With the field of technology shifting and evolving all the time, getting your foot in the door of a career for the long haul can be daunting. It can feel difficult to always stay on the cutting edge, which begs the question, are there any high-growth jobs that stay consistent through the ebbs and flows of the technological explosion? According to LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Job Report, there is a set of skills that stands the test of time regardless of how the job market evolves: soft skills.
In its 2017 report, LinkedIn noted that “traditional soft skills like communication and management underpin all of [the] emerging jobs.” In 2020, it noted that Sales Development Representative (SDR) has been on the Emerging Jobs list multiple times throughout the years, taking the seventh spot that year.
Why? Because the skills that make a good salesperson are foundational skills, applicable to many areas of work. This allows people who work in sales to get their foot in the door and find a successful career in sales directly, or easily transition to any role they may find interesting.
The skills required to excel in sales opens doors. Nobody knows this better than Fuel Sales Academy, an instructor-led sales training program that strives to help you launch long-lasting careers.
Fuel Sales Academy offers a B2B sales training program that comes with paid on-the-job career development.
Apply to Fuel Sales Academy today.Become an Expert in Communication
Daniel O’Reilly, the Co-Founder and CEO of Fuel Sales Academy, believes that a successful sales career is really about communication. It’s about being a good listener, identifying someone’s needs, and collaborating to have those needs met.
Doing sales, he says, is like building muscle. When you’re on the front lines, you learn how to get to know a sales prospect, communicate with that prospect, and come to an agreement that benefits both parties. This foundational skill of communication is incredibly valuable in all areas of business and technology.
“There’s a psychological piece to it,” O’Reilly says, “You put yourself in the other person’s place and speak to where they’re at. Get them to express their difficulty and vocalize their challenges. Sometimes when folks get out there, they think sales is about teaching and telling the prospect. But really, it’s getting the prospect to tell you what they need because if they are the ones who express it, then they have more connection to it.”
If you tell someone what they need, it jumps the gun, as O’Reilly puts it. Getting them to open up and talk about their needs, on the other hand, makes them feel like they’re in power in the conversation and that they have ownership over the interaction. Ultimately, that feeling of ownership and connection leads to a sale.
But, being able to actually do this is easier said than done. This is where a training provider like Fuel Sales Academy comes in.
“We’re teaching life skills on communication,” O’Reilly says of the school, “[We’re teaching] how to engage with people and how to get people to talk to you.”
What’s a Career in Sales Really Like?
O’Reilly and his team like to say that sales is not for someone looking to punch the clock at the office each day. It’s for people with real ambition who are willing and ready to take initiative and watch that initiative pay off.
In this way, sales is a meritocratic career. You have a lot of control over your own success, which also means that you have no one to blame for your failure. It’s a high-intensity job, but O’Reilly and the instructors at Fuel Sales Academy say it’s an amazing way to see what you’re made of.
In sales, you’re paid a salary plus commission or other financial benefits. This combined number is often called On-Target Earnings or OTE. Right now, Fuel Sales Academy is placing entry-level SDRs between $45,000 and $60,000 in salary, with the ability to make an OTE between $60,000 to $75,000 annually. There is usually no cap on the variable, so the sky is the limit.
The harder and smarter you work, the more you can make. As graduates from Fuel Sales advance through their career, the opportunities to hit six to eight-figure numbers in a year is real, O’Reilly says. You either get the results or you don’t, and that determines your career.
“It’s an objective career, an equalizer, which can be challenging but incredibly rewarding.”
But you don’t have to go through it alone. Fuel Sales Academy was created to bridge the gap between ambition and success. The school says that great salespeople aren’t born, they’re made.
Learning Sales at Fuel Sales Academy
At Fuel Sales Academy, students learn how to communicate and excel at sales through role play and practice, skill development and market research, live-calling with real companies, and ongoing training and development.
When companies are hiring from Fuel Sales, they can see real data on what the graduate has done in their sales role during their time at the school. Hiring managers can also assess their sales performance and witness their overall growth, which can say more than just looking at a resume.
Because of this, Fuel Sales Academy reports a 100 percent employment rate in the sales industry among its graduates. However, seeing as sales a high-effort and high-reward career, hard work is a must. It should be noted that the school boasts a 50 percent graduation rate.
Why Sales Can Prepare You for Lifelong Success
Let’s say you’re an ambitious person looking to find the right career for you. You know that you’re passionate, but you’re just not sure what exactly you’re passionate about. You have great people skills, you’re a great listener, and you want to be on a dynamic team and working for a company you’re interested in and respect. If you’re not sure where to go from there, sales could be the answer.
Daniel O’Reilly views succeeding in sales as opening a door to your future.
O’Reilly says that when you work in an SDR role for a company, it gives you a way in. You learn about their product, their message, their customers—all the details. It opens more doors for you in that company because you’re learning so much about it and interacting with so many people across departments.
“It’s the best way to get into the organization and know what kind of organization you’re working for,” O’Reilly says, “It’s an indicator of how the rest of the company is functioning or not functioning.”
O’Reilly knows from personal experience and from working with many students who have gone through the Fuel Sales Academy program that having a sales role early in your career can lead you to much more than just a higher sales position.
It teaches you to face rejection and engage with people; it teaches you problem-solving skills. In his own career, O’Reilly has promoted SDR program graduates into customer success, marketing, and recruiting roles.
Not only do the communication skills and insider knowledge set you up for a variety of roles within a company, but the high level of responsibility you shoulder is akin to running your own business and can prepare you for a higher-up leadership role.
“The other side of it is that sales is a great foundational role for people that are aspiring to be an entrepreneur or eventually a CEO. In sales, you have to treat your role like running your own little business. You’re the main reason for your success or failure.”
Start a Career in Sales with Fuel Sales Academy
The path doesn’t have to be a straight line through sales unless you want it to be. It can splinter into a lot of different careers using this foundational knowledge. Whether you want to put yourself to the test in a high ranking or get your foot in the door to a variety of positions and advancements, succeeding in sales opens doors to many exciting career paths in the tech industry.
To apply for Fuel Sales Academy’s program, submit an online application form here.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
