Going from Financial Services to Saas. Here is how i did it:

insurance, investments, mutual funds, annuities all that shit.

Thats what I did for 4.5 years as a rep and as a manager and then wanted to get out and get into Saas.

Ive seen a few others looking to do that, so I thought I would share my story.

A few things I would warn you about:

EVERY company says they are a "tech company"

• many will be copier sales, or Point of Sales/merchant services (so just make sure you know what you are really looking at)

Everyone will want you to start as a BDR.

• This is not 100% necessary but is the easiest path forward.

Steps I took:

1. understood exactly what I did and did not want in a role.
2. Who did I want to sell too
3. Did i want to travel?
4. What type of sales cycle did I want to be in (short and transactional, or long and complicated)
5. Then I did a ton of googling for software companies in my city.
6. Made a list, and researched each one.
7. Stack ranked them based off of what I could find on google.
8. Looked up everyone on Glassdoor. (i would also add RepVue to this now)
9. Used LinkedIn.
10. I searched for each company on linked in and looked at who was in the role I wanted and sent messages to a few that seemed active on LI.
11. The message was something like: "hi ___ i am looking at getting into Software sales and I ___company is on the top of my list. I see you are a ___ and thats the position Im interested in. Would you be open to chatting on the phone for a few minutes? I was hoping to learn a little more about what its REALLY like there and what the interview process looks like. Let me know if you would be open to that"
12. Connected with the ones that said yes.
13. look to learn more about their experience. what is the manager they work with like? what was different from what they were told. would they join again if they could do it over again?
14. and made sure to ask them if they would get a referral bonus if they brought someone in. if they did, make sure you let them know you will put their name down.
15. BE PROACTIVE:
16. Reach out to managers, or recruiters and let them know you are interested in joining the team.

I ended up taking an SDR role with a company that had a direct path to AE. and was able to get to an AE role (at a different company mind you,) after a few months.

Happy to chat more with you savages, but that is the framework I used.

EDIT: The way this post is showing up is not the way its formatted when im writing it. @BravadoMod just thought id let you know.