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Think about it seriously...from a sales guy (long) Posted by Saabpilot [Email]  (#134) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Saabpilot) on Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:22:51
In Reply to: OT: Need Career Advice - Engineering to Sales (LONG), Randy Thatcher   [Profile/Gallery]
, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 02:17:41
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I have been in professional sales of complex technical systems and products for the last 15 years. Not that you are guilty of this because you don't seem to be, but I can't tell you the number of times I've heard service or production people at the places I've worked say that they should just get into sales because they know so much and anyone can do it and they look at me and my peers and think our jobs are a piece of cake.
When I say I'm in professional sales I mean just that. I've had specific, professional sales training for engineered electro-mechanical systems, complex and customized solutions and long, complex sales cycles. Your business sounds similar. In other words it's not making 100 cold phone calls and hoping 2 people you get on the phone will buy your widget. This is not to say I'm some cheese ball that puts on a tie, talks slick, takes people to dinner, tells them what they want to hear and sells them some widget. In fact I loathe those types of stereotypical cheesy sales people. They give the rest of us a bad name!
Fact is that any idiot can do that cheesy stuff but as you said regarding your potential new boss, you HAVE to know your products, systems, markets, market trends, prospective customer base and many, many other things including ALL of the capabilites and limitations of ALL of your competitors.
You will have a quota. This is usually not merely a goal but a requirement. Miss it and you are in trouble. Maybe big trouble. Depending on your company and how it runs it could mean your job if you miss the quota in any given year. Some companies give big incentives for exceeding it, though. (Mine doesn't; I wish it did.)
Professional sales is very, very difficult. I have a situation right this very moment where a substantial sale that I worked a year to get and is worth many thousands of dollars of commission for me has just turned to absolute crap today because of a tremendous manufacturing and engineering error beyond my control. We are about to deliver the product in two days and just discovered a major failure that I don't know how to fix. The results is stress, real stress not only because I stand to lose a large pile of money (that I already spent buying a 'new' Saab last week I might add!!) but I stand to lose a new customer forever. Forever is a long time.
Many days I long for the security of a salaried, 9-5 type job. Growth can be limited but security is a nice thing. And I understand about the boss. My company just promoted a total idiot yesterday into running his own entire division they created just for him because he threatened to quit. And man when I say a total idiot I mean it. Someone who has brought our company down in the gutter in his market segment and who is a complete incompetent, but has successfully convinced senior management that everything is someone else's fault and that he has all of the answers. Were I to have been reporting to him I would have quit on the spot. That can, has and will continue to happen in the sales arena in many companies, as you can imagine. I have seen it time and time again.
Of course there are many rewards in a successful sales career, not just money but otherwise. I am proud to say that I can easily call up many customers from prior careers of mine and I still have a great relationship with them today. And I know I've done good in helping customers solve complex problems and have left my positive mark on this world in many systems I have sold. But you need to be absolutely 150% sure that from the sales and marketing perspective your company deals squeaky clean honestly with it's customers. You should call customers you know already and speak with them about your desire to get into sales and see what they think of your sales process and sales people. That would be the best barometer of how your company is perceived.
Don't confuse this with whether or not you have a good product or solution to sell because the two don't automatically co-exist. You can have great products and solutions but if your company is not honest to customers it can still be a bad situation. I have been there before, unfortunately. I had to leave my last career because of it. A dishonest VP of sales caused customers to distrust us and stop buying our systems.
The other danger is that when your company gets bought out (it happens, don't say it won't) and a new president is brought on board he / she may decide to bring in his / her own team of managers and sales people. In that scenario the "little guy" like the service tech is infinitely more secure than the sales person in terms of his employment.
It happened to our company 4 weeks ago. No one has been let go yet but there are dramatic changes about to take place and it has been made clear that anyone not on board with the new program will be gone. Period. But they won't fire the grunt on our production line or our service guys because the business would die without them. Many top managers, right or wrong, feel that sales people are a dime a dozen, even in complex sales solutions. I guess the fact is that we are, at least in a theoretical sense.
I hate to sound negative because I don't mean to, I just want to emphasize that sales is not nearly as easy as many people think and as you have very astutely realized there are a great number of variables to consider. Every manufacturer I have ever worked for has had employees who get down on their sales people, thinking our lives are so easy and we just stand on street corners waiting for orders to fly into our hands.
For example we have one guy where I work now who gives us immense crap if he sees us leaving the office at 3PM but of course he's not there in the car with me when it's midnight on a Friday night and I'm still on the road 3 hours from home in the middle of a snowstorm after having made 5 long sales calls beginning at 7AM that day...while at 5PM he punched his time card and went home.
You can expect MAJOR long hours of committment on days, nights and weekends, on your vacations, on your honeymoon (yes I returned calls while my wife was in the shower on our honeymoon; boy was she mad). For many professional sales jobs this is expected. When the time clock strikes 5PM your day is not over. You are always on call...that is if you want to be the best you can be. And the other thing to remember is that YOU and you only are totally accountable to your customer for whatever you sell them. Like my situation today with the product being screwed up. I had no responsibility whatsoever in causing this but I am fully, 100% accountable to the customer nonetheless.
One thing you might try to do if this is at all feasible is strike an agreement that if the sales job does not work out in "x" amount of time that you can move back into the support role and you don't lose your job entirely.
I hope this has been of some help. Best of luck. No matter what happens, drive your SAAB when the pressure gets to be too much and it will make you feel better!!!
posted by 68.250.18...
, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 02:17:41, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:22:51 <-- Viewing This Message
, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:54:18, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:19:25
, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 09:32:52
, Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:21:22
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