Why Sales?

Sales. Ugh. The word itself has a slimy connotation to many people.

To be fair, it even took me a while to understand what it meant to be a salesperson, and I am one!

And I’ll be honest, I still think there are moments of rejection or difficulty with a particular deal where I feel like this guy:

The OG sleazy sales guy.

The truth is, I never saw myself in sales. I did a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from a top “technical” school, but I never loved “engineering”. I liked the problem solving mindset I developed.

But debugging code or sitting in front of a computer doing circuit board schematic reviews… no thanks. I think I’ve always been too impatient for the deep technical work that engineering required, which is why I finished squarely in the middle of my graduating engineering class – not at the bottom, not at the top.

I won’t bore you with my journey and all that jazz. What I will say is that the reason I was drawn to sales, was drum roll it was the only job opening for a role that I wanted.

I had never done sales before. Again, I thought sales was filled with generic versions of that guy above.

But fast forward 2 years into my sales role at a SaaS startup – and I love it.

I won’t sugar coat it, sales sucks a lot of the time. However, where else do you get the opportunity to be an entrepreneur in a new market, without taking on the risk of founding the startup yourself?

Here are the reasons I love sales.

Reason #1: It’s entrepreneurial

You own your territory or vertical, you own your customers, and you own your fate. This statement of sales roles being entrepreneurial is mostly for salespeople at Series B or below startups.

The sales guy at Oracle… not so much. Sales anywhere, but especially at a startup is very much sink or swim. Either you figure out how to sell the product your engineering team has built – regardless of whether it sucks or not, or guess what, the sales team is under fire.

It’s both scary and exhilarating at the same time. Would not recommend if you have a weak stomach on roller coasters.

Reason #2: Sales is life

Or maybe this should say life is sales? Either way, once you start selling you realize that many relationships-oriented activities in life are sales-related in some way.

I don’t mean to say everything is a transaction, but rather that every choice has a give and take. For example dating – you are convincing this person in a way that you are a good potential partner.

Or say you are trying to get your kid to do something, usually you need to help them understand why they should eat the broccoli, or they’ll just throw it in your face (disclaimer: I don’t have kids so maybe this analogy doesn’t work).

Even understanding why someone is acting a certain way requires empathizing, uncovering their pain, very much like discovering business pains with a customer.

Reason #3: The money can be good

 We can’t leave this one out. Wow, as an entry-level engineer, did I underestimate how well sales roles got paid.

There are SaaS salespeople (men and women, young and old, all varieties of products) across startups and Fortune 500 software companies that will pull in $1M+ in commissions this year.

I don’t know how common it is, but it’s certainly possible. On the flip side, if you get stuck with a dud of a sales role, you could just be earning in your base salary with little commissions, and for the stress and emotional roller coaster of being in sales, you’re better off just chilling in a marketing role (sorry marketing, we still love you and need you for those sweet, sweet inbound leads).

I can’t say for sure whether or not I’ll be in sales forever.

But so far it’s great, and I can’t tell you what the thrill of getting that contract signature after a 1 year long sales cycle feels like. Actually I can, it’s a pretty substantial and natural boost of adrenaline.

In the best deals, you are helping your customers transform their business in the forward direction. I feel like I am a tiny part of that company’s journey (and the employees of that company I worked with to get the deal done).

So, throughout this blog I will continue to hit on my learnings good and bad, experiences and more working sales at a startup. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine. But when it is, it’s great.