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4 Intelligent Questions and Answers About Sales Careers
| Guest post by: Ken Sundheim |
Article Overview: Q: Are There Certain Industries I Should Avoid? A: No. This is a mistake made by many young job seekers. It is the company that makes or breaks a job much more than the industry-wide products or services it offers.
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Free Download - The Requirements to be a 10 / 10 Sales Professional By Ken Sundheim |
4 Intelligent Questions and Answers About Sales Careers
Q: Are There Certain Industries I Should Avoid?
A: No. This is a mistake made by many young job seekers. It is the company that makes or breaks a job much more than the industry-wide products or services it offers.
Believe it or not, the nicest office I've ever been invited to was a bedbug extermination company in Downtown Manhattan. Keep in mind that I have visited the New York offices of Google, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and more big names.
The bedbug office was beautiful, the people were a pleasure, and following our meeting the CEO made me an offer to run their sales force. If I were to ever go back to corporate, he would be the first one I would call.
As a salesperson it is easier being a big fish in a small tank than being just another trout attempting to sell complex financial packages against rivals such as Goldman, UBS and others.
What may seem unsexy at first may become very attractive when the product or service is purchasing your house, vacations and private school tuition.
Regardless of the economy, people are still going to eat Heinz ketchup, an everyday product from a company with a very high entry bar, stock options for employees.
Q: What About Industries with Low Entry Bars?
A: The easier it is for start-up companies to cheaply break into an industry and compete with existing players, the more stress the sales representatives are going to have.
Hosted and fully managed software services are a good example of an industry with little to no entry barrier.
This means that at any given time, the sales representative could have a dozen other qualified firms bidding for the same business.
Q: Can the Product or Service be Outsourced?
A: Sales as a profession is nearly impossible to effectively outsource. This is mainly due to slang, accents, and little cues in any culture that are difficult to pick up on and replicate.
However, if the product or service that the sales professional is selling is outsourced, that person is in for trouble.
When jobs are outsourced overseas, the sales team no longer has reliable customer service backing them up. They have little control over the success of a particular project, and they come to the negotiation table with major disadvantages.
If a product or service is outsourced unsuccessfully, the deadlines get missed, then the customer service slips, then the existing base of clientele go, finally to see the business's reputation follow.
Q: How Can I Tell if There is Advancement Within the Organization?
A: There is a false, yet widely held belief that the young sales representative ought to seek a job that comes equipped with a direct sales manager boasting over 25 years of sales management at the organization.
Only, think about it: If a sales professional is in the same exact position after 7+ years, there is something wrong with the company.
It may be that the sales manager is well-liked in his or her company, but could not sell so he or she was moved to more of a relaxed role. The sales manager may be complacent or unhappy, as surely over the years someone senior was hired or an internal promotion took place that he or she missed.
I have had clients in this situation send me their resumes because they wanted to leave the company due to management's lack of caring and lack of leadership skills.
Pick a job where your sales manager is only a few years ahead of you. This way, when he or she moves up, you're right in position to follow. Warren Buffett said that a good organization must be comprised of at least 15% of leaders. Pick the company that you perceive to have a 20% ratio.
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Article Tags: finding a job, sales careers, sales jobs
Related Forum Posts
Re: Contact Information
- Another idea would be to have an email form in place to accept "ticketed" inquires (if people are afraid of spammers seeing their email address). However, I hate how some sites try to persuade you out of sending an email by bombarding you with lists of "Frequently Asked Questions & Answers" as I find they're rarely helpful.
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz]
I second the request...
My reading log
- Hi OmnivoreInk,
Before starting my business, I read the following books as research:
-"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki
-"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm
-"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson
And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order):
-"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross
-"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom
-"The Twits" by Roald Dahl
-"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer
-"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne
-"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener
-"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
-"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer
-"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis
-"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer
-"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following:
-"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson
-"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
-"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett
-"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer
-"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch
-"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron
-"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
Re: Let’s talk about the ways of marketing your products, servic
- I agree with some of the others who responded it depends on what your selling... but to answer your questions here are some of the methods I use.
Forum Marketing
Yahoo Answers (I need to use more of)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Bum Marketing or Article marketing
P-P-C (Pay Per Click) Marketing
Online Directories
Hope this helps.
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