Managing your sales career is up to you. If you’ve ever wanted to move into sales leadership, sell a different offering, or start your own business, you’ll need a plan to get there.
You can’t hope that someone else will discover you, automatically promote you, or recruit you for a better opportunity at just the right time. And a plan starts with understanding what you’re good at.
Here are five keys you’ll need to embrace to take charge of your sales career and build a better future.
Key #1: Sales Careers Get More Competitive as You Gain Experience
The further along in your sales career you go, the more competitive things get. For every ten sales openings, 8.5 on average are entry-level. That means only one or two roles in ten require specialized experience or sales leadership expertise.
And for every sales management position, there are plenty of experienced managers vying for the role, plus internal competition from top sales reps.
Most sales careers are structured like a pyramid. The highest number of openings sits at the bottom, and as you gain experience, the opportunities narrow while the competition for them magnifies.
Key #2: More Experience Doesn’t Automatically Mean More Money
It’s natural to assume more experience begets more pay. This isn’t necessarily the case in sales, and if you’re not careful, it can be the opposite. Experience is good up to a point, and then brings diminishing returns to employers.
Here’s why: experienced salespeople are expensive relative to entry-level salespeople. If an employer can replace experience with training and halve their monthly payroll commitment, they will.
It’s easy to think that because you’ve been doing something for years, you should get paid more. But sales isn’t about experience. It’s about results. People who lack experience but embrace hard work, prospecting, and determination can often go head-to-head with salespeople who have ten times their tenure.
If you doubt this is a market reality and you have 10+ years of experience, try to remember what you used to do early in your career. All the phone calls, late nights, emails, early mornings, follow-ups, persistence, crazy sales strategies, and long shots you took to win new business.
Are you still willing to do those things now? Better yet, are you still consistently doing any of them? If the honest answer is no, it’s time to ask what kind of salesperson you are now.
Key #3: Employers Hire Who They Want, Not Who They Need
Have you read any sales job descriptions lately? Exhaustive requirements that narrow the candidate pool can seem ridiculous from the outside. You can sell anything, after all, right?
But remember that people buy what they want, not what they need. Even with transferable sales skills, you won’t out-compete candidates who meet 80% of the stated requirements.
Do you need a degree in engineering to sell software? Doubt it. But if that’s what the employer wants, it doesn’t really matter.
If you’re looking for a new sales job, the best use of your time is exploring companies with similar offerings, sales cycles, and customers. Invest your time where you’ll have the biggest payoff, and look for openings with companies who can put your career capital to work.
Key #4: You Need Your Sales Job More Than It Needs You
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your company really doesn’t need you as much as you need it. This can be hard to come to terms with, but it’s the cold hard truth.
When you’re good at sales, it’s easy to let the ego get out of hand. You start to believe you walk on water and the company can’t live without you. You forget that your specific achievements took the effort of many others who work with you, or who came before you. Ego has a way of surfacing in interviews too, and here are six ways ego costs salespeople job offers.
Ask yourself:
- Who worked hard to develop the software you’re selling?
- Who wrote your company’s website, developed your marketing materials, and built your value proposition?
- Who warmed up your territory before you got there?
- Who delivers the services, implementation, and customer care that let you feel good about what you’re selling?
- Who’s mentored and trained you?
- How have you benefited from a lead, a training program, your peers, marketing, product development, your boss, and CRM?
It’s easy to discount the line of people who’d love to have your job, and the very opportunities you’re starting to feel disgruntled about.
When you feel undervalued, under-compensated, and unappreciated, remember that if you leave, the company will keep going. You will be replaced. Things won’t change much for your former employer, but they’ll certainly change for you. Sometimes dramatically.
Key #5: It Never Gets Easier
If you think you’ve earned your way out of cold calling, dealing with problems that are beneath you, or hustling hard for new business, you’re simply wrong. If you think you’ve paid your dues and you can coast, it will eventually catch up to you. That I can guarantee.
Coasting, or an unwillingness to aggressively hunt new business, may cost you advancement, new opportunities, or even your career. Sales roles require a certain amount of hustle that gets increasingly hard to maintain over time, and if you start to believe you’re above it, you’ll soon be looking for a new job, and maybe eventually a new career.
Manage the Career, Not Just the Quarter
No doubt, sales careers are difficult to manage. Even more so as companies change, technology advances, and customer buying patterns evolve. It’s easy to believe your past success will carry you forward and let you take your foot off the gas now and then.
But make no mistake: if you want to be in sales for the long haul, you’ll need to work hardest at managing your expectations and attitude. Keep your ego in check and your motivation strong.
Competing for new sales opportunities becomes increasingly difficult, but with the right attitude and drive, you’ll enjoy a successful and lasting sales career.
