I’ve been an engineer for the last 14 years, over 10 years at Salesforce, over the last 2 years I’ve had to learn how to sell OneShot.ai and here’s the honest truth.
I honestly thought sales was easy, your basically selling the product engineers work 18 hours a day on.
I thought sales people were overpaid, commission cheques of over $500k for just meeting people and showing the product.
Over the last 2 years I’ve learnt I couldn’t have been more WRONG.
Sales is one of the most mentally draining and challenging jobs out there.
The constant rejection, then the next day put a smile on your face and go again.
Sales is highly competitive, not only with your actual competition but with yourself and team too.
Sales people get fired for performance, engineers rarely do.
Understanding the complexities of how companies make decisions, the amount of people involved, the levels of justification.
Pipeline doesn’t magically appear, outside of deals I’m stressing over a weak pipeline.
Prospecting is very f**king hard, finding leads, researching, emails, no responses.
Cold calling is the worst job in the world!! You’re basically interrupting people during their day, being hung up on is not a nice feeling.
The product sales sell isn’t always the best, there are bugs, sales get the blame for that if the deal doesn’t close.
Sometimes you can do everything right and still lose the deal.
To the sales family keep going, you deserve that commission, you are the lifeblood of ALL companies, and most importantly remember to protect your mental health.