CXM2Sales

Customer Experience Manager

Personal Narrative

Moving from support/operations into sales

Hi all! For the past 15+ years I have been in roles that essentially supported sales teams. This experience has had me wear many hats: customer-facing, vendor facing, and user-facing. Managing projects, managing accounts (without renewal duties or commissions), managing contracts, and doing fulfillment. Training, troubleshooting, onboarding, etc. The list goes on and on. Along with this experience has come very good, stable six-figure pay and the ability to WFH/WFA. My specific experience usually gives me a lot of autonomy to work within the team or as an IC as I need/desire.

However, having just experienced my first layoff well into my career and finding the current job climate challenging to navigate, a bit of reflection has me interested into transitioning into a Sales Role for purely financial motives as well as wanting to remain WFH/WFA.

The issue is that I have no tangible sales experience. I have helped renew, upsell, and cross-sell - but it was mostly unintentional (i.e. really in client's best interest) since I did not gain monetarily from it. I have also put together Quotes and SOWs because it was somehow part of my job, but none of that counts.

At this stage, I just want to make as much money as I possibly can and tap into my skills to do so. But it looks like I will have to take a major demotion in duties and/or a fairly large hit on (base) pay to make this transition, if I can make it at all.

So I am looking for some advice, where should I start? What should I do? What would be the right position to go for? My top concern and priority (aside from getting an actual job) is pay. I need it to be bank. What are my best options here?

Hoping some pros can throw me a lifeline.

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13 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

3

☕️

...you can make bank in operations roles. Keep building your path, find companies that pay big bases AND bonuses. Negotiate the shit out of your bonuses and cake it up.
What is the REAL reason you want to make the move? You say it's money, and sure, that makes sense...but why NOW?

Sunbunny31

Politicker

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

This is what I want to know as well, because there's a statement about taking a cut to do it, and I want to know why that assumption and why that's the path.

CXM2Sales

Personal Narrative

0

Customer Experience Manager

I keep reading that base salaries for sales are like $60-70k and that I likely can't just walk into being an AE (which makes more than a CSM - which may be closer to what I have done but doesn't make AE bank). Age is also starting to become a factor, unfortunately. So it's now or never.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

AE roles are often 50/50 OTE, but 60-70 base may be low unless you’re looking at SMB. This does mean the OTE in this case would be 120/140.

CSM may not have the earning potential but probably has the higher base.

Have you checked RepVue for relevant salaries?

CXM2Sales

Personal Narrative

1

Customer Experience Manager

I hadn't, but thanks for the suggestion. I was just google searching.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

1

🦊

You've been missed around here.

CXM2Sales

Personal Narrative

0

Customer Experience Manager

Thanks for the feedback. It seems like the road to making better bank in Operations is long and winding. I had to fight to get to market (pay) and now I'm back to square one. So it's really trying to use this as an opportunity to catapult my earnings without having to start completely from scratch.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

2

☕️

You’re going to find that high earnings in sales is also long and winding. You’re starting over from a deep hole before you find yourself remarking at your earnings.

CXM2Sales

Personal Narrative

0

Customer Experience Manager

Yeah I thought about this, what if I am horrible at it and never make any money. But all avenues are open...gotta try.

TennisandSales

Politicker

2

Head Of Sales

so the first thing that comes to mind is to look back and calculate how many sales / revenue you made. Doesnt matter if you got commission or not.
put it together and frame your resume like your in sales.
your biggest hurdle will be convincing employers that your experience is going to make your a successful sales person.

So showing numbers/ results , your process, your duties is a good place to start.

Also i would shift the titles of roles you had to be more "salesy".

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

You need to design a sales-oriented resume - one which talks about the impacts you had on your company and the metrics which would be important to sales hiring manager.
And if you have had quasi-sales duties, you need to be able to outline those effectively on your resume and then in an interview.
I would suggest finding a resume coach (or similar) to help you with this. It may cost you some money, unless you got a severance package which includes this, but it may be worth it.

CXM2Sales

Personal Narrative

0

Customer Experience Manager

It didn't include that, but it's a good idea. I will explore that route. Thanks!

Justatitle

Big Shot

0

Account Executive

If money is the only motivator sales is probably not the 100% best place to be honest. Not saying you can't make bank but usually wanting to be in sales has other factors as well.

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