"The hardest high paying job, or the easiest low paying job."
~ anonymous
When I hear the title "Sales Executive" (SE) many visuals come to mind; A-type personality, net new business development, a professional with A.D.H.D., hunter, closer, and on with a massive killer instinct. A position for people who if they were born in another century would have been the trail blazer into the wild wild west. Take Daniel Boone out of the 18th century Appalachian Mountains, dress him in a logoed polo shirt and pressed suit pants, and you got a President's Club winner for decades. In some instances modern SE's are an urban pioneers. Instead of guns and fur traps, the SE's tools are a box of business cards and marketing material collateral. The rest is exploring a given territory. Unlike the salty woodsmen of old, with their years of experience and feel for the lay of the land, the professional explorer today are typically wide-eyed college grads.
I know that talent pools have to be continually replenished and younger, less experience people need places to start. But I am not a proponent of throwing a fresh-faced twenty-something into the wilderness of lead generation, prospecting, door swinging, and cold calling. The sales force is the closest place to a companies future revenue. It does not benefit anyone to have young inexperienced representatives out in the market! HR is constantly trolling the college campuses for new recruits that are as green as a buck private, hiring managers are swamped with endless streams of mundane resumes, and the young hire gets their teeth kicked in because they don't have the competency to make things happen.
Young sales executives should be put into a six month training program where they handle customer service matters; learning how the company operates once a client has been brought on. Companies need to recognize that youth energy burns out really quick when they are out in the field getting doors slammed on them, deals falling through the cracks, which can trickle up to the more experienced reps who have to pick up the slack. In my mid twenties I saw hundreds of reps inside and outside of my company come in, train up, and burn out in less than a year.
It took me nearly five years of account management and outside sales to feel comfortable in the traditional sales executive role of hunting for net new business. I became like a precession surgeon doing exploratory surgery in my accounts because I knew how to work efficiently enough to weed and seed my prospect pipeline based off of constant practice in my trade. These skills are gained through trial and error -- more like an education at the school of hard knocks. That is why I hate to hear a sales manager ask new SE's to call around to other successful reps in the company to learn how they "did it." Are you kidding me?!? It takes 10,000 hours of training and execution to become elite in a given field... How the heck is a telephone call or web cam conversation going to allow a new SE to become successful?
To be continued...
~ anonymous
When I hear the title "Sales Executive" (SE) many visuals come to mind; A-type personality, net new business development, a professional with A.D.H.D., hunter, closer, and on with a massive killer instinct. A position for people who if they were born in another century would have been the trail blazer into the wild wild west. Take Daniel Boone out of the 18th century Appalachian Mountains, dress him in a logoed polo shirt and pressed suit pants, and you got a President's Club winner for decades. In some instances modern SE's are an urban pioneers. Instead of guns and fur traps, the SE's tools are a box of business cards and marketing material collateral. The rest is exploring a given territory. Unlike the salty woodsmen of old, with their years of experience and feel for the lay of the land, the professional explorer today are typically wide-eyed college grads.
I know that talent pools have to be continually replenished and younger, less experience people need places to start. But I am not a proponent of throwing a fresh-faced twenty-something into the wilderness of lead generation, prospecting, door swinging, and cold calling. The sales force is the closest place to a companies future revenue. It does not benefit anyone to have young inexperienced representatives out in the market! HR is constantly trolling the college campuses for new recruits that are as green as a buck private, hiring managers are swamped with endless streams of mundane resumes, and the young hire gets their teeth kicked in because they don't have the competency to make things happen.
Young sales executives should be put into a six month training program where they handle customer service matters; learning how the company operates once a client has been brought on. Companies need to recognize that youth energy burns out really quick when they are out in the field getting doors slammed on them, deals falling through the cracks, which can trickle up to the more experienced reps who have to pick up the slack. In my mid twenties I saw hundreds of reps inside and outside of my company come in, train up, and burn out in less than a year.
It took me nearly five years of account management and outside sales to feel comfortable in the traditional sales executive role of hunting for net new business. I became like a precession surgeon doing exploratory surgery in my accounts because I knew how to work efficiently enough to weed and seed my prospect pipeline based off of constant practice in my trade. These skills are gained through trial and error -- more like an education at the school of hard knocks. That is why I hate to hear a sales manager ask new SE's to call around to other successful reps in the company to learn how they "did it." Are you kidding me?!? It takes 10,000 hours of training and execution to become elite in a given field... How the heck is a telephone call or web cam conversation going to allow a new SE to become successful?
To be continued...
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