I have said this before at EPJ. It is not about flash and glitz, on the high end. It is about professionalism and competence. Read Harry Browne's book, The Secret of Selling Anything, to understand what professional sales is really all about.
Today, WSJ explains the pay advantages of sales:
Some companies are having a hard time selling people on a career in sales.-RW
As the U.S. economy gains momentum, companies selling technology and other services to corporate customers are struggling to fill potentially lucrative sales jobs.
Sales reps who peddle technical and scientific products earned a median annual wage of $74,970 in 2012, more than twice the median for all workers, according to the Labor Department. A competitive hiring market for science and tech workers is part of the reason, but employers also say young workers are uninterested in sales—a field they perceive as risky and defined by competition.
Technical sales and sales-management positions play a critical role for U.S. businesses, but they are among the hardest to fill, according to a 2014 report from Harvard Business School’s U.S. Competitiveness Project. Employers spent an average of 41 days trying to fill technical sales jobs, compared with an average of 33 days for all jobs for the 12-month period ending in September 2014, according to Burning Glass, a labor-market analysis firm that worked with Harvard Business School on the report.
I can vouch for this...if you are talented enough you don't need a degree to make money in sales if you fall into the right technical field.
ReplyDeleteYou'd better be pro-active and aggressive(knowing when to dial it back) in addition to leveraging your technical skills though if you're going to be successful.
Also, anyone going in this direction better make sure they are able to generate ongoing commissions via their job being structured to retain/maintain their business relationships instead of handing them off, otherwise the constant cold calling over time will burn you out.