For the love of sales!

Why… you should launch your career in a sales roleWhat… top employers are looking for from you

How… to build and manage a professional sales career

Why listen to me?

• I built and own Sales Talent Agency, Canada’s #1 sales recruitment company

• I had a pretty good sales career that set me up for entrepreneurship

• My company interacts with thousands of sales professionals at all career levels each year

• We hire sales people for more than 170 companies across Canada in every industry (from SAP and salesforce.com, to Monster, Groupon and Castrol)

Get into sales!

• Highly measured: effort and expertise are always rewarded

• Highly paid: best sales people will often earn more than 99% of the company

• Incredibly empowering skill-set to develop: opens your career path to both executive and entrepreneurialism

• Lower than average lay-off rate

Don’t get into sales!

• Highly measured: no place to hide• Paid for performance: if you don’t make it, you

don’t earn it• Higher than average firing rate: no matter how

much they like you, you better bring an ROI

So, do you have what it takes?

Drive[The engine]

Empathy[The rudder]

What are top employers looking for?

Talent [how you get in the door today]

Experience [how you earn more money tomorrow]

A sampling of the market (for top performers)

Industry Year 1 Year 10

Technologye.g. Software, Cloud, Data Storage, Infrastructure Outsourcing, etc.

•$40-60k base with an $80-120k total income•90% inside sales roles/10% outside sales roles

Enterprise-level outside sales rep (or Manager/Exec) earning $200k+ consistently

MediaDeal-of-the-Day Advertising, SEO/SEM, Job Boards, TV/Radio, etc

•$30-50k base with an $60-100k total income•50% inside sales roles/50% outside sales roles

Key/National Account Manager (or Manager/Exec) earning $120k-$160k

Consumer Goods (B2B)Pharmaceuticals, Beer/Wine, Gift Cards, Electronic Appliances, etc

•$50-80k base with an $55-100k total income•99% outside sales roles

Key/National Account Manager (or Manager/Exec) earning $70k-$150k

How to navigate from here

• Pick an industry and stay in it (so pick carefully)• Choose based on where you want to be 5 years

from now (not where you want to be today)• Embrace hunting – this is a life skill you will never

regret developing (and it pays more!)• Don’t be put off by inside sales if it is in the

industry you are interested in• Keep track of every win, accolade and metric

What you should be looking for• A compelling and unique value proposition• Good sales technique/strategy training (as well as product/service

training)• Access to “subject matter experts” who can attend meetings to help you

work through complex deals• Good competitive analysis• A strong understanding of what is “low hanging fruit”• Case studies, reference letters and/or testimonials from happy customers• Well developed and constructed marketing materials (including a strong

company website)• A good boss to help you plan meetings, analyze your sales pipeline, set

realistic quotas AND strategize accounts• An easily understood commission plan

SALES TALENT AGENCY

For the love of sales!