What are the benefits of a sales career? I graduated college with a degree in marketing but became a BDR for a company, so now I am not sure in which field I should go into.
Advice for new salespeople
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Benefits will vary widely from one company and one industry to the next.
I have a lot of control of my daily schedule where I’m at now and I love it. When I have office work to do I can work from home or go into my companies local office to work. I get to chose what parts of my territory I make sales calls into on each day.
If my performance and numbers are great, it’s easy to wrap things up early on a Friday. The challenge with this much freedom is it requires one to develop self-discipline. Many people get lazy and don’t do their job well if they don’t have someone telling them what to do and when to do it.
I also love that I’m paid for my performance. I don’t have a salary as a ceiling to what I will earn each year. Depending on your compensation package, the floor could be little to no money as well. Learn about different ways sales people are compensated. Also, if you end up taking a commission based job get REALLY GOOD at personal finance. Salespeople who don’t manage their money well often have horrible attitudes during the slow months and it negatively effects their sales performance.
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Obviously I’m biased, but an outside sales career is a blessing in disguise. Though you spend most of your time on the road and most of your salary is based on the success of your sales, the flexibility and freedom to work from home is extremely rewarding. Plus, most companies offer a company car, which is awesome.
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You get to meet a lot of new people, establish connections, and just learn a lot while in a career in sales. Every day will be a different experience, so you will never be bored. A degree in marketing may even help you prospect for clients, which will give you an advantage in a sales job.
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Honestly, I came out of college not expecting to be in sales too. But it was my company who actually recommended me to try out an SDR position and I found it really interesting. It’s very competitive and I liked that about it, plus as I got promoted into outside sales, it gave me a lot of freedom to create my own schedule. In a way, getting to outside sales is one of the most exciting jobs because there is rarely a day that is the same. I can even vouch that having marketing background is a bonus because I am able to get my message across better to my clients and prospects.
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Looking to get into sales, how much do sales reps make?
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Hey @andrew, that depends a lot on each company, but there’s most often a base salary + commission. Commission is really cool because you basically earn as what you work for, so it’s completely up to you on how much you make.
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Hey Everyone! I have another question, what are some ways to create urgency in sales to get my prospects to quickly move forward?
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Hi @georgia,
You want to listen closely to what your prospect is telling you. When they are hesitating, always remember to refocus on the problem that they are trying to solve.
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If you are still looking for some help I thought I would provide some tips to create a sense of urgency.
- Speak clear but quick. When speaking quick it creates some emotion and tends to make customers make a decision right away. Most people have been conditioned to when someone is speaking fast it probably is an emergency. Just make sure you are speaking clear. Don’t sacrifice clarity for speaking quick.
- Talk in the present tense. Always use the words like “now” and “today”
- Always look at your watch or ask what is the time. Just be careful this could be annoying for some people.
Hope this helps
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Hey guys! Maybe you can help me. I just started a sales job and am having a hard time overcoming price objections because the products I sell are really expensive. Does anyone have any good tips or tricks that worked for them to convince prospects that the product is worth the price?
I think the best suggestion for this is to keep asking questions to try and get more of an idea of what the needs of your prospects are. I also struggled with this at the beginning of my sales career one thing that helped was finding articles with helpful tips. Checkout this article, it has great content! https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/01/overcoming-common-sales-objections.html
Whatever you do, DO NOT offer a discount right away. This is one of the biggest mistakes salespeople make when dealing with price objections. This makes your prospects think that the product was not so expensive in the first place and you were trying to rip them off. Instead, focus on the value of your product. You can present your prospects with other clients’ success stories with your product or even tell them how much money they’re losing by not having your solution in place. Nothing overcomes a price objection better than showing how the benefits of your product make the price irrelevant.
A really good tactic is to shift the focus away from the price of your product and more towards your prospects potential pain points and how much that is already costing them. What I mean is to hone in on the problem they are trying to solve/what’s causing them pain specifically within their company. While you do this, you can link it back to your product by highlighting how the product can solve their problem. Then, and this is the important part, you want to end by finding out why they need to solve this problem, which in most cases is costing them time or money. Specifically, try to get them to imagine a number it’s costing them in their head regardless whether they say it or not. Then present the price of your product. What this should do is in comparison make your product seem cost-efficient and cheaper than letting the problem continue after going through the above process, if done correctly. This process will also make you seem as though you are genuinely trying to solve their problem by focusing on them rather than your product and its cost. Hopefully, this helps!
My advice, choose a consumable product if you could or something that pays you over and over again, like insurance sales or cosmetics. Insurance sales the producer usually is paid on renewals as well as the initial sale- it just depends on which company you go with. Same for cosmetics… your clients will run out and given that you have proved superior customer service will reorder from you again.