My Journey to the ADM role
I delivered my first public speech on October 19 at Wrike’s Prague office as part of the Sales & Success Meet-up event. According to the only one attendee, I nailed it! I’m sharing this article, which is based on that speech, for those of you who must have missed it. I hope this article will make managers think differently about candidates with non-traditional backgrounds and encourage those candidates to apply for sales roles. Feel free to share your own journey in sales in the comments!
▶️ If you don’t have time to read this article, you can listen to my talk here!
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I didn’t wake up one day and decide to have a career in sales. You should know that I’m a Gemini, so if I had woken up deciding to be an ADM — or anything! — it would be a miracle. (In case you don’t know, Gemini people don’t make decisions easily.)
Sales has been a part of my life since my childhood but in a totally different format.
My family used to run a shop where we sold coffee, spices, candies, and such. When I was little, I used to help out with small tasks like opening bags and returning customers’ receipts and money, but when I got a bit older, I got promoted! I started helping with more advanced tasks, and I was responsible for the full journey: welcoming customers, preparing coffee and other things they might want, trying to upsell and cross-sell — “Would you like to have some Turkish coffee with your morning cigarette?” — then receiving their money and seeing them out.
I was the 6th generation running the same shop, so I believe selling and running a small business is kind of in my blood. Now, instead of a shop, I have a book of business, which is kind of like my small business.
But I can say that I had a few stops and changes in direction until I arrived here: internships at a hotel and a travel agency, some work experience in business development and marketing, 3.5 years at Pfizer GFS as a Travel and Expense Analyst, and finally, a month at SAP where I was an Accounts Payable Analyst for Qualtrics.
The most important milestone for me so far happened in November 2021, while I was at Pfizer, when we learned that our office in Prague was closing. It was a shock — how was it possible when we were the ones working on vaccines? But when one door closes, as they say, another opens!
At that time, I had been browsing for customer success management and account manager jobs in SaaS and had chatted with my friends and my network about those roles from time to time, but now was the time to take it seriously.
All of these experiences made me understand what I wanted and paved the way for my ADM role.
Here’s what I know:
- I need human interaction.
- I don’t want to be in finance.
- I enjoy guiding people, providing them with a solution and showing them different aspects of doing things, then seeing the sparkle in their eyes.
- I know about different businesses and teams, making me a natural business conversationalist.
- I like improving people’s experiences — in the end, we spend 1/3 of our day at work, and how we work is important.
Why did I start as a Customer Success Manager (CSM)?
Let’s accept that we spend most of our waking hours at work, putting in too much effort and energy. So why not do something special? Guiding people’s work management and processes and changing how they work and collaborate for the better is very magical work.
And, frankly, I also felt like the good cop on the account team — they know that I’m there to guide them and that selling is not my primary goal.
How did the Account Development Manager (ADM) role start?
We had an initiative in our team, and some team members were already in a hybrid role, being both the Account Manager and the Customer Success Manager of a client.
From the beginning, this hybrid role made total sense to me. After all, we’re responsible for SMB clients, and the nature of our opportunities are different from enterprise clients. But there was a glitch, and I wanted to fill the shoe I was already in first. I wasn’t ready for the sales, the responsibility, and the stress it all would bring. But after a year in the CSM role, I started working as an ADM.
💪 Challenges
Getting out of my comfort zone: At one point, I was in my comfort zone after losing a job and then landing a job I wanted, which made me not want to leave.
Comfort zones can be dangerous. If I had stayed in my comfort zone, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. When we are out of the zone, that’s when we discover that what we are afraid of might not be that scary and uncomfortable. This is where we challenge ourselves, push our boundaries, and learn. If you’re as lucky as I was and have a manager and a team there to support you, stepping out of your comfort zone is not scary.
Changing my mindset: Having more of a sales-oriented mindset than before is not easy. And selling SaaS is quite different from selling coffee in a shop.
Selling something doesn’t mean pushing or forcing your clients to buy something — you’re not the bad cop.
More responsibility: I’m collaborating with different teams more actively, there are more things to follow up on, more things to clarify, more information to discover and learn. This is sort of how it feels:
Learning to say no and creating boundaries with clients: Sometimes clients want to meet more and more frequently, but we have more responsibilities and other clients that we have to treat fairly.
The SMB segment: Every segment has its own challenges. The SMB segment has a tighter budget and sometimes has a narrower vision, so they might not see the bigger picture or understand the advantages the products and solutions can bring.
🌟 Opportunities
I’m the 👑queen👑 of my castle: I have full responsibility for my book of business. Yes, I know that means more responsibility and stress, but it’s worth it. I don’t have Account Managers to report to and update, and I don’t need to worry if our campaign will affect someone else’s campaign.
Orchestrating the full journey as the face of Wrike: I become the one and only Wrike rep that a client can contact, and I’m the only one contacting them, too, causing less confusion on their side. I know more about the client because I’m responsible for both the product and commercial sides. I educate them, widen their vision, and potentially help them expand.
Creativity to educate and bring money: Luckily, we as a team are actively collaborating on and discussing these topics, but we still need to think of different ways to find and approach prospects in our BoBs, too.
Career growth: In Turkish, we say, “A profession is like a golden bracelet” — so with this sales role, I have another golden bracelet! This job will create more learning and career opportunities for me.
If your journey is similar to mine and you think there are other challenges and opportunities I haven’t discussed, you can DM me or share them in the comments.
Finally, a fun fact! 🤭
I knew about Wrike for some time before starting here. In 2017, while I was working in a small business development agency, we were searching for a platform to manage our projects and collaborate.
At that time, I also thought it would be exciting to work for Wrike as different clients used Wrike in different ways. I think all the stars were aligned.
So just be careful about what you say and wish about other companies — the universe can be full of interesting surprises!
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▶️ You can listen to the full event here.
📣 If you are interested in working for Wrike, you can find open positions at Wrike here.
#Wrikey #WrikeWisdom #WrikeSalesSecrets
