From Accounting to Sales

I graduated from college in June 2016 with a finance degree and held jobs as an accountant until September of 2017. Like most people, I didn’t know what I wanted to do after graduation and with a finance degree, being an accountant was one option. I saw it as a stable source of income as well as job stability but after a year and a half of learning about myself and working with account managers, I knew sales is where I should be for long term.

I tried to make the switch with no experience or training and it was a train wreck. I was not landing any onsite interviews or getting far. I was not going to give up that easy and luckily found Always Hired sales bootcamp from googling “ how to break into tech sales.” This led me to the yelp page and the reviews convinced me that this was the one for me.

Always Hired sales bootcamp was a three week long 9–5 Monday to Friday intense program. I learned so much in there. They teach you the fundamentals of tech sales. During those three weeks, I learned the history of tech sales, prospecting, inbound vs outbound, difference between a salesperson and a sales consultant, sales lingo, sales stack, SDRs vs AEs, career progression, qbs(question based selling), cold calling/cold emailing, how to write campaigns, ICP(Ideal customer profile), understanding lead generation, logging a call on salesforce, how to pitch, how to sell a pen, how to use a script, objection handling and many many more.

Yes the program was intense but the battle really begins when you graduate. I was expected to submit 40 leads a week of companies that I want to work for in the form of sending cold emails to VP of sales using Outreach. This is not a small number and once that converts to about 5 phone interviews and to 2–3 onsites, week after week, the pressure starts to built up. This is all worth it once I got my offer 5 weeks after the program.

I recommend this program for people really looking to break into tech sales and wants it as a career. This was a journey that is not easy and you will get rejected many times. The way to overcome that is to remember why you started. Lastly, be prepared and have funds to stay afloat for at least three months but ideally six.

Get ready for an adventure that you will remember for the rest of your life!