Resumes > 1 page = too long! Sales and Selling |
- Resumes > 1 page = too long!
- LinkedIn Prospecting - A (hopefully) helpful guide masquerading as career advice
- I would appreciate some of your insights
- I discovered I suck in sales - what can I do?
- How do you celebrate after you have a kick ass month?
- Is Enterprise sales more or less stressful than transactional/small business sales?
- Why do you like working in sales?
- Prospect tells me to talk to his current broker? How would you answer him.
- Help weighing offers.. ISP vs SaaS
- Anyone selling Patient Engagement Solutions to hospitals?
- The Case For Starting Your Sales Career At An Early Stage Start Up
- How do you find numbers to call for cold calling ?
- New employee: Should I attempt to get to know the Executive Vice President, Head of North America who just moved onto my floor?
- Is my cover letter too long?
- Automated Dialer
- For those of you in tech sales... If you just graduated college this month what would be your top five companies list?
- I think I screwed up.
- B2B Sales - Cold Calling
- Graduate looking for assessment day advice!
- Sales job for a kid who just graduated high school? (18)
- Microsoft MBA to AE program
| Posted: 31 Jul 2019 08:29 AM PDT Hey sales professionals! As a hiring manager in the med device industry, I have a lot of things to say about resumes. But I wanted to limit this post to one specific thing - resume length. If I were to apply for a sales job for myself, my resume would be one page long. I have been in sales for 14 years. I get a lot of resumes 2+ pages long for people who have sometimes only a year or two of experience. Honestly, you're not helping yourself. Most of the stuff on their is complete fluff that nobody cares about, and most managers aren't going to read them in detail anyway. If anything, it shows a lack of clarity and confidence. If you're applying for a sales job, you want to limit the scope of your resume. In other words, stick to the numbers because that's what the managers care about. Some good things to include are rankings, percentages to quota, awards you've won, or general sales numbers. What the managers are looking for are someone who will learn fast, over-perform on their plan quickly, and be consistent. Show that with your numbers, and bring documentation to back it up via a brag book/folder of some kind. You don't need a long objective statement (and consider eliminating it all together). You don't need to tell me you "Assisted customers with business optimization strategies" or some other generic statement which can basically be summed up as "selling." You don't need to include that you're proficient with Microsoft Office/Excel/PowerPoint, because that's assumed at this point. You don't need to list out the languages you speak, and level of proficiency (unless this matters to the specific position). You don't need to include every activity you participated in during high school, unless it's entry level and you have a good story you're planning to work in. I do like to see college performance and GPA. If your GPA is under 3, have a story to explain why. One guy was on a national championship soccer team and had a 2.9, and it was a great conversation. If you were an athlete or something similar, I like to hear about that also. So that's all. Keep the resumes short. The resume 1) gets you in front of the manager and 2) is a guide for you to show off how awesome you were AND will be for the new company. It's a guide for you to tell the story of you, not the story itself. tl;dr Keep the resumes short, as in one page. Long resumes annoy hiring managers. And focus on numbers! [link] [comments]  |
| LinkedIn Prospecting - A (hopefully) helpful guide masquerading as career advice Posted: 30 Jul 2019 03:55 PM PDT I'm seeing a lot of posts in this sub about LinkedIn prospecting and it's a combination of do's and don'ts that conflict. As someone that has been on both sides of the table, prospected and prospecting here's my best advice for anyone looking to use LinkedIn in a productive manner. This is taken from another post reply that someone suggested I just post in full to the whole community. Ok hopefully more than a few people can benefit from this. This sub is full of just hustle dial and kill it! Which used to work about 20 years ago - problem is those are all the people that are teaching this stuff today. It simply isn't an effective use of time anymore. But no one will tell you this because somewhere in the same 20 years since we've started to track everything by Data Points or KPIs. The reality is most modern KPIs don't really matter. For the vast majority of companies, all you really need is 20 good clients that pay you really well every month, that's it. Even SaaS companies just starting out, usually are being floated by their top 2-3 clients in the beginning. If I were running a sales org again, you allocate your CEO's time to doubling that every year and you leave you sales team to find strategic ways into tier 2 companies, these are ones with connections to the ones you are currently servicing. So to your question about touches and how often - you're already missing the point. It's not about touches, it's about quality over quantity. If you're targeting businesses, find an email through hunter.io or another service but use LinkedIn as an open forum to put yourself on the map. In most cases, LinkedIn should serve as your first cold call/email. I'll explain. If you know your target is on LinkedIn, you'll want to follow them, you can do this by going to their profile and clicking the 3 dots then click follow, note this is different from connecting with them, this will just allow you to see what they are liking, commenting on, or sharing. From the main profile you can see the recent activity for that person. You'll want to be patient and look for a string they have commented on or something they have posted on that fits what you have an opinion on, YOUR opinion not your company's. Congratulations, you now how a reference point to start a conversation and not in a creepy way. Wait a few days, then reach out. So now to your cold email. Scrap that shit entirely, we're not selling, we're gathering information to figure out if we should be spending time on this prospect or prospects they are connected to (note that second bit, at the end of the day you're really looking for a connector, they are worth more than just one sale, approach all sales like this). So really sales is about continued learning, meaning that every interaction you have with a potential client should be about learning. So how do you get this knowledge to become a thought leader in the space? It's actually easier than most people make it seem. This is the holy grail and is pretty much bullet proof in terms of systems that work every single time. To become a thought leader or respected in a space you have two options - been there done that and share about it or find people that have been there done that and aggregate their input. I know it's stupid but people are lazy and give a lot of respect to people that aggregate data about a particular area. Crazy. So if you don't have the experience, where do you get it? Well turns out that the people you're reaching out to likely have this experience. So what if instead of reaching out to pitch a product that they may or may not need you instead sent them a cold email asking for their expert opinion on the subject that your product aims to solve? A light bulb should be going off at this point. Come up with a topic and questions around things that you would ask during a discovery call, send them over to have people answer them in an expert way, send this out to a few people, aggregate their results add some spice and publish an article on LinkedIn, then post that to your timeline and tag them on LinkedIn, congrats you've now created something of value plus given a shout out to people you've talked to and started the unselfishness of creating a relationship. Welcome to how to use LinkedIn to grow a relationship and get the answers you want while posing as an interested party, bonus, you'll actually learn some shit in the process which will make you more of an expert in the space. Rinse and repeat - but be genuine the entire time. As your network increases with the right people you'll find that people are just an introduction away in most cases. Just my $0.02 about how the game should be played if you're looking to build long term success. To all the haters that say cold calling isn't dead etc, blah blah blah, I like to think of it this way, you have a finite TAM (total addressable market) if you burn through them too quickly doing stupid shit you're just making your life harder down the road. The corollary to that, which no one takes into consideration, is that people talk, if you company gets a bad rep, when someone looks for social proof, you can very easily lose deals. Your reputation as a rep is everything it will follow you beyond your first company all the way to your last one. When you reach out it should always be selfishly about building your long term worth not the company's. [link] [comments]  |
| I would appreciate some of your insights Posted: 31 Jul 2019 11:58 AM PDT TL;DR : Had first outside sales job interview, don't know if i fucked up or got an opportunity. Also got a interview for internal sales, will keep you all updated. As a starter... I'm 23 years old and just graduated with a degree in engineering. Went to my first sales job interview at a multinational company yesterday and i feel like i got crushed or have a big opportunity. They were 3 interviewers(1 F, 2 M), the female asked the questions (while constantly sniffing, so i think she tries to keep my attention towards her? Or...?), and the other 2 listened. I went a little unprepared( i know, big mistake) and i didn't got a really good nights sleep, but i still stood my ground, kept continuously eye contact and a poker face most of the time. In the middle of the interview, one of the guys walked out, while the female interviewer said something like "Did you forgot how you were in the beggining?". At the end of the interview, i didn't had the opportunity to negociate the salary or asked questions, because i felt literally crushed. Then she said they liked me, they saw potential in me, and if i want, to come back to a "first" interview again in one month. I agreed and left. Today i got a call from her, and she told me one of the new guys in one of the departments offered to train me, and wants to meet, so she gave him my number. Talked with the guy, and we'll meet the day after tommorow. I know i fucked up by not informing well enough about them, but i am so fucking confused, because she left me with the impression that they really liked me, but on the other hand i feel like i got played hard. Did i fucked it up that bad, and got played hard or were they as genuine as i thought they seem? Now... The crazy thing... Later today i got a call for a job in Internal Sales, another multinational company and it includes a 4 month paid training in Germany. I would like your guys insights on this whole thing, if you are willing to help me. Any other information needed, let me know. I. Am. All. Ears. (and eyes). [link] [comments]  |
| I discovered I suck in sales - what can I do? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 08:32 AM PDT I'm pretty down right now. A few years ago I had to look for a job next to university. I always was a nerdy guy who couldn't talk to people. I was overthinking everything and didn't understand human communication. I landed a call center job and felt super stressed about talking to these people. But then something unexpected happend - with every call I got more confident and then I made my first sale. Just an IT service package for 360Euro. Quickly I became much better. I liked to have this repeated structure in my calls. And it didn't take long after I was the best sales person in the whole center. I made multiple 1000Euro sales per day and my calls lasted maybe 20minutes. After a while I thought I'm stupid if I wouldn't do that for myself. So I started a business and now I realized that prospecting on my own is fucking hard. I didn't have this multibillion dollar brand behind me. People are questioning my service and want me to qualify myself to them. After one year I finally figured out how prospecting on LinkedIn works. But my confidence is really down. Also people do video calls over Skype and I suck in this. I feel like they can see what I am thinking. On the phone I could work only with my speech. Skype makes me insecure as fuck. I don't know how to go about this. Should I just accepted that sales isn't for me? I feel like a total loser right now. [link] [comments]  |
| How do you celebrate after you have a kick ass month? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 10:08 AM PDT |
| Is Enterprise sales more or less stressful than transactional/small business sales? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 11:56 AM PDT Obviously this is a very general question, but all else being equal, do you find transactional sales to be more or less stressful than selling to larger accounts? I work in telecommunications (hosted VOIP) to small businesses. I sell 25-40 accounts per month, but do utilize a consultative selling approach. This is my first sales job, and I'm wondering what it would be like selling to larger accounts, while having significantly less sales. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do you like working in sales? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 11:37 AM PDT Just accumulating some raw data and perspective. Tinks. [link] [comments]  |
| Prospect tells me to talk to his current broker? How would you answer him. Posted: 31 Jul 2019 11:23 AM PDT So I was sending a follow up email to a prospect after leaving him a message. The below is his response, he copied his current broker in as well. How should I respond to him? If his broker hasn't talked to him about this strategy, he needs a new one!!!!! but I know I can't say that although I'd like to! Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for the e-mail. Please review with Gxxx Bxxx of XXX--- they are our agent. Not sure it is a fit for our company, but happy to take a look. We are always looking for ways to control costs. [link] [comments]  |
| Help weighing offers.. ISP vs SaaS Posted: 31 Jul 2019 10:32 AM PDT Hi everyone, looking for some input to help me weigh pros and cons of two offers I have. Offer 1: Nationwide business ISP, essentially a National account manager role. $65k base, ~$110 OTE. A bit more than an hour commute in traffic. But I like the future prospects that internet provides (ie jump to data center industry down the road -big money there). Selling into on net opportunities nationwide. I accepted this offer already (they really put me on the spot), but start date is still weeks out. Offer 2: IT management and monitoring software platform. $100k OTE (but it's a $50k base), 20 minute commute ON BIKE. Latam territory. Does anyone have experience: selling for an ISP, or conversely selling similar software targeting Brazil or LATAM? Any experience anyone can share is very much appreciated [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone selling Patient Engagement Solutions to hospitals? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 06:39 AM PDT I'm thinking about potentially moving into a BDR role at a company that provides Patient Engagement Solutions for hospitals and wanted to get some advice from anyone in the industry. The platform appears strong and they have an impressive list of healthcare systems/hospitals as clients. Leadership within the sales department is also impressive. If anyone has some experience working in this space any advice would be appreciated. Is this industry considered SaaS, medical device (maybe a combo of the two) or something entirely separate? As someone that is new to sales, would this be a good industry to start in? Sorry if this has been asked before. I tried searching for any relevant posts, but couldn't find anything. [link] [comments]  |
| The Case For Starting Your Sales Career At An Early Stage Start Up Posted: 30 Jul 2019 06:35 PM PDT I wanted to post this because I've just hit the half year mark in my time at an awesome tech start up and have determined that thus far it has been one of the best choices I've made in my career. Having both experienced a typical F500 sales gig with long training and consistent processes, vs a start up, my honest opinion is that young reps should start their careers at a fast growing small company. To give you context, I joined my company 2 months before it secured a series A funding round. I'd like to quickly address a lot of the objections of taking a start up sales gig for a first job out of college, and address them 1 by 1. - Start ups have no training: corporate will be better for inexperienced reps - Start ups are risky: corporate will have you on a straight forward path to success where as start ups are a crapshoot - Start up culture sucks; corporate sales typically have better work life balance, benefits, etc. - Start ups aren't as good for building long lasting skills as corporate gigs. You're colleagues you work with in corporate will be more "elite". - Start ups have bad sales processes that are undefined and expectations / progression is unclear Now of course there are valid points to these objections to start up sales. I'm not going to pretend that start up sales can't be extremely stressful and taxing, and I'm not going to pretend that corporate sales cannot be a great career move for the right type of person, but here are my responses to the previously stated objections.... - Start up sales lacks good training: I've always found the best training is trial by error, and this involves actually selling. All of the most important sales lessons I've learned in my admittedly young career have come from mistakes I've made in the trenches. Also I'd argue after experiencing a typical "world class" sales training program at a F500, that a lot of the material is unnecessary. What I mean by this is that there's a lot of corporate fluff, pointless exercises and stuff like "sell on value, not features" that you could learn in any simple sales book. A lot of it is also purely product based training and the sales processes that involves selling one particular product may not translate to another. With this being said though, being one of the very first reps at a start up with little experience selling their own product is super difficult and I'd rather not take that extreme of a gig. - Start up sales are risky: This is the one I'd say is most valid of an objection. Anything can happen with a start up. You could be about to get promoted and then your CEO fails to get a funding round and can't afford to move you up. Not to mention the chances that some big internal problem completely outside your control can cost you lots of commission due to you having to wear multiple hats, instead of solely focusing on sales. The earlier the start up, the more risky. However if you are not risk averse, I think the start up can teach you valuable skills and life lessons you can't get in corporate. In my time here, I've gotten to interview new hires, participate in product releases, webinars, and beta tests. I've regularly discussed ideas with my CEO on moving the company forward (I'm 24 years old). I've also had to adapt to multiple territory and comp structure changes, which has made me incredibly versatile (arguably the strongest skill to have in sales). Dealing with the BS that is inherent with a start up can ignite you to learn how to deal with any punch that comes your way, if you go about it with a good attitude. -Start up culture sucks: Culture is and has always been entirely company dependent. My current start up has a fantastic culture, where they expect reps to take normal amounts of holiday and won't fire you for missing a few monts of quota out of the year. My corporate gig would discourage talking about anything that didn't make the company sound like a basket of rainbows and unicorns, and would passive aggresively encourage being a workaholic. Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of start ups have much less politics than big companies. Start ups, especially early ones, cannot afford to promote favoritism and unfair promotions because the turnover this causes hurts the company much more than a big corp. -Start ups aren't good for building long lasting skills and your colleagues aren't as elite: I used to think that everyone in a start up was there because they didn't get a job at Linkedin, salesforce, IBM, etc. Boy how wrong was I haha. When working for my F500 gig, I saw a very noticeable amount of lazy, and quite frankly mediocre sales reps, hiding behind their brand name when talking to clients. I could cold call someone and sometimes saying my company name would be enough to book a demo. A lot of the Account managers and AEs would benefit by the simple fact their competition rarely had the security or brand recognition they do. At my startup, everytime I call someone, they're using 3 of my competitors, who are legacy tools most of my industry has been using since the 80s. The skills it takes to sell to someone and convince them your product is better, when you're ripping out a 20 year process, takes wayyyy more skill and grit than selling Salesforce against some no name CRM. The enterprise AEs at my start up are cold blooded predators. I learn more about sales observing them do their thing than I did with any comparable AE at my corporate job. The AEs and SDRs we hire from big corps also struggle much more noticeably on average ( thankfully I'm an exception thus far). -Startups have amateur and undefined sales processes / progressions: Depending on the type of person you are, this is a good thing. My company has let me experiment with my email templates, talk tracks, and prospecting. Prospecting is great because the world is my oyster. There are no strict territories that I have to adhere to, so long as I'm targeting good fitting accounts. Creativity is encouraged, and the strategic aspect of selling against corporate competitors without the brand name drives me to think really critically and come up with objection handling tactics that I can take anywhere I go. I also have weekly discussions with the sales ops team about different processes and have had my personal scripts used to train future reps. Ultimately the type of person who succeeds in sales is a self starter, and not having a 100% clearcut manual laid out in front of you shouldn't be a detterent for picking up books, reading about your industry, and learning some things on your own. I realize this was a long post, but I'd be interested to hear thoughts / counter arguments! Fire away! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you find numbers to call for cold calling ? Posted: 31 Jul 2019 08:50 AM PDT I sell direct tv and when there's not much store traffic I'm looking to cold call. Is this a good idea and how do I find numbers to call [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2019 08:06 PM PDT I am a month into my new role as a sales executive at a Fortune 500 company. Due to some restructuring, a high level Vice President is moving into our building. He is spoken of with great reverence by my manager, and he earned high seven figures last year. He is known for being a nice man and very approachable. No one on my level is on his radar or part of his day to day responsibilities, and that is reasonable given his role and our chain of command. Would it be gutsy and wise to reach out to him and ask if we can have lunch or a quick coffee? He comes from a sales and sales management background. I would be grateful for the chance to hear how he progressed and what makes someone a better producer. What questions would you ask him? What would your goals for such a meeting be? ....or is this awkward cheesy potential career suicide and I should seek guidance from people closer to my orbit? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jul 2019 07:43 AM PDT My current plan is to apply to entry level B2B sales jobs. Per advice on Reddit, I'm focusing on big-name companies in payroll, uniforms, and copiers. (Are there other industries I should look into as well)? I've read lots of advice that it's helpful to tailor your cover letter to the specific job you're applying to. However, I've also read advice that it shouldn't be too long. While I do have experience selling professional services as an Entrepreneur, it's difficult to quantify those experiences in a way that sounds good. Here's my cover letter for a Payroll/ HR company, with the names redacted. Dear Hiring Manager: As an experienced Entrepreneur with an advanced background in sales, I would love to be considered for an Outside Sales Representative position at COMPANY. I believe I will excel in this role for the following reasons:
I would love to talk to you more about how I can be an exceptional and productive member of your sales team! Sincerely, NAME [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jul 2019 06:36 AM PDT Can anyone recommend an automated dialer? I need one specifically that doesn't integrate into a phone system, but rather allows you to call a number, stay connected, and have the dials routed through this. Similar to a Connect and sell but not as expensive. I don't have the ability to integrate into my phone system, but need to make a high volume of dials. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2019 07:43 PM PDT Really trying to see what the opinions are of some of you who have been in this industry for a bit. Assuming you have one summer of internship experience at a massive west coast tech company. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jul 2019 01:38 AM PDT So I'm a car salesman and 99.9% of the time, all prices go through our specialized computer program. This is the 0.1% and I'm in trouble. A customer asked for a car that just went out of stock, with a face-lift coming in soon. I asked around, and my sales director said he can get me a car from a dealer in a nearby country so I can then sell it to my customer. This buying from another dealer and reselling combined with the fact that it's a model of car we technically no longer sell, made it so we couldn't have the car go through our sales program and therefore didn't go through the usual automatic price checks. Let's say we got the car for €10k (we didn't, keeping it vague for data protection purposes). I thought that included a towing ball, underbody paneling and some other extras, so I offered the car to my customer at €12k. Before sending the offer to my customer, I sent it to the sales director for verification, and verify it he did. Fast forward a few weeks and the contracts have been signed, around 20% has been put down long ago, I'm due to hand over the car in a few days and one of our bookkeepers notices the car is being sold at a loss, since the original €10k didn't include the extras mentioned earlier. Total value of the car would be around €13k in this example. Now my boss (not the sales director) is yelling at me for screwing up the price, even though I made sure to verify the prices with the sales director, who is the one who handles the car buy-in prices as well as sale prices. I'm also quite a fresh salesman, having started in January, and I've never not gone through our sales program for any sales. I'm afraid they're going to pin it all on me and I do take some responsibility for not triplechecking the prices and not realizing it's being sold at a loss, but our sales director clearly said, in writing, that the sale price would be okay. What do I do? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Jul 2019 04:20 AM PDT Hey everyone, First post here. I am working with my board of directors to buy other businesses with the eventual goal of doing an IPO. There will be a lot of cold calling involved and I was hoping to get some feedback on what your favorite courses are. I have seen a lot of people mention Jordan Belforts straight line selling, Grant Cardones program, Zig Ziglars material and one of Tony Robbin's old ones (Mastering Influence). Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Graduate looking for assessment day advice! Posted: 31 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT Hi there r/sales! I'm a soon-to-be Political Communications MA graduate with a BA in Politics looking for any and all advice/tips I can get from this community regarding an upcoming assessment day. It's with quite a large UK company and they are looking for graduates to hire as 'Business Development Executives'. It involves b2b sales and the role would have me essentially trying to sell software to other businesses, maintaining relationships with existing clients and just helping to grow the business. I've already had one telephone interview and a Skype interview and I have been invited to an assessment centre next week. In the preparation material for the assessment day, it says I should try to have an understanding of the 'sales process' and 'how to qualify a sale'. Of course I will be doing my own independent research on these topics, but I wondered if any experienced sales person(s) on this subreddit might also have any of their own information/advice on these topics. If anybody also has any book/article/journal recommendations for me that would be incredibly helpful as well! Thank you in advance for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| Sales job for a kid who just graduated high school? (18) Posted: 30 Jul 2019 10:31 PM PDT Hey guys. So as the title says I'm kind of just trying to stick my head into sales, and figure out if there might be any fitting careers for a young dude like me. My dads been in sales his whole life, and he's really good at it, so I figured I might give it a try. Any advice? And careers you guys would recommend? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2019 08:08 PM PDT I am currently a first year MBA student and noticed that Microsoft will be recruiting from My school for sales. I know that Microsoft has a MBA to AE program but have not been able to find much info on it. Does anyone have any insight regarding the program? Is this a management track or track to enterprise rep? Any idea on OTE? [link] [comments]  |
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