Simple Tips to Find the Sales Job of Your Dreams

In this article I share simple tips to find the sales job of your dreams and provide a step by step by step Job search framework anyone can use.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend (let’s call her Kate) called me up to recap on what she described to be the “worst date she had ever been on in her life”. Like most single 20 or 30-somethings in Manhattan, she had been testing her luck on the popular dating app Hinge, and matched with a man who seemed to have promising potential. Let’s call him Joe.

Joe’s profile was well curated and gave off all the right signals that would draw in any younger single woman looking to settle down. He had a good job, a love for animals, an appreciation for his aging parents, an obsession with Barry’s. Plus, he had a really really nice smile. So far, so good.

The two met up at Kate’s favorite wine bar in the city, and all signs were pointing up. That is, until Joe opened his mouth. Spoiler alert: turns out… Joe is an asshole.

Sadly, this is a pretty common story these days. Woman sees a dating profile, agrees to a date based on limited information provided online, takes a leap of faith and agrees to meet in person to see if there is a fit… only to find out that the person either completely mis-represented themselves and is nothing like the person they portrayed themselves to be, or they read the situation wrong. Either way, it’s clear that there is not a fit and the woman is left kicking herself for all that time wasted.

What’s odd is that this modern-day dating story isn’t much different than the stories I hear from my clients during their job searches. The premise is basically the same. At the core of both experiences, you want to find a match that brings you joy, values your opinion, and looks to you for guidance, and allows you to be the best version of yourself. And in both situations, you could find yourself in situations where you’re questioning their honestly, unsure of their intentions, afraid to ask the questions to find out, and worried they may lose interest before they get to know the real you. UGH.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Well, I’m no self-proclaimed dating expert, so I’ll steer clear of giving advice on that topic. When it comes to job searching, the good news is that there are tactical steps you can take to mitigate the risk. Is it perfect? No, nothing is. But by applying some good old fashioned process and time-tested research methodologies, you can at least enter the application process knowing you’ve done your due diligence and taken control of the situation.

Intrigued? Keep reading. I have a lot of advice to share on this topic. Especially if it’s your 1st (or 2nd) job, you want to get into sales or account management, and you feel really in over your head.

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When my clients are first starting out and trying to compile a ‘short list’ of companies to apply to, they often come to me lost and overwhelmed. With so many tech companies out there today, it’s hard to know where to even begin. It’s at this point that I generally share with them the following step-by-step framework.

Disclaimer: There is no right answer for the below steps. Each choice comes with its own list of pros and cons. The key is to understand what those pros and cons are, so you are adequately prepared to navigate the situation. Keep reading, I’ll explain as we go.

Step by Step Job Search Framework

Step 1: Choose your industry(ies)
- Coming up with 3-5 industries will help you whittle down a long list into a more manageable amount of prospects. Some of the hottest industries in tech today include: software, healthcare, fintech, food delivery / logistics, edtech, AI, and cybersecurity.

Step 2:Choose between startup or established
- Choosing between a hyper-growth startup and a late-stage established company could be a whole lesson in itself. Keep an eye out for a future article where we dive deep into this concept and weigh the pros/cons. Until then, consider picking a lane and building your list within one to start. You can always build a 2nd list. The key is to aggregate like-stage companies together, because interview prep will look different between the two lanes.
  - Startup usually refers to a company that does not yet trade on the public market (ie: NYSE, Nasdaq). These companies are usually between seed – Series C funding rounds, but there are exceptions to the rule. Some startups will continue to raise well into Series E or F rounds but it’s rarer. These companies are generally in the earlier stages of operations, just building out their sales and product teams, and roles likely carry more scope and breadth. These companies usually attract candidates that are more entrepreneurial in spirit, like to get scrappy, don’t mind a bit of disorganization, and enjoy building from the ground up.
  - Established on the other hand refers to a company that may or may not trade on the public market and is much further developed. These companies generally have deeper rooted footprints in the market, more brand recognition, larger in size and scale, and more structured. These companies tend to attract candidates that are more process-oriented, have specialized skill sets, like organization and structure, and work best against a well defined roadmap.

Step 3: Choose between large employee size or small employee size
- This sounds like the previous distinction, but it’s slightly different. This refers to the employee count within a company, and this matters for a lot of reasons. Working at a company with 10 employees provides a completely different experience than working at a company with 10,000 employees. You just need to figure out what fits best with your personality.
  - For what it’s worth – I personally believe that starting large first provides a lot of benefit to first-time job seekers. Reason being, these companies usually provide the structure and guidance necessary to develop foundational work competencies that you will carry with you throughout your entire career.

Also Read Informational Interview Questions

Step 4: Only choose companies with missions you can get behind
- This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people overlook it. The average human spends ~85,000 hours of their life at work. Let that sink in. That’s a lot of time! If you are going to spend this amount of time at work, it better be for an organization that you are morally and ethically aligned with and a company that is doing work that genuinely excites you. Never – ever – take a job at a company whose mission is boring or uninspiring. It will bite you in the ass later on.

Generally speaking, I highly recommend checking out https://builtin.com. This site does an awesome job aggregating some of the fastest growing tech companies on the market, and allows you to filter the results by industry, location, size, and even perks!

Once you have followed the 4-step approach, you should have a decent sized list to jump start your application phase. But before you jump there, let me share a few more helpful tips I’ve learned along the way.

Other Helpful Tips For the Job Search

Tip 1: Finding the right company is more important than finding the right job.
- If you find the company of your dreams, but the available job sounds boring/unexciting, don’t be so quick to cross it off your list. Getting into the company is priority #1, and if you have to do that by taking a less-than-ideal role for a year and then making an internal transfer, I’d say that is time well invested.

Tip 2: Make sure the company is solving an actual problem. And make sure they are doing it better than anyone else.
- It could be the coolest company in the world, but if it is not solving a real-world issue, it’s not going to be successful. Period.

Tip 3: Vet the leadership team, even if that means you need to stalk them on Google
- If you are taking a leap of faith on a startup, do your research to see where the founders came from before. Are they first time founders? What does their board of advisors look like? You don’t want to attach yourself to a sinking ship before the ship even gets built.

Tip 4: Talk to the employees
- You’d be surprised how many people are willing to pay it forward! Reach out to other candidates that are in the same role today and see if they’d be open to an informational chat. Go prepared with no more than 5-10 questions about their role. Gut check if the culture is welcoming, if people are hitting goals, and if they genuinely like their boss. And make sure to respect their time. Offering to buy them coffee or a drink is also a really nice way to break the ice.

Tip 5: LinkedIn is your friend. (If you don’t have a LinkedIn, this is your sign to make one).
- LinkedIn does this really cool think where if you search for a company on the site, it will show you “Pages people also viewed”. This is usually a list of related companies to the one you just searched for and possible companies you can add to your shortlist.

And that’s really all it takes. Job searching is a lot like dating, but the one good thing is that contrary to dating, it is very much in your control. With this 4-step process (and perhaps a little bit of coffee), you’ll be well on your way to finding the job of your dreams. And once you’ve landed your interview, you can head over to this article where I talk through my foolproof process to prepare.