TLDR: I’ve been around a while.
Honestly, I’m honored to be asked to contribute an AMA; thank you @Gasty . I’ll try to keep this brief (haha) and not answer your questions in advance. Also, writing this out is making me feel really, really old – and I’ll be the first to assure you all, I do not feel as old as I may seem.
My sales career started before the end of last century (see, old), when I was moved into a “Sales Coordinator” role at a tech start up I’d joined as an admin assistant, because my CEO thought I had a good phone voice. I didn’t want to move into sales; it wasn’t honestly something I’d ever considered as a role or as a career, so it was a big decision. It beat being office manager, though, so I took the chance. And this would actually prove pivotal: we sold software as a service. At the time, we were categorized as an ASP, or Application Service Provider; basically SaaS before some bright person coined that term. From there, I started closing business and moved up into an AE role; as a company, we merged with our biggest competitor, expanded our reach, changed our name, and things looked golden! I have to say that had bandwidth been what it was to become just a few years later, I could be sitting on FB founder money, but alas, that was not to be; we were far too early out of the gate. Foundational technology wasn’t up to what social media would become. Instead, the dotcom crash followed by 9-11 led to layoffs; I’d been the last one standing on the West Coast in a spooky, mostly empty, office we’d been subletting to other companies.
Job hunting took a long and frustrating year, but I finally landed an awful role at a terribly-run Ed Tech company. Sometimes beggars cannot be choosers, and it got me back into tech sales. On the positive side, this purgatory led to a networked opportunity for a significantly better role with another startup – and they liked the fact I already had ASP experience. Honestly, this turned out to be some of the best times in my career with awesome colleagues and great, smart management. We were acquired a few years later by a major tech company, and that was the only time I’ve successfully gotten an equity payout (hello new car). I stayed for an additional 10+ years. Over that time, I was in a number of different roles and teams; sold quite a bit of martech software both in and out of my comfort zone. Went through the 2008 recession with some belt tightening and again through 2020. Had mostly good managers, one notably bad one, one great one, but several bad sales plans later, I jumped to where I am today, a smaller, privately held company where I am among a handful of reps and am working strategic accounts.
I’ve never been in sales management; I’ve never been a BDR (that role also did not exist when I started out). I’ve never sold anything but tech, unless you count Girl Scout Cookies and World’s Finest Chocolate. My industry literally did not exist when I was in college – and I would have thought you were nuts if you would have told me what I’d be doing less than 10 years out of college.
So go ahead, AMA. Results not guaranteed. Will depend on my mood.
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