Flockjay’s First Success: Kwasi Aggor On His Journey From Ghana to the US
Before graduating from Flockjay’s Sales Honors Program, Kwasi received the first job offer in his cohort. It’s been nearly a month since he started as a Senior Sales Development Representative at Freckle and he sat down to share his experience from Ghana to the United States and from financial services to tech sales.
By Yemi Olorunwunmi
How has your experience as an immigrant influenced your professional pursuits?
I was 18 when I first came to the US as a freshman in college. Anything that I set out to do, I looked at it from a standpoint of focus and maximizing opportunity. Typically, in new environments, I’m initially quiet in order to listen and learn. Then I listen again, and when I feel like I know enough about what is going on, I’ll contribute. Though my family is from the Volta region in Ghana, I grew up in Accra, in an area called Northridge. I was originally going to return home because there was so much business potential, but I wanted to make the best use of my educational opportunity to not only challenge myself but to learn and develop.
When you first graduated from college, did you imagine the career you have today?
In college, I actually studied computer science. With an immigrant family, there’s always this encouragement to study something with a clear career trajectory like engineering, math, or medicine. My degree was in management information systems, but around my final year, I was telling myself internally, Hey, you need an industry that can help you make a large salary with earning potential of six figures. At the time, it seemed like earning opportunities were available in finance versus computers. I had no experience in financial sales or anything like that, but, I decided to take the plunge.
How did that go?
Well, I really did not like public speaking. One of the things I did was to immediately confront that. I took a job as a mortgage broker to help people refinance across the country. That’s how I got comfortable talking on the phone. I’ll tell you, for the first three months it was miserable. I quit every single day, saying to myself, I’m not going back. This is just crazy.
What helped me persist was the thought that if you really want something and you know the only thing stopping you is getting comfortable on the phone with people, why don’t you just take the time and get comfortable. The payoff is you start making money and creating a life of yourself. I did that for two years and then moved from Missouri to the East Coast working as a financial advisor near the major financial services hubs!
Why Flockjay?
I was always a salesperson. I’ve been selling the past ten years in financial sales and I just got bored one day. I knew I still wanted to work in sales, but was unsure of the type. Originally I was looking into biotech and pharmaceutical sales as they were on the east coast, but I didn’t know a way to make that happen. My brother actually encouraged me to do Flockjay because they could help me make the transition. The timing was perfect: I wanted to change industries and rather than focus on biotech alone, I was able to pursue opportunities in the larger sphere of technology.
What attracted you to tech sales?
In my former company and many financial organizations, they are so large that even if you’re a rockstar and you’re able to close a million dollar deal, that impact is minor. When you’re at a small startup, a $5k close is celebrated. When you are successful it actually means a lot and you can see, in real time, how your efforts have moved the needle and contributed to the business. Aside from that experience being more gratifying, and the competitive pay, I like the flexibility of sales. In this profession, you can get on the phone, talk to a few people, and make lots and lots and lots of thousands of dollars every year. With this lifestyle, you can crush your numbers, enjoy your vacation, recharge, work really hard again, and continually keep learning.
How did you prepare for a new industry?
Going into Flockjay I thought, “Hey Kwasi, you know financial services sales. You know everything about it. You’re an expert there. Hey Kwasi, you know nothing about tech sales.” Even though at the core, sales is sales because you have to talk to people, the buzzwords, lingo and even culture in tech are very different from finance. With Flockjay, one of my main goals in coming to class for 3 hours every day was to learn everything I possibly could and to drop any bad habits I picked up from elsewhere. Moreover, I fully believed that with everything we were learning, within 3–6 months I would be working in tech; I went in as a rookie and learned from the ground up.
What would you say is the best thing you learned in Flockjay’s Sales Honors Program?
Flockjay has exposed me to the differences between selling in tech versus selling in finance. Tech moves very fast with quick turnaround times, while finance is a long drawn out process. Tech is straight to the point, in as few words as possible, whereas finance can be very vague, with traditional methods. Not only did Flockjay prepare me with the skills I needed for a tech sales role, but they also helped refine my sales approach.
If you’re in an outbound role or working with cold leads, your job is to paint a vision of value for a client in a short amount of time. How can your product offering benefit them when they have absolutely no idea you exist. So you learn storytelling, how to highlight use cases, and how to connect the client to a vision that makes their work easier. We did this consistently at Flockjay and my first week I felt right at home when I was on the phones and creating opportunities.
Any insights for those considering Flockjay?
Tech is an exciting space to be in and is unlike any other industry you might have encountered. The benefits and the atmosphere in which you work might be different from what you’re used to, but the only thing keeping you from getting there is all the things you’ll learn in Flockjay. Day one on the job, you’re actually going to be using what you learn! So when you’re not in class practice, use the mirror, use your friends, and read content on selling so that you make it a part of yourself. Shaan and Kelly will get you to the water, but then you have to drink from the water. Take it seriously. The payoff is that you will create a very good life for yourself and be proud of the results from your hard work.
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At Flockjay, we are proud of how far our students have come, and we know this is just the beginning. If you want to launch your own career in tech, submit an application. (app.flockjay.com)
