I find it super interesting to learn about how people have progressed in their careers; what they’ve learned, what they wish they had done differently, and how they think about the future. I get asked a lot of questions about my sales career (mainly because I publicly blogged about my internship and full time experience at IBM), and while I’ve done FAQs and posts about changing jobs, I haven’t recently shared much about my time so far at Google and more of the “story” behind my journey.
Today is going to be a comprehensive (and long!) post about how I have developed in my sales career, going pretty far back. Let’s get started!
My first sales job
If we want to take this question literally, it would be selling lemonade at a stand in front of the church I lived next to as a kid. If we want to take this question as more of “when did you actually know you were selling?” it would be when I was an attendant at tennis courts at 16 years old.
I would drive after school to the local tennis courts in a public park and I was in charge of managing the office, cleaning the bathrooms and courts, and charging people. Remember when I said it was a public park? Yeah, it was, but this court was managed by the company I worked for and people did not appreciate that we charged to use the courts.
I’d often have to approach people who already went onto the courts and started a game to tell them the hourly rate and collect payment. And remember the part about me cleaning the restrooms? People treated those like public park restrooms and they were…disgusting. I also used a leaf blower to clean the courts, emptied the trash, and had to get rid of the puddles after it rained using a gigantic roller. It was the character building first job that we’ve all gone through!
The sales part came in when I was handed a binder and instructed to call everyone who had taken tennis lessons in the past, or signed up their kids, and ask them to buy lessons for this season. I was terrified of the phone and talking to strangers, but I had to mark off my progress each day, so I picked up the phone, smiled, and dialed. I can’t tell you how many lessons I successfully sold, but it was a pivotal experience that made me confident talking on the phone and asking people for their business.
Internships
My first internship was after my sophomore year of college and I was on the sales team at Target. My job was to learn how a store was run, manage the way we motivated the team and promoted the merchandise (within certain parameters), and to be the “leader on duty” aka the person that handles any and all problems.
Sometimes I would be working in the warehouse in the back, sometimes I would be restocking items, and other times I would be interacting with customers and selling them more. It was an experience that taught me I didn’t want to be in B2C (business to consumer) sales as I was starting my career.
There was another important lesson I learned about navigating the corporate world. Quick example. I was on a conference call with all of the interns across the tristate area. The leadership team went over a few things with us as we were getting towards the end of our internship. To close up they asked people to jump in and share a few words about their experience and if they want to come back/would take a job offer.
A few people spoke up and had positive things to say and “oh yes, absolutely” they would accept an offer. There was a minute of silence, so I decided to share my take. I said something to the effect of “I have learned a lot of great skills, enjoyed my time with my in-store team, but that I realized B2C was not for me, so I wouldn’t be looking to come back after the summer was through.”
Silence.
The leadership team ended the call, then they reached out to my direct manager in the store about my answer. He and I had a great relationship and he was already aware of how I felt. However, he taught me that there is a time and a place for everything and that, while my response was reasonable, it wasn’t necessary to vocalize on that call. This was so impactful for me to learn (and hopefully you can take this advice without having to learn it the hard way)!
I don’t need to share too much about my IBM internship here because every week is chronicled on the blog (you can check it out here). The main takeaways are:
- I love B2B (business to business) sales
- I love New York City
- I love interacting with customers and helping them solve problems
College experience
During these internships I was also taking coursework at school about sales, participating in sales competitions, and working part time for a sales training company (that I still contribute to today). I owe so much of my career to Dr. Pelham, my sales coach and professor who spent countless hours practicing with me and helped me to win national championships. Being able to practice practical skills during my education was invaluable and I am so glad I went to The College of New Jersey.
First job at IBM
Like I mentioned at the start of this post, I am not going to spend too much time on this part of my career because it is already so well documented. After I completed the Summit Sales Training Program I went right into an Account Executive (AE) role. This means that I was handling my own set of accounts and selling products from the portfolio I represented. I was focused on doing outreach (I didn’t have a business development representative to work with and had to get all of my own meetings) and handling existing customers.
One of my big projects was to get the contracts in order for a company IBM acquired and I also ran a number of enterprise sales cycles for business that I generated on my own. I learned how to forecast my opportunities and collaborate with sales management, I worked with technical sales reps on opportunities, and got to understand contracting processes.
I was at a huge advantage coming out of the Summit Program that allowed me to get right into an AE role with massive companies in my territory. This program is unique and I believe it helped me to accelerate my career by a number of years.
Joining Looker
After about two years with IBM, I was looking to make a change. Primarily because the group of products I represented was going through a restructuring and I didn’t view it as the optimal opportunity for me anymore.
I reached out to a mentor of mine who used to be at IBM and she told me she’d been running into a startup in a bunch of her accounts called Looker and that I should consider them. Ironically, a recruiter reached out to me who is a fellow TCNJ graduate and said that he was working on a search for an AE at Looker!
I went through a series of interviews and the biggest hesitation that the hiring team had was my years of experience. My response was to understand what skills they thought I would have gained with x years of experience and then to demonstrate how I had already developed those skills. Again, having gone through sales training in college and working with Yukon put me in a place to get into the Summit Program, which put me in a place to be an AE at IBM, which put me in a place to earn a role at Looker.
Joining Looker was exciting because I was interested in the technology, thought I could learn a lot from the leadership, and it would be a new challenge to work with customers in different industries. It was also the chance to join a startup and have equity in a company!
Becoming part of Google
Not even a week after I signed my paperwork it was announced that Google was buying Looker. I was shocked. Part of me felt validated that Looker had stellar technology if Google wanted to buy it. And another part of me was apprehensive because I went from joining a startup to being part of a massive organization. Luckily the pros far outweigh the cons and I was on to another adventure!
In the past two years I have grown substantially as a salesperson. I’ve learned how to effectively manage multiple stakeholders and influencers at accounts, how to collaborate with teams across Google, how to negotiate massive contracts, and how to exceed my objectives. It was very tough in the beginning as I was getting ramped up and dealing with self doubt. I worried that all of my “training” would mean that I could do sales by-the-books, but wasn’t sure that it would sustainably translate into real world results.
In the past six months I have come into my own and built up my confidence tremendously as I’ve seen my hard work pay off. A career in sales is full of ups and downs, and staying balanced in your expectations of yourself can be incredibly challenging.
My best advice to those interested and already in sales is to realize that while you can’t control the outcome of every deal, you can control how you navigate opportunities and your own inputs. Focus on what you can control and continually remind yourself that a positive mindset will come through in all of your interactions.
What’s next?
I love being an individual contributor and want to keep working on larger and more complex deals. I love being a Looker AE and being part of the Google family. And I love being a salesperson that helps others solve their business challenges (cliche, but true). So what’s next is to continue learning and growing (i.e. taking more courses, like my Harvard data science class, and participating in sales trainings) because there are a lot more experiences to have in enterprise software sales!
Any other questions for me? Leave them in the comments below or contact me!
Love learning about sales and want to read more? Check out these posts.
Leave a Reply