062 – Not STEM-Inclined & Want to Make 6 Figures? Consider a Career in Sales

Released Monday, 2nd July 2018

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062 – Not STEM-Inclined & Want to Make 6 Figures? Consider a Career in Sales

Monday, 2nd July 2018

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Not the engineering, science, or medicine type, but want to make a great salary? Here’s why you should consider a career in sales, who it would or wouldn’t suit, and some common misconceptions.

062 – Not STEM-Inclined & Want to Make 6 Figures Consider a Career in Sales

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Welcome to The Wealthy Healthy, the podcast and blog dedicated to inspiring better mental, physical, and financial health. I’m your host, Riki Newton, and today let’s chat about something I’ve wanted to discuss, but it’s finally something I feel somewhat qualified to actually talk about. As a heads up, I am starting to schedule to join other podcasts as a guest and will likely in some part speak about this topic, but in any case I thought this was worth talking about here and I don’t think there’s a ton of similar content out there currently.

For those who follow the show, you know I work in professional tech sales. I’ve done this for 3 years, or 4 depending if you count a less tech-oriented sales job I had in college. Before talking about any specifics, I just want to set the stage here: for June 2018, LinkedIn published a workforce report that showed that in several tech-dense areas like the San Francisco Bay Area, professional sales is one of the largest skill gaps as of present. Which is to say, that in the Silicon Valley, there are more open positions for sales roles than there are people working in professional tech sales. It’s a literal seller’s market. While geography and economy certainly affect this — just like it would affect any job function — professional sales is an extremely viable way for people to make a sizable salary their entire careers, without having to be a technically inclined engineering or science and medicine type.

I’m going to break this down into a few areas of focus, starting with why sales should at least be considered by non-STEM inclined people, and in that we’ll talk about expectations and realities. Then I’ll talk about WHO should consider sales as a career and naturally help weed out or checklist off what kind of people should NOT consider a career in sales, and then I’ll close out with some discussion of misconceptions. Nothing is for everybody and sales is certainly NOT for everybody, but at the same time I think in some places and among some people it still has a weird stigma or brings to mind images of a sleazy, fast-talking used car dealer, or a greedy Wolf of Wall Street character in a boiler room who will say anything to make a sale. In 2018, that’s very very rarely what sales is about, which is why I’m passionate about evangelizing it as a great career if you want to make a solid income but don’t want to go to graduate or medical school or pursue a career in software coding. And just to be clear, for the sake of this article, when I refer to sales or professional salespeople, I am primarily speaking in general about high-tech, software or solutions based product offerings and am not referring to door-to-door selling, telemarketing scammy free 5-day cruise offers, or wheel-and-dealing auto or gym membership sales. These are all forms of sales, but they are not what I’m referring to by professional sales, where you’re almost always selling a software as a service.

Why You Should Consider a Career in Sales If You’re Not STEM-Inclined

So with that stage set, let’s talk about why you should consider a career in sales if you’re not STEM-inclined. First off, the barrier to entry for sales is honestly quite low. I mentioned already that there is a skill gap in many high cost of living, tech-dense areas — meaning as it stands companies are somewhat desperate for sales talent, which could frankly mean the bar is lower now than it would be in a lesser economy with a poor job climate. Even that aside, professional salespeople come from all walks of life, including even from retail work or auto sales. Most professional salespeople have a four-year undergraduate degree, and in terms of getting into an entry-level sales role, what you studied or the quality of the school you studied it at barely matters. In sales, your presence, hustle, and organization or “buttoned-up-ness” will take precedence over nearly any quantitative aspect of yourself on paper such as your major or your GPA. I’ve seen a near equal number of successful sales careers from “communications at such-and-such state” backgrounds as “applied mathematics from Ivy League school” — while competitiveness of major and school can certainly develop the skills required to succeed at a career in sales and thus be predictive of likelihood to succeed, it’s still truly a lower barrier to entry. You simply can’t walk off of a state school campus with a 3.1 GPA and a communications degree and ask a hospital to allow you to perform neurosurgery. The barrier to entry there is much higher, and I’d argue rightfully so, but this works out great if you’re thinking about the sales track as getting started is basically a matter of virtually any degree, and then interviewing well.

Another reason to consider a career in sales: entry level pay, let’s say right out of undergraduate schooling, is likely to be between about $60-90k a year in a tech-dense area. This means that if you’re near a city like San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Portland, Seattle, Denver, New York, or Chicago, your first job offer will be for more money than any of your peers with a few exceptions such as those in software engineering majors. From there, moves up in salary are generally not difficult to come by: if you perform above quota, it’s not unusual to double or nearly double your starting salary within 2-3 years, while star performers who are aggressive about leverage and negotiating can likely nearly or more than double their starting wages within 1-2 years. Keep in mind folks, commissions are often uncapped and most tech sales jobs pay half base salary, half commission, so if you are a serious go-getter who looks at performance goals as mere suggestions, your earning potential can be pretty considerably higher than what you were even offered on paper.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a top performer type of person to have a lucrative career in sales. Even fairly average performers — say, those who get close to their sales quotas but don’t always hit or exceed them — can achieve director-level responsibility in their 30s, which using the the Bay Area as an example would very very realistically pay between about $180-250k. On the flip side, if you are competitive and driven, you may end up a high performer. Star performers who are extremely aggressive about progression and negotiation could realistically get close to or above $300-400k and VP level responsibility 10-15 years into their career. I have to be clear that this latter group is more exception than rule, but I’ve worked at 2 companies and could name you 10 people I’ve worked with or know personally who were close to, at, or above this example, from a compensation and title perspective, before their mid-30s.

And that’s not even the ceiling. The rainmakers — we’re talking the true top 3% in competitive, expensive markets like San Francisco and New York — have nearly limitless earning potential. At my previous company, I know for certain that the top 3 sales reps were earning around $700k a year, and these were folks between 29 and 34 years old living in cities like New York and Chicago. At my best friend’s previous company, their top enterprise sales rep took home — AFTER TAXES — 7 figures a year. Again, very much an exception to the rule, I want to be very candid about that, but if 1000 people listen to or read this episode, and we assume this audience is fairly selective for people interested in money and interested in fostering a growth mindset, I would probably estimate 100-200 could have a lifelong career in sales, and very likely less than 5 would ever break past $300k a year in their careers; but those 3-5 or so people would make between $300k-2 million a year for a decent length of their careers, and the other couple hundred would almost definitely make around or over $200k for a lot of their career length.

Two more reasons to consider sales, and then we’ll talk about who it’s right and wrong for. If you’re a quota-beater, you are basically recession-proof; recruiting, HR, marketing, some finance, other administrative, and low-performing salespeople will ALL be let go in a downturn before strong engineers and star salespeople. In fact, in a recession, a salesperson who can still produce is even more valuable because the companies more than ever rely on effective revenue-producers to keep them afloat. And one final reason to consider sales is that the skills are simply highly transferable. Even if you leave the sales realm after a few years, the skills you develop working in sales can help you in every interview, negotiation, dating scenario, etc. for the rest of your life, so even if it isn’t for you, it’ll very likely still leave you a net positive outcome.

Who Should Consider a Career in Sales

Now, let’s jump in to WHO should consider a career in sales. In my opinion, far and away one of the top qualities which will absolutely just eliminate more than half of people from the running altogether, is rejection resilience. It’s said all the time that if you’re going to work in sales, you have to be comfortable with rejection, but this is absolutely no joke. This is such a key quality that any experienced sales leader could probably look at any group of entry level, brand new Sales Development Representatives in a room, watch them cold call and email for a few days, and tell you with considerable accuracy which of them will drop out of the sales track within a year or two. Sales has very high attrition, because the relatively low barrier to entry means a lot of great people can get in, but a solid half or more of them will get in and realize it’s not a fit for them. Rejection resilience is the most blatantly obvious trait among people who go on to have any career in sales, whether totally average or blow-the-roof-off rainmaker.

As an exercise, think of a passion of yours, something you know pretty well and could speak fairly confidently on. Now I give you a list of 50 names and phone numbers, and tell you, these people also have some interest or know a lot about your same passion. You need to get into the office at 7:30 am and start cold calling them, trying to get them to accept a meeting with you to discuss your mutual passion, because you have something that will help them improve their skill development in that mutual passion. You get on the phone with someone after 30 minutes of hitting voicemail boxes, and the person is outright mean to you, telling you never to call them again.

How do you react? If you hang up, turn to your colleague and go, “that guy was a jerk,” and dial the next number on the list immediately, then you are probably have the thick skin necessary to pursue sales, as this emotion can be something you experience several times a day for the rest of your career. If you were deeply troubled by this example and know that you’d be terrified to make another call for fear of the next person being mean, then I have to candidly tell you that this is probably NOT the career for you.

Let’s talk about some other important traits. An ideal sales rep is also competitive, money-motivated, achievement-motivated, goal-oriented, an advice and information seeker, naturally curious and inquisitive, and career-oriented. I’ve personally helped 4 friends begin careers in sales, and one of the biggest things I tell them is that they have to understand that professional sales is not a job. It’s a career. Most professions, people can comfortably clock in at 9, leave at 5, and not think too much about work once they’re home. At times sales will be that, at times it may even be less than that as sales can be very flexible in schedule and work location, but generally speaking, working in sales you will always feel like you can do more. Because usually, you can legitimately do more, and your days are done not when a project is finished or a quota is reached or some checklist or deadline was ticked off. Your days in sales are done when you decide you can live with yourself if you went home now, knowing you did a lot today to set yourself up for future success. You will probably always have your antennas out. Within 2 years, you will be able to say you’ve given out your business card on a train, at a party or social event, in an airport, at a bar, etc. Some days you’ll wake up at 6 am to send emails and you might stay in the office until 8 pm to finish a powerpoint presentation. You might draft emails with your downtime rather than slack, and you might take a client service call on a Sunday. Every single sales rep I know making over $140k a year has done all of these things at least once before, and from time to time many still do them regularly. You have to be comfortable with that.

Common Misconceptions

Before we close today, I want to talk about common misconceptions. Many people believe sales is a career for the perennially social, outgoing people of the world, the football jocks and the “Best to Bring Home to Mom and Dad” prom queen types. Certainly some of these characters end up in sales, and certainly some of them are outstanding at it. Sales is without a doubt predominantly a club of extroverts who were in a frat or sorority in college, who played a sport or three growing up, who are comfortable in a crowded club in Vegas. But to suggest that sales is only for the outgoing and the extroverted is a fallacy. In fact, more introverted sales reps have at least as much chance to succeed in sales due to the fact that success is, as mentioned before, predicted much more by traits like being rejection-resilient, competitive, achievement-oriented, and information-seeking. These are qualities you can find in just as many quiet types as social types; in fact, the ‘quiet’ types may be even more naturally inquisitive and may be better listeners, both of which are absolute assets in sales.

And to close things out, I mentioned up front that many people carry some sort of stigma or image of what “sales” means, and some of it may be rooted in truth or history, but little of it holds up today. In tech companies, salespeople are almost always viewed as and expected to be problem-solvers who take a genuine interest in diagnosing a client problem and providing a customized, tailored solution to fit the need. Ask any professional “buyer” and they can probably tell you the names of some sales reps that they really genuinely like and appreciate for their tenacity, work ethic, personable low-pressure approach, intellect, expertise and experience, and so forth. Gone are the days of sitting in a boiler room with 30 other young aspirationals all calling curated lists with aggressive, infomercial-style approaches. Short-lived are the deals and relationships where a sales rep lied and “yes-manned” everything just to get the sale, only to leave the buyer in the dust when they realized they’ve been sold a bill of goods. This does exist, and I’ve known and worked alongside a few of these, but generally speaking their success erupts into a huge flame at first, then crumples to ashes once all of their prospects and clients see them for what they truly are. Career salespeople make lasting relationships with their clients because they create value. That’s the bottom line here: professional sales in the 21st century is all about driving value.

All right folks, I hope that was helpful. If it was, or even if it wasn’t, we’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re a regular listener or brand new, if you haven’t yet you can check out our blog and other content on thewealthyhealthy.com and follow us on instagram @thewealthyhealthy… if you have not yet done so please hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an upload. As always be good and be great and until the next time we talk… lata!!