how it is to work in that company and some more technical details about what they expect you to do there, you’ll get a pretty good idea about how hectic your schedule will be. Company culture is something that you can ask about in vague terms but will only experience it when you join the workforce yourself. Every industry has its own work politics. As a sales person, I always felt that my focus should be solely on my work and other things will fall into place. At the end of the day, you need to achieve your targets, and keeping your morale high with a positive attitude is something that only you can be in charge of.
A day in the life of a salesperson can also get as exciting as it is demanding. Even as a fresher in the company, I got to go meet the prospects and customers in new cities and had lunches in some fancy restaurants. This probably will not be a regular occurrence, but if you are a person who likes to travel and explore, sales at a higher level can bring a bit of excitement in terms of meeting new people and having new experiences.
