Where do I start to begin a career in sales? I'm not talking about scummy, shady car salesmanship or related ilk. I mean building relationships, following leads, asking questions, and such.
What does a path in sales look like and where are some places for entry level training and experience?
Eventually I want to find what I'm passionate about and sell that even as an entrepreneur.
I'm currently searching for a way tho
SELL ME THIS PEN
act like you're going to die if you don't sell something to someone
When was the last time you used a pen?
Yesterday.
How long have you been in the market to buy a pen?
How about your write down your name and number for me?
>You say I need something to write with
There you go supply and demand.
Welcome aboard! You can pretty much start in any area you want because salesmen are in-demand and full commission paid careers cost nothing for employers so they rarely ask for much credentials. Anyone can be a salesmen but a small percentage of people can actually make it and earn a real living. I myself started out in the field of insurance for no particular reason and it is hardo modo. Selling insurance is selling the idea or promise that when shit hits the fan your company is going to handle it for the insured and take away some of the risk they're exposed to.
When starting out in sales you'll want to devour all the information you can on just prospecting and getting past objections. You have to remember that the average consumer is bombarded with calls, commercials, real life salesmen, ect.. daily and unless you stand out you're nothing but more noise to them.
It's hard to say how much you'll earn annually because sales is something that fluctuates. If you do really well you'll probably spend 2-5 years grinding and building a client base before you slow down and just manage/maintain what you've grown. That's why starting out early you need to use your momentum to get yourself in front of as many prospects as possible to make something happy. You'll meet dozens of people every day and maybe you'll get a single yes that makes your month that contributes to a great quarter/year.
Anyways, I hope some of that info I threw your way was helpful, user-san.
So where would I start looking for these jobs that are everywhere in a way I'm not poking around too long getting poorer?
For example Craigslist seems pretty messy and confusing. Where do I go to find out where I fit and the different models or products
Do you remember what kind of pen it was?
I just applied for a sales job online, did 2 interbvews and they hired me with absolutely no experience
nice easy job from what Ive seen so far
What kind of sales?
in office an atm
selling steel tubing and pipes to engineering and construction companies
In my area (Wisconsin) there's a job website that allows for me to upload my resume, list types of work I want, asking pay, and specific areas I'm willing to work. I put up I was looking for sales and I was hit with lots of emails/calls from prospective employers. If you have such a similar website you should try it. I don't do Craigslist because I NEVER get a reply back and it feels more like someone's yanking my chain or stealing my info.
If you wanna maintain while doing a sales job you should either save up enough for 3-6 months worth a living or take a part-time job until you see real earnings.
Go on LinkedIn and indeed and look up BDR or SDR. Those stand for business development rep, and sales development rep. You'll be making a shit load of cold calls and setting up meetings for a senior sales person to close. It's usually a good starting point to get into professional sales and a lot of companies will have a 2-8 week training program depending on how good the company is.
You can also search inside sales, which is usually code for you'll be making a lot of cold calls and maybe closing deals.
Though these may sound sexier you probably won't be making very much money. You can likely make more selling cars at a decent lot.
What are you interested in? What do you want to sell?
You're going to want to start off as a sales development representative (SDR). They are also sometimes called ADRs (account) BDRs (Business) or MDRs (Marketing). Its essentially all the same crap, but SDRs BDRs and ADRs essentially focus on cold prospecting, whereas marketing development reps usually just qualify and pass off inbound leads. If you can find a job as an inbound lead processor, take it in a heartbeat. That shit is fucking easy, like seriously, a gorilla with a headset could do it, and you usually always end up hitting quota and making bonus because its all determined on the overall amount of inbound inquiries.
If you're not so lucky as to find an inbound job, you'll probably have to focus on outbound cold calling, emailing, linkedin, twitter, etc. ways of getting in touch with people. The SDR job is far and away the most thankless and most demanding job within sales of an organization, but if you grind it out, hit quota semi-consistently, company doesn't suck, and people don't hate you, you can probably work your way into an account executive role and actually close deals instead of just passing off qualified opportunities to someone else who closes. This is where the real commission money comes in. I've known several salespeople in this role to make several hundred-thousand $$ overnight on commission alone just by closing a big deal.
Training is important, but if you find a big enough company to hire you on as entry level sales development, then you're bound to get a basic intro into sales methodology and prospecting efforts. There's really only so much training can help though--in sales you either have it or you don't. My advice would be to look for a position in tech-sales. There's millions of well-funded startups that have security,data,cloud,software, whatever products. Starting off in tech sales is solid because if you can sell to IT within an organization, you can sell to anyone.
Marijuana, fabric, dye, solar energy, not insurance, pharmaceuticals, or finance
This is new information to me. I'll start digesting it and researching thanks
*puts pen in your hand*
feels good, don't it?
>If you can find a job as an inbound lead processor, take it in a heartbeat. That shit is fucking easy, like seriously, a gorilla with a headset could do it, and you usually always end up hitting quota and making bonus because its all determined on the overall amount of inbound inquiries.
this is me, Ive been told Ill have to cold call at points too but not constantly
Bump
Bump
Yer doing it wrong. Talk long; talk wrong, bruh. You need a pitch.
You learn sales by doing sales. That's really it right there.
As for where to start, really anything. I think door-to-door is fine, but really where you want to be is B2B. B2B sales is god tier in terms of experience. Some services you can sell:
payroll
print services
signs
IT Service
Merchant services
HR & recruiting
good luck.
Door to door is pretty badass. Huge, painful, awkward learning curve but the money is sweet, and what it does for self confidence and learning how to talk to people is almost cheating.
> what it does for self confidence
EXACTLY.
As human beings we are preprogramed to fear social rejection. It's a relic leftover from our days as cavepeople. In a tribe of 100 people a single big rejection could literally mean death for a person.
It's also a big part of the reason why men fear rejection from women.
But as humans evolved there are billions of us, and that same risk is not present. So whether it's a sale or a date if you can just rapid fire persist, and get good at charming people quick, you can move mountains.
But until you hit that mental breakthrough, those first few weeks are pretty uncomfy.