Most people might not immediately associate the terms “team player” and “salesperson.” Salespeople are often stereotyped as lone wolves who only look out for themselves. But that isn’t the case at all – being a top performing salesperson means being a team player.
Why? According to the CEO of Sandler Training, David Mattson, sales teams that are united and work together produce greater results. As a result, being a team player can increase the chances of success for both you and your sales organization.
Research shows nearly 75 percent of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as ‘very important.’ This emphasizes that team cohesion is just as important to the leadership team as it is to you. Top sales leaders know that an aligned team mentality can be the difference between a mediocre and a top performing sales force. Even something as simple as providing the sales team with a name can help build teamwork.
So, what can you do to excel as a salesperson and make the team more effective?
Here are 5 ways to be a team player and maximize your sales performance:
1. Meet Your Targets
According to a survey of senior executives by Accountemps, the most common response to activities that make someone a team player is meeting deadlines. Meeting deadlines means meeting commitments, and the biggest commitment a salesperson can make is hitting their targets.
Meeting or exceeding targets has a positive effect on the team as a whole — it fosters healthy competition and a sense of urgency among other reps to achieve their goals. On the other hand, missing targets lowers morale of peers who are frustrated that management tolerates poor performance.
Although most salespeople are measured on individual metrics, everyone’s goals are all a part of larger team goals. A top performing salesperson understands that exceeding expectations can motivate others and is a fundamental aspect of being a team player.
2. Demonstrate Adaptability
With the introduction of social selling, advances in sales management tools, and establishment of hyper-personalized content marketing, the sales industry has dramatically changed in recent years. The influx of Millennials is also dramatically transforming the workplace.
In order to thrive in a constantly-changing environment, sales teams need to adapt to their surroundings and ensure there is alignment across all members. According to Glenn Parker, author of Team Players and Teamwork: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration, in order to be successful in this age, team players need to be “complex, adaptive, creative and flexible.”
But, how do you become an adaptable team member? “Adaptability starts with maintaining an open mind,” says AJ Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Alumnify and contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. “It is about being willing to embrace change and be open minded to new things.”
A sales rep who is flexible and adaptable to changing conditions is a strong team player and will maximize his or her performance as an individual contributor.
3. Practice Open Communication
Research shows 86 percent of employees and executives cite a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for the cause of workplace failures. A lack of communication results in inefficiency, low quality work, and frustration among team members. In fact, David Hassel, CEO of 15Five, says, “in the absence of open communication, a snowball effect of negative actions can envelop the energy of an organization.”
Consequently, David emphasizes that making open communication a part of the company culture is vital to business success and strong team players lead by example. “If it is clear that open communication is welcomed, mutual, and expected, [other team members] will proceed to operate on that basis and seek it out in others.”
To thrive as a top member of your sales team, encourage your teammates to openly discuss their goals, values, and concerns.
4. Provide Support
Perhaps one of the most obvious ways of being a strong team player is to provide support to struggling teammates. A-Players take the time to help their co-workers who aren’t meeting targets through one-on-one coaching/mentoring. Mentoring has proven results. According to a survey by Micro Mentor, “salespeople who received mentoring increased their revenue by an average of $47,000 or 106 percent.”
While it’s clear how supporting others makes you a great team member, how does it help you as an individual? According to Jill Konrath, Speaker and Author of Snap Selling, Selling to Big Companies and Agile Selling, helping struggling team members is the best way for sales reps to set themselves up for a promotion to the leadership team.
Not only does providing support improve your team, it can also play a major role in advancing your career.
5. Be Committed
Great team players are committed to achieving goals and putting in 110 percent every day. According to The Career Advancement Blog, “great team players take the time to make positive work relationships with other team members a priority and display a genuine passion and commitment toward their team.”
Demonstrating commitment establishes you as a team player and can help drive your sales success. “If you want great results, you need to be committed,” says President and CEO of Fusion Logistics, Joe Judson, “Commit to being successful or get ready to be passed by those who are.”
Despite the benefits, studies show employees who are committed to their organization are rare. A Gallup poll found that only one in eight workers are psychologically committed to their jobs and “likely to be making positive contribution to their organizations.” As a result, salespeople who are committed to their goals, team, and organization stand out to the leadership team and are more likely to be considered for promotion opportunities.
Become a team player and advance your career
While it’s easy to get lost in your individual work and goals, it should remain a priority to act as a team player on your sales force. Work to consistently meet your targets, adapt to your surroundings, practice open communication, provide support, and demonstrate your commitment to maximize your performance as a sales team and individual contributor.
Ultimately, these contributions will not only help you succeed, but will lead to improved performance for your entire sales organization.
The evolution of B2B sales is a fascinating phenomena and one of my favourite topics. There’s a great article hereby Frank Cespedes and Tiffani Bova that discusses the evolving nature of sales and the continuing importance of salespeople in the context of successful B2B companies – contrary to the popular notion that sales is a dying profession. They’ve provided some great insights, and explain that B2B selling has evolved so much that:
“it should be the end of glib generalizations about sales and selling, which remain complex, changing, and people-dependent activities in most B2B markets.”
Here are my top three takeaways on the insights shared by the authors about the evolution of B2B selling:
1. The B2B sales force is more important than ever
Data indicates that for B2B companies, salespeople are absolutely critical. Digital marketing channels, on the other hand, and particularly social media, are currently some of the least impactful on sales success. This means that investing in the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and compensation plans of your sales force is imperative for healthy business growth.
Gone are the days of simply hiring someone with sales experience and hoping you’ll find success: you need to heavily invest in the sales force of your business, and work to create a high performance sales culture. Differentiate your business by creating a pro sales culture that’s company wide: buy-in on the importance of sales from the C-Suite will have a massive impact on your sales force performance.
2. There is no silver bullet in B2B sales
There is no single perfect tactic and selling model that works today. The right selling approach is, and has always been, highly dependent on the specific selling environment of each seller. While this is something that has always been true, the rise of solution selling and a increasingly competitive and empowered customer market has changed the way B2B companies understand selling.
Today, there are numerous factors that impact your sales performance cycle and customer value proposition, including:
Sales organization (how you measure effectiveness and manage channels)
Company environment (cross departmental functions, strategy management)
In the current world of B2B selling, there’s no formula for success, there’s just making and executing strategic choices.
3. B2B sales effectiveness isn’t a generalized trait
While it’s useful to assess the characteristics and sales DNA that will make someone great at selling, there is no “golden rule” that will lead you to a great seller. Simply put, the common stereotypes of a good seller are just that: stereotypes. The context and environment the salesperson will be working in are just as critical as sales DNA.
We have spent a lot of time understanding the role of sales DNA in a top performing salesperson, and it can be confusing to determine whether DNA or the resume is what you should hire for. While every sales situation is unique, and each sales manager will know whether their sales team really needs to have the sector experience in order to be successful, DNA typically beats out resume. The best way to accurately predict whether the sales DNA you hire for will be successful in your selling environment? Have a crystal clear definition of what and who your ideal salesperson is before making a hire.
A lot is changing, but some things remain the same
B2B sales is no doubt evolving, however it is interesting to note that the DNA of top salespeople remains consistent – even while we learn that environment plays a big role too. Having spent more than 20 years building sales teams, and the last 10 years helping B2B companies recruit top sales talent, we have observed that there are several primary traits that are common to the top performing salespeople, including:
Ambition
Self awareness
Persuasiveness
Competitiveness
Resilience
Drive
Successful experience in a similar selling environment is critical, and obviously the ability to adapt is also critical – but you’ll find this list of traits common among every successful seller you meet.
Cespedes also notes in his book, “Aligning Strategy and Sales,” thatcompanies who try to recruit great salespeople cannot expect organizational success, since “stardom” is not easily portable. Instead, success comes from disciplined and growing from within. We would add that if time does not permit the luxury of growing from within, that success can be accelerated by targeting candidates with the requisite sales DNA, or behaviours, and success selling from within a similar sales environment, not to be confused with selling within the same industry.
B2B sales is unquestionably evolving, so if you want your sales force to remain ahead of the curve, remember: B2B sales is now more important than ever to business success, there’s no sales silver bullet in creating your selling model, and sales effectiveness depends on the selling environment as well as selling DNA.
Like what you’ve read? Get your secret weapon in making your sales hiring process more effective by downloading our eBook,Make the Right Sales Hire, Every Time.
relpost-thumb-wrapper
Related posts
How to Hire Salespeople Outside Your Industry
Top 7 Characteristics Essential to Sales Success [Infographic]
14 Sales Recruiting Strategies You Need to Build a Top Performing Team
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Think you’ve earned a sales promotion? Does your boss think you’re ready? If you’re doing these three things right now, it will be hard to deny the promotion you deserve.
You’ve been consistently hitting your sales targets, have experienced success in moving opportunities down the pipeline, and actively serve as a mentor to many of your junior team members. You’re obviously succeeding in your present role, but what’s next? Are you ready to take the next step into a management role? If so there are several things you can be doing. Or, are you looking for more recognition and responsibility? Either way, doing these three things will prove you’re ready to move up the career ladder.
Here are three things you are doing that prove you deserve a sales promotion:
1. You Go Beyond Your Individual Goals
As a salesperson who has been in your role for a significant amount of time, you have mastered the numbers aspect of selling and know how to achieve your targets. Your managers can rely on you to consistently hit your sales targets and exceed your quotas.
The value you add to your organization goes above and beyond superior results in the numbers aspect of your work. You bring insights to the team that involve work processes, market challenges, or unnoticed opportunities. For example, you are able to identify an inefficient process with your CRM. You not only provide a solution, but also share the solution with your team and incorporate the improved process into the training of junior team members. You deeply understand the market you work in and contribute to the strategy and planning in territories beyond your own. You demonstrate your aptitude and readiness for a sales promotion by providing insight and vision that goes beyond your individual goals.
2. Your Boss Relies on You
You display informal leadership by mentoring junior team members, and peers come to you for advice and guidance – a sign that you deserve a sales promotion. Not only are you meeting and exceeding all your targets, you are doing so while mentoring new trainees. You help arm them with critical insights about the market, explain what selling tasks and behaviors are most effective, and teach junior salespeople how to best prioritize their responsibilities.
You help to implement pilot projects or prospect an unassigned territory. You constantly seek out new information to deepen your knowledge base — and, to go further, you freely share this knowledge with others. You are an independent learner. You seek out training opportunities on your own accord instead of waiting for your manager’s suggestions. Finally, you are committed to honing and refining your skills, even as you excel in your sales role.
As Max De Pree, author of Leadership Jazz explains, one of the biggest indicators that you are ready for a leadership or management role is that managers are able to observe you recognizing learning opportunities for others. It’s one of the things that makes you a significant contributor to the team — you help others to achieve their objectives along with your own.
When sales managers look to identify their top performers and determine who is ready for a promotion, they heavily consider how their team members contribute as coaches and mentors to more junior salespeople. Embracing the mentorship and coaching role while delivering on your targets shows your boss you are ready for more responsibility.
3. You Understand Coachabilty
According to a study published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing titledSalesperson coachability: what it is and why it matters, there are several dimensions to a salesperson’s coachability. The following table depicts the dimensions of sales coachability and examples of coachable behaviours. Compare these dimensions with your own behavioral patterns to determine your own coachability:
The authors of this study describe coachability as a manifestation of the personality traits of agreeableness, achievement motivation, and conscientiousness — what we refer to as the DNA of sales excellence. While being coachable doesn’t automatically mean an individual will be great at selling, it is a necessary ingredient of a top performer seeking a sales promotion.
Because not all salespeople possess equal levels of these traits, they will naturally possess varying levels of coachability. Use the table above to measure your coachability. Consider not only how coachable you see yourself, but also how your manager assesses your coachability. (i.e. during feedback, formal performance reviews, etc.). Understanding how coachable you are allows you to objectively assess how you are perceived by your manager in a new way.
The fact that you understand coachability proves that you are ready for a promotion. This is particularly true if you are seeking to be promoted to a management role because as a manager, you need to understand how to coach. In fact, research shows that the more effective sales managers are at coaching, the better their teams perform. Those working for managers with formal coaching training, and who coach regularly, deliver revenue at four times the rate of teams working for managers who don’t coach. Understanding how to be coachable is the first step in being a great coach.
Prove You Are Ready For It
Since you are currently doing all three of these key things, you are likely ready to move up in your responsibilities. However, you need to consider what you really want. Often, top performing salespeople think they want to become managers, but eventually miss the rush of hunting, selling, and closing. Do some research and ask a manager you have a strong relationship for some insight about their role. Managing is much different than selling. What it takes to excel in management is not the same as what it takes to excel in sales. As a manager, your role is to coach rather than play, so gaining a perspective of what the performance indicators and quotas are for a management position is critical when deciding what you really want.
As a salesperson, taking your performance beyond the numbers, being your boss’s biggest asset, and understanding coachability are the most important qualifiers in determining your readiness for a promotion and aptitude for a management position. There is a lot that goes into gaining a promotion, but determining if you are ready for one is the crucial first step.
Ready to advance your career? Or, are you interested in gaining insight about current and future B2B sales openings in the technology, professional services, telecommunications, software, or manufacturing/industrial services sectors? Submit your resume to Peak Saleshere.
According to the Boston Consulting Group, of every HR practice, recruitment processes have the most significant impact on revenue. Companies that effectively recruit the best candidates exhibit 3.5x the revenue growth of competitors that poorly manage their recruitment efforts. This article will break down the biggest mistakes hiring managers make at the offer stage – and explain best practices to avoid them.
A company’s ability to find, recruit, and hire the ideal candidate for every sales role can make or break its long-term growth prospects. For organizations that have found the ideal candidate for their unique selling environment, nothing is more important to this process than the offer stage. It’s the culmination of time, money, and resources that are allocated to finding the best possible salesperson to help execute the sales strategy.
Some organizations consistently reach this pivotal stage without successfully enticing their best recruits to sign on the dotted line. With that in mind, this article details the biggest mistakes hiring managers make during the offer stage of the recruitment process. By incorporating the accompanying suggestions, your company can greatly enhance its sales talent acquisition efforts:
1. Not Previewing an Offer
Over the course of the recruitment process, the hiring manager should have collected information on the current salary of the rep, as well as their compensation expectations for a new role. Previewing an offer — or sharing high-level elements of what an offer would look like before extending one — verifies that the hiring manager is aligned with the salesperson’s career expectations.
Specifically, previewing an offer has several benefits:
It gives candidates a sense of how serious the hiring company is about bringing the candidate onboard without the formality of a written document;
It speeds up the process, ensuring that the company is well-positioned in the case of multiple offers;
It leaves room for further negotiation for both parties. If the hiring manager shoots too low, it gives them the opportunity to reassess compensation before a formal offer.
2. Lowballing the Salary
Salary negotiations are complicated in sales, but one thing is clear: below and at-market compensation packages never incentivizes the best recruits to join your sales team. In fact, Peak’s internal figures suggest that 93% of companies who lowball a candidate during the offer stage fail to hire the candidate.
Offering a low or average salary sends the signal that the company doesn’t value the candidate or the sales function as a whole — it’s one of the most likely ways to end a negotiation before it starts. The quality of the salespeople on a team is directly correlated to the salary they are offered. Top salespeople know their value to an employer, and they expect a competitive offer that recognizes the ROI they deliver. Therefore, to recruit the best candidates and consistently grow your company’s revenue stream, sales leaders need to understand that offering compensation packages that are above market is a strategy to build a high-performance sales organization .
3. Taking Too Long
“A” players are highly sought after in the marketplace. These top performers regularly receive multiple offers from employers competing for their services. If one hiring process takes much longer than another, chances are the candidate will go with the first option. A fast offer, one that is presented within 48 hours after the final interview, demonstrates to the candidate that the company is committed to bringing the individual onboard.
Top performers want to work for companies with effective, efficient business practices that cut through the red tape rather than adhering to them. A recruitment process that places a high-emphasis on presenting offers in the ‘two day window’ shows candidates exactly who they will be working for — a driven, dynamic company that’s willing to speed things up to get them on the team.
4. Overcomplicated Compensation Plan
Some compensation plans include tiered reward levels, with multiple and varied financial incentives for different kinds of sales. Although these plans reflect the intention to motivate the salesforce to overachieve their sales targets, they can confuse, rather than clarify, the expected income. When a candidate struggles to identify what their on-target earnings will be in the first 180, 360, and 540 days, these types of plans can discourage candidates from joining your organization. In fact, our data suggests that 4 out of 5 candidates agree that overly complicated compensation formulas discourage them from accepting an offer of employment.
Instead, the best employers construct a simple compensation plan that can be built out over time and that is tailored to the individual’s motivations and needs. A compensation formula that links financial rewards to the sales activities that brings in the most profitable revenue for the company is a comp plan that both a candidate and their future employer can agree upon. This approach ensures clear alignment between the effort of salespeople and their income, which gives candidates an accurate image of their earning potential, and one that puts them in control of the value they will deliver to the company over time.
5. Small Territory
One of the biggest complaints of sales reps is that their sales territory is too small. Talented salespeople will not leave their current roles unless it’s clear to them that they’re taking on a territory that gives them the bandwidth to surpass quota, earn accelerators, and continually drive profitable revenue for their employer.
We see sales leaders frequently make the fatal mistake of not giving enough attention to this aspect of their sales force design and the impact assigning small territories has on their talent acquisition efforts. The reality is that it’s a major contributor to why companies fail to incentivize top salespeople to sign their employer offer.
To mitigate the risk of territory size becoming a point of contention during the offer stage, hiring managers need to:
Describe the size of the territory’s potential customer base and profitability,
Emphasize the company’s process for evaluating the local market potential and it’s impact on what candidates care about: earning potential, account value, and travel requirements.
6. Failing to Provide Details
When salespeople weigh a new opportunity against their current role, they don’t make the decision solely based on their salary and on-target earnings. Instead, they take a holistic approach when thinking about their choice. They want to know specific details about the comp package.
Specifically, candidates expect an offer to include the following:
Health Insurance Plan
Vacation Days
Retirement Plan
Company Car
Commission Plan with Assigned Quota
Covered Expenses
Existing Account Base
Other less tangible benefits, such as flexibility and autonomy, can make a significant difference on the decision of a candidate too. Depending on a salesperson’s priorities, these attributes can tip the scale in the direction of a new job. By giving a comprehensive picture of each aspect of employment, you can maximize your likelihood of hiring your top candidate(s).
7. Not Selling the Opportunity
High-performing salespeople are standouts at their current companies because they’re surpassing quotas, growing their market base, and cultivating strong relationships with prospects that can be leveraged in the future. To recruit these candidates, companies need to put themselves in the candidate’s shoes and sell them on why they need to join the company.
At each stage of the recruitment process, and specifically during the offer stage, you need to give ideal candidates compelling reasons to change jobs. Bestselling authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street have identified five things that candidates care about the most – the “five F’s of selling” – when considering signing on the dotted line.
The five F’s of selling a candidate to join your company include:
Fit: The alignment between the company’s vision, needs, and sales culture with the candidate’s values, goals, and selling abilities.
Family: The impact changing jobs has on the candidate and their family.
Freedom: The autonomy granted to a candidate.
Fortune: The territory, market opportunity, earning potential, and specifics on the financial standing of the company.
Fun: The sales culture, working environment, and personal relationships the candidate will make.
If your company isn’t a brand name in the market, prospective salespeople will hone in on the specifics on the financial standing of your company; they want to shift to a company that exhibits consistent growth or strong financial backing. Don’t breeze over these details — hiring managers need to provide solid evidence that by joining the team, a candidate is positioning themselves for continued growth moving forward. The most successful companies always frame a new position in this way, with clear information on the promotion track at the organization.
These seven offer-stage mistakes can damage even the most effective recruitment processes.
To ensure you don’t make these mistakes, download the comprehensive offer stage checklist by filling out Peak Sales Recruiting’s form below:
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
There are key differences between the best salespeople and the rest in how they conduct themselves. Top sales professionals have just as much discipline and commitment to achieving their goals when they’re not in the office as when they are.
While average salespeople tend to check out at 5 p.m., great salespeople don’t stop at the end of the day. They seize opportunity for success 24/7.
This infographic demonstrates 5 unique ways top performing salespeople spend their time outside of the office:
Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:
relpost-thumb-wrapper
Related posts
Selling During A Recession: What You Need To Know
Top 12 Sales Conferences to Attend in 2024
5 Challenger Sales Model Examples — An In Depth Guide
In many companies it is commonplace to promote successful reps into sales management roles. To be fair, it is instinctive to reward your most successful and reliable reps with a promotion – who better to take on more responsibility in the sales organization than someone who understands how to sell a lot? Research shows, however, that more than 75% of reps promoted to sales manager will not last 2 years in the role and will return to a sales position.
Given the high failure rates of sales managers promoted from reps, does it really make sense?
Here are six reasons not to do it:
1. They are vastly different roles
A sales role involves hunting for opportunities, qualifying and/or developing relationships, listening, negotiating, and closing. Sales management involves activities such as interviewing, hiring, developing, training, cheerleading, managing, firing, tracking, forecasting, analyzing, and planning. An understanding of both makes someone more successful in either role, but a day spent in each seat means a day doing very different things.
2. Many aspects of managing people are more complex than selling
Great sales people have a system for dealing with the finite number of sales situations they will see. Managing a team means using an infinite number of mechanisms to hold each individual accountable, all of which can change from day to day, depending on the person.
3. Managing is not for everyone and requires specific ‘Sales DNA’
Drive, competitiveness, perseverance, optimism and flexibility are all traits one might expect to see in top reps and sales managers. The focus required by sales managers, however, is completely different and often cannot be fixed through training. Management requires patience, flexibility, tolerance and communication skills. “A-type” drivers, may be great at telling a team what to do, but may not be suited to helping them get there. Top reps who love the thrill of the kill will miss that aspect of their job if they are focused more on helping others close business. They will miss the time they spent in the field if they now spend more of their time inside overseeing the team and in meetings with their own management.
4. The best sales reps are used to flying at their own top speed
They are action oriented and used to driving results through their own direct efforts. Assuming leadership means overseeing a team where (on average) 50% of the reps are below targets, managers need to be able to gear up or down to the lowest common denominator, as the case may be. There will be a huge temptation to step in, takeover opportunities and close business for reps on the team, rather than help the reps become better closers through coaching.
5. Sales reps innately resist the things that sales managers absolutely need
In order to effectively run a team, great sales managers implement training programs, conduct in-depth sales meetings and pipeline reviews, and scrupulously document opportunities. Sales reps, on the other hand, are far more interested in going out to hunt new business opportunities, close deals, and ensure clients are happy and ready to buy again.
6. The cost of incorrectly promoting a top sales rep is massive
Poor leadership and loss of a great rep costs severely in terms of lost present and future customers, a damaged market reputation, and a drop in sales team morale.
To be a great manager you have to be an expert at management, not an exceptional sales person.
relpost-thumb-wrapper
Related posts
Cut Your Costs: Onboarding Sales Reps
9 Ways You May Be Killing Sales Team Morale [Infographic]
What You’re Missing When You Hire Based on Resumes Alone
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
As a salesperson looking to advance your sales career, you want to benefit from a strong sales territory, high compensation, long-term growth potential, and a thriving local economy. However, without a clear roadmap, it’s challenging to discern which cities can give you the ideal environment to capitalize on your skills and experiences.
Based on Glassdoor’s Top Cities for Sales Jobs, our own data, and 3rd party sources, we identified the top cities for sales jobs in 2017. Each of these metropolitan areas is an economic powerhouse with distinct advantages for high-performing salespeople. If you are considering making a move to a new region or are curious to know how your city ranks against other major economic centers, this guide can help to set you up for long-term success:
San Jose
More than any other city in the country, San Jose stands out as an epicenter for technology, energy, venture capital. It’s region — nicknamed Silicon Valley — was originally known for the high-tech engineering and manufacturing companies in the area. Although these industries still hold sway, Internet, software, and hardware companies now dominate the local economy.
San Jose’s dominance as an economic center cannot be overstated. In 2015, Milken Institute ranked San Jose as the #1 U.S. metropolitan area for sustaining and creating new jobs. The competition among companies for the top salespeople is intense — this demand is a reflection of the overall trajectory of the local economy.
Given the concentration of Fortune 500 companies based in Silicon Valley and the high cost of living, San Jose also has the highest paying sales opportunities. Glassdoor’s ranked San Jose #1 in its list of highest-paying cities for sales jobs. The overall average compensation for sales professionals reaches $127,500, while our research found that sales managers make an average of $165,570.
Although living in San Jose is also extremely expensive, it’s the ideal location for salespeople who want to enter a competitive, fast-changing market filled with organizations at every stage of growth.
San Francisco
San Francisco’s booming economy is only 49 miles north of San Jose. Together, these two cities create a dynamic ecosystem of thriving companies and high demand for top performers. In San Francisco, top salespeople will find the same technology industries that thrive in Silicon Valley in addition to a big financial services presence. It’s largest employers include Wells Fargo, engineering company Bechtel Corp, and professional services firm Ernst & Young.
San Francisco benefits from the highest concentration of venture capital funding of any city in the world. Over 15 percent of the world’s VC funding is invested in San Francisco, totaling close to $6.5 billion dollars. Combined with #2 San Jose, Bay Area companies account for over a quarter of the world’s VC funding at $10.5 billion dollars.
San Francisco also offers a higher level of job availability than San Jose at a lower average pay. In 2015, Glassdoor listed close to 3,000 jobs in San Francisco — almost 2,000 more jobs than in San Jose — at a median salary of $100,000. Between 2011 and 2015, requests for Peak to headhunt enterprise software sales leaders in the SF region rose by more than 15 percent, suggesting B2B companies are doubling down on their recruitment efforts in the city.
Living in the San Francisco also means that you benefit from companies and clients based in both Silicon Valley and San Francisco proper. Due to the prevalence of employer-provided transportation, salespeople can live in San Francisco while working in Silicon Valley or vice versa.
In addition to being one of the most expensive cities in the country, San Francisco has also been dubbed the city with the highest quality of living by Mercer. For sales professionals who live here, the cost is well worth the lifestyle and professional opportunities.
Boston
Situated at the head of Charles River, Boston is an iconic city with a flourishing economy. As an epicenter of higher education, healthcare, tech and biotech, Boston offers increasing opportunity for B2B salespeople.
A 2016 Wall Street Journal article described “knowledge capitals” like Boston as punching “above their weight” economically. In particular, Boston’s brainpower, rooted in over 100 colleges in the area, make this city a dynamic place to build a career. The unique combination of a talented workforce and elite research institutions ensure it’s poised to grow even more in the coming years.
GE’s recent decision to move their headquarters to Boston’s Seaport District reflects increased interest in tapping into this kind of energy. In particular, both the Seaport District and Cambridge’s Kendall Square attracting companies of every size that want to maintain a strategic edge, causing an influx of businesses to flock to the area. Boston is such a hub for emerging companies that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation declared it as the top city for start-ups.
Salespeople who want to have a material impact on a growth company or thrive in an innovation-based economy benefit from exploring Boston. Because the local economy builds on both a strong start-up culture and a long list of marquee companies, this city appeals to salespeople who want to position themselves for a promising, long-term career.
As of 2015, Glassdoor listed medium base salaries in Boston at $55,000 with an additional $33,000 in commissions. The robust economy suggests an expected growth in both B2B revenues and salaries for salespeople. For senior technology sales reps with 5+ years of experience, for example, salaries have risen 7 percent over the past three years. Territory managers in the software vertical have also experienced a 5 percent increase to $135,200.
Furthermore, Boston differentiates itself by offering residents a small-town, New England experience that accompanies the advantages of a major metropolitan area. Homes in its neighborhoods continue to grow in value as job seekers and companies flock to its brownstone-lined streets.
New York City
New York City is a hotbed of lucrative sales positions with a high level of intensity. In this city of over 8 million residents, financial services reign supreme, accounting for 15 percent of the economy. JPMorgan Chase is the city’s largest private-sector employer, followed by Citigroup.
The New York area includes a seizable portion of the country’s B2B professional and scientific services headquarters, which have consistently rebounded from the recession. For this reason, New York City boasts over 5,000 open sales jobs according to Glassdoor — the highest number on their list of top cities.
The big apple has also seen significant growth in the technology industry. According to the Partnership for New York City, the area’s tech sector has expanded by 29 percent in the past five years. In 2016, there were 75 percent more unicorn companies based in New York City than in 2014, including Buzzfeed and Oscar Health. CEO Kevin Rose even noted that people in New York’s start-up scene exhibit more “hustle” than its West-Coast counterparts. Therefore, salespeople who want a high-intensity work environment thrive in the fast-paced NYC economy.
With over 100,000 salespeople working in New York City with less than 50 percent of them consistently hitting quota, A-players can stand out among their sales peers. New York City sales candidates will find a medium base salary of $60,000 with a bonus of $30,000 for junior sales positions.
Although New York City is the most expensive city in the world, most New Yorkers couldn’t imagine an alternative. With an exceptional client base, unmatched opportunities to climb the corporate ladder, and the city’s cultural experiences at your fingertips, New York offers an amazing opportunity for top performers to advance their career.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is known for the entertainment industry, but it’s also an ideal environment for continuing a career in sales. In addition to being a creative capital, it’s the largest center for manufacturing in the United States, which offers opportunities for salespeople who work in industrial B2B sectors. Los Angeles-based companies create everything from computer and electronic products to automobiles. Plus, it’s location on the coast mean that $1 billion of products move through the port every day.
In addition to trade, LA has seen significant growth in the aerospace industry and specialized manufacturers, once a stagnant industry in Southern California. Clear skies and an abundance of space make Los Angeles an ideal environment for testing drones and satellite technology. For that reason, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Rocket Lab all chose LA for their headquarters.
Salespeople in this sunny city make an average of $55,000 in base pay with $30,000 in commissions. Meanwhile, B2B regional sales managers make an average of $97,484, which is slightly above the national average. Although this compensation is not at the level of the cities like San Francisco and New York, cost of living is lower. In New York City, for example, cost of living is 21 percent higher than Los Angeles.
According to our data, Los Angeles Area based employers have increased the number of sales positions they are recruiting for over the last 24 months by ~5 percent. Combined with amazing weather and a distinct quality of life, Los Angeles offers a breadth of opportunities for B2B salespeople interested in the aerospace, defense or manufacturing industries.
Washington, DC
Government, education, and tourism may be the largest industries in Washington. DC, but the private sector is on the rise. According to Business Insider, Washington DC is the seventh best economy in the nation. Stephen Fuller, an academic specializing in Washington’s economy, believes that professional and business services are the fastest growing industries in DC. Fuller argues that the next thirty years will add 800,000 private-sector positions in the metropolitan area.
Salespeople in DC benefit from the proximity to government — contractors, think tanks, and consultants drive innovation and policy in the public sector, contributing to long-term growth in the private sector. In particular, salespeople with experience working in the consulting industry will see plentiful opportunities in DC.
The largest private-sector employers include Clark Enterprises, Tasc, and Alion Science and Technology. According to DC Inno, the Washington start-up scene is also thriving. Over 400 local companies made Inc.’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies, including technology consultants ByteCubed and Oasys.
With a median base salary of $55,000 and $30,000 in commissions, salespeople in Washington, DC are setting themselves up for short-term and long-term success in a robust job market. For salespeople who want to work in a thriving city rooted in government and culture — and don’t mind a high cost of living — DC is the perfect metropolitan area.
Houston
Although people associate Houston with the oil industry, its job market offers other diversified options for sales candidates. The city provides a large B2B customer base in energy sector, space science, biotechnology, and technology. Top employers include Chevron, but also Deloitte and health-care company Kelsey-Seybold Clinic. Houston also stands out as the top exporting metropolitan region in the United States, which supports economic growth in this region.
The median age in this Texas city is 33 and is becoming younger every year, as a growing population of young professionals make their home in Houston. The city is seeing changes that accompany the influx of millennials. This year, two big downtown coworking spaces are under construction, one operated by TechSpace. These coworking spaces signal that companies are investing in this region as an entrepreneurial and technology center.
Houston stands out from other cities on this list by offering the highest compensation for salespeople outside of the Northeast and California. Total compensation averages at $85,000 in Houston. With 1,775 sales positions available, it also surpasses San Jose for opportunities in the job market.
Bridgeport
Once a thriving industrial center, Bridgeport, Connecticut is in the process of reinventing itself after years of economic hardship. The biggest city in the state, it’s home to nine of the top employers in Connecticut, with dozens more in surrounding communities.
Manufacturing still drives the economy here despite a significant drop in available factory jobs. Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation employs 8,300 people right outside of Bridgeport’s downtown. Neighboring cities Stamford and New Haven also provide opportunities. In fact, our research shows that there was a 13 percent increase in requests for senior account executives in the Bridgeport area over the last 24 months.
Non-profits are in the process of rejuvenating Bridgeport’s ailing downtown with the hopes of sparking creative and tech industries. This September, the city hosted its first hackathon. By working with the neighboring Stamford Innovation Center and a grant from Connecticut Main Street Center, the city intends to shift in a renewed direction.
Bridgeport offers a slightly lower median income than Houston at $85,000. Its cost of living is 34 percent lower than New York City, despite the short distance between the two commercial centers. By train, it’s only an hour and a half ride to midtown Manhattan from downtown Bridgeport. B2B salespeople looking to work and live in the Northeast in an area with a lower cost of living should definitely explore the opportunities in Bridgeport.
Boulder
Boulder is a city teeming with entrepreneurs. In 2013, the Kaufmann Foundation reported that it has the highest density of tech start-ups in the country, with twice the number of start-ups per capita as San Jose. In the first three quarters of 2015, $150 million of venture capital funding went to Boulder-based companies, with 41.5 percent supporting software companies and 39.3 percent allocated to biotech companies. Tech firms employ the greatest percentage of Boulder residents with large employers like IBM and the aerospace contractor Ball Corporations anchoring the economy. However, according to University of Colorado Boulder, the strongest job growth will occur in professional and business services. Their research also suggests that the state’s concentration of professional, scientific, and technical services are 33 percent higher than the U.S. as a whole. These statistics signal that Boulder-based firms rely on talented salespeople to close deals, outperforming the country in its concentration of sales employers.
Like Boston, Boulder is home to many higher education institutions and research organizations. Residents are well-educated and technically skilled, which makes it a competitive hiring environment. Although this city offers a booming tech scene, available jobs hover around 108 because qualified young professionals who flood the market. It may take extensive networking and an aggressive job search to find the ideal sales role.
The median pay for salespeople in Boulder is strong, at $85,000. Because of a moderate cost of living, 300 days of sunshine a year, and a mountain environment, sales roles in Boulder are coveted positions.
With a thriving, diversified economy, Dallas-Fort Worth offers B2B salespeople opportunities in defense contracting, professional services, aviation, financial sectors, and information technology. As with the other cities on this list, Dallas has benefited from strong ties to the technology sector. Known as Texas’ “Silicon Prairie,” it is gaining traction as a great ecosystem for entrepreneurs.
Salespeople who choose to build a career in Dallas make an average of $84,000. They benefit from a strong job market with 252 jobs available per 100,000 residents — a ratio that’s higher than New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Combined with the affordability of homes and low cost of living, Dallas’s hot job market and thriving economy make it a great place to be.
Seattle
Situated alongside Puget Sound, Seattle is home to marquee companies Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nordstrom. Some of its top industries — technology, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, green technology, and information communication technology — are ideal for B2B salespeople.
Most notably, 238,900 people in Washington state work in tech. Recruiters can attest that it’s a job candidate’s market, especially for technical sales roles. It’s rated the third-best city in the nation for job growth, with over 100,000 available jobs. Seattle’s also boasts strong salaries with compensation for sales roles averaging at $84,000. Salespeople can find even higher salaries at big tech companies.
Start-ups that can’t compete with Seattle’s biggest companies on compensation incentivize job candidates with a culture-first approach. With a supportive sales culture, extra flexibility, and significant perks, these start-ups offer their sales reps additional ownership over their work and an exemplary experience. If a salesperson values a fun, dynamic environment, there’s bound to find an abundance of options here.
Raleigh-Durham
Known as the Research Triangle, this part of North Carolina includes Raleigh and Durham, as well as Chapel Hill. Thanks to significant investments in the private sector and numerous universities, the Research Triangle is a center for aerospace and aviation, automotive, biotech and pharmaceuticals, energy, information, and communications technology.
Raleigh-Durham’s hiring landscape offers a full range of options for salespeople. Mid-size companies and start-ups in R&D’s emerging tech scene both offer sizable opportunities to salespeople who want to be a part of a growing firm. A large pool of multinational corporations that include GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer Crop Science offer corporate opportunities for salespeople who are interested in pursuing a career in a large organization.
Peak Sales has seen an increase in requests for senior salespeople both from Raleigh-Durham’s technology and professional services organizations. Specifically, the Research Triangle has seen a 12 percent increase in sales job growth in technology and science sectors over the last five years. Companies in this booming area need B2B salespeople with in-depth industry knowledge and the ambition to grow their careers.
Our research found that the average income for sales managers in Durham and Chapel Hill is $142,320 and $130,800 respectively. Glassdoor reports that the median income for non-managerial sales jobs is $84,000 total, including commissions. This area also offers affordable housing, a thriving sense of community, and access to three of North Carolina’s best cities.
Atlanta
Atlanta is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Southeast, second only to Miami-Dade County. An affordable cost of living, low housing costs, and state and local incentives have helped drive Atlanta’s economic boom. For every new job created, the state of Georgia gives the employer a $2,500 to $5,000 tax credit.
Atlanta remains firmly rooted as a key area for pharmaceuticals and life science industries while making gains in technology, transportation services, and professional services. Specifically, the region’s professional and business services sector has outpaced the U.S. economy at 5.3 percent job growth.
The tech scene in Atlanta also continues to gain traction. DataFox named it one of the best places to create a start-up outside of Silicon Valley and New York. The city also recently benefited from the opening of a $100 million venture capital fund Leaders Fund that will further support the city’s SaaS companies.
Atlanta’s thriving economy is ideal for salespeople in every stage of their career. In particular, Peak has seen requests for senior salespeople in Atlanta grow by 24 percent since 2014. Salaries for sales professionals in this region are above the country’s average. Glassdoor reports that the average salesperson makes $82,500 while our data suggests that sales engineers make a median wage of $106,700 and managers make an average of $117,160.
Although Atlanta offers lower salaries than the other cities on the list, as in Raleigh-Durham and Dallas, its low cost of living make this region an ideal place to put down roots. With an average home cost of $178,900 compared to $809,400 in San Francisco, your salary provides much greater buying power.
Sacramento
Sacramento is often overlooked when compared to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but it’s still a top city for sales jobs. This region is the seat of state government, but it also built a varied economy, with thriving clean technology, life sciences, transportation, and aerospace industries.
This year, The Sacramento Bee reported that the region’s economy has grown at the fastest pace in 10 years, reaching a 3.5 percent growth in GDP. Household incomes also grew by 5 percent between 2014-2015, showing promise for continued prosperity.
According to Glassdoor, Sacramento-based salespeople make a median income of $82,000. Although this salary is significantly lower than sales positions in other commercial centers in Northern California, Sacramento offers much lower housing costs. Rent prices are 227.84 percent less expensive than in neighboring San Francisco.
Sacramento companies also exhibit an increased need for talented sales reps. Peak Sales has seen a 10 percent increase in the number of requests for enterprise reps selling complex, multi-stakeholder solutions in the Sacramento area.
Hartford’s appeal doesn’t stop there. In addition to a strong presence in the insurance and financial services industries, Hartford benefits from a thriving manufacturing sector led by Fortune-500 companies United Technologies Inc. and Stanley Black & Decker
This year, Hartford is poised to make significant investments in creating a local tech hub.
CTNext, which offers state-funded grants for entrepreneurs, set aside $90 million to boost entrepreneurialism in Connecticut. Their goal is to turn Hartford, and other cities in the state, into centers for innovation. As Connecticut makes significant investments in the technology sector, salespeople can expect a growing need for their talents moving forward.
Hartford-based salespeople also benefit from a 120-mile radius that includes Boston, New York, New Haven, Springfield, and Albany. In other words, they have access to clients in the Northeast’s biggest economies, all within a day’s drive. With salaries at a median of $82,000, sales professionals in Hartford make a good living in a city that offers long-term career potential.
relpost-thumb-wrapper
Related posts
Top 5 Ways to Prepare for Your Next Sales Interview [Infographic]
Beyond Smiles & Dials: 5 Sales Coaching Techniques That Work
Personal Branding: The Key to Success for Salespeople on LinkedIn
Having to deal with counter offers is one of the most difficult challenges facing successful companies looking to grow and attract great talent.
Great employees are hard to find, highly sought after and almost always gainfully employed. No employer wants to lose people like this without a fight, so when an employer learns that one of the their best employees is intending to resign, in all probability there is going to be a strong effort to prevent them from going.
In our business, which is based entirely on finding elite level sales people, counter offers arise regularly. Over the years, however, we have developed useful ways of mitigating their impact on our ability to recruit the people our customers need to hire. Some of these tactics can be used in isolation, or combined to increase the chances of landing the desired candidate:
Be an Employer of Choice
The best defense against counter offers is to offer things that no other employer can offer. Market leaders explicitly understand that becoming known as a great place to work and build a career significantly lessens the impact that a counter offer has on a highly desirable candidate. Any employer can offer more compensation, but a company that is known as an employer of choice can offer not only a great financial opportunity, but also a great career opportunity – which is always very difficult for other employers to match.
Stay Close to the Candidate
When someone decides to interview for a new position, they are likely seeking something they are not receiving from their current employer. The recruiting employer has the advantage of discussing these matters with the prospective hire and offering a career opportunity that caters to the candidate’s current objectives, needs, and mindset. When a mutually agreeable offer is made and the candidate informs their current employer that they will be resigning, the current employer may well be caught off guard and not be able to offer all the things that the competing employer is offering. This makes it imperative to not only fully understand the candidate’s real career objectives and motivations for making a change, but also to stay in very close contact throughout the recruiting process so as to be aware of any issues or mood changes as they arise.
Trial Resignation
During advanced stages of engaging a target candidate, have a discussion about the likelihood that they will receive a counter offer from their current employer. Ask the candidate whether they expect a counter, how they will feel about this and how they will respond. Consider conducting a role play where you present a counter offer to the candidate to assess the degree to which they have thought through their response, and how emotionally committed they are to leaving their current employer. At worst, this will help identify any addressed obstacles that may stand in the way of hiring this person away from their current job.
I recall the negotiations with one particular highly coveted candidate. We met the candidate’s financial requirements, and although money is always a factor in making career moves, the candidate had expressed that their primary motivation for making the change was to take advantage of the career opportunity that was being offered. They claimed that no amount of money would make them pass up this opportunity. To see where we were really at, I role played a resignation conversation between the candidate and their current employer, with me assuming the part of the latter. It went something like this:
Candidate: I would like to inform you that I am resigning.
Me/Current Employer: I am sorry to hear that. Is your decision final?
Candidate: …Yes
Me/Current Employer: Can you tell me why are leaving?
Candidate: I feel it is time for me to move on.
Me/Current Employer: Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?
Candidate: I am sorry, not really.
Me/Current Employer: If I raise your base salary by $20k and add a new 10% bonus, would you be open to reconsidering?
Candidate: Uh…wow…well…uh…yes.
Boom! I knew right there we had not yet fully secured the candidate’s commitment to make a move and more work was required to understand the candidate’s real motivations.
Get Compensation Right
While there is a school of thought that money is not the most important aspect in attracting great talent, we see time and time again that even small differences in compensation have an enormous impact on a candidate’s desire to change employers.
Yet a surprising number of companies will spend a lot of time finding and courting the ideal candidate, discussing a financial offer and then making a formal offer which includes compensation that is lower than the candidate is currently making. Hiring employers that make these kinds of offers either overvalue the career opportunity that they are offering or assume that a candidate will want to negotiate. Big mistake. In many such cases, the candidate, having been insulted by the recruiting employer, will go back back to their current employer, let them know they are contemplating resignation, and ask for a raise in exchange for staying. Many employers will comply and the candidate is off the market.
even small differences in compensation have an enormous impact on a candidate’s desire to change employers.”
An approach with a better chance of success involves knowing what a targeted candidate wants, and making a great first offer that meets or even exceeds their expectations. This takes compensation off the table as a potential issue in the offer negotiation and allows the discussion to focus on other aspects of the unique career opportunity that is being offered. It also doesn’t hurt to have some budget flexibility in order to sweeten the compensation offer if required to close the right candidate.
Out Counter the Counter
At some point later in the process of courting a particular candidate, have a discussion with them about the likelihood that they will get counter offer from their current employer. Be upfront and inform the candidate that you would like a chance to speak after the counter is received in case there is chance to make a better offer. While an employer generally wants to avoid a bidding war for talent, there is no escaping the reality that by targeting the best talent in the industry, you are already in a bidding war.
De-risk
Anyone that leaves an employment position to join another company is assuming risk. This is particularly true with high achieving people who have an unblemished track record of success. Recruiting employers often underestimate this risk and the power of the status quo. Even if a great career opportunity is presented to a potential hire, they may be inclined to pass on the opportunity and accept a counter offer in order to stay with their current employer since they have a reasonable likelihood of continuing their success. This reality makes it incumbent on the recruiting employer to thoroughly map out how the candidate will be successful and how every detail has been taken care of including contingencies for unexpected events.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
In today’s hyper-competitive sales hiring landscape, the interview process can quickly become a daunting and drawn out process. Candidates are required to complete multiple interviews, behavioral assessments, and psychometric testing. While it’s frustrating when you don’t get the sales job, understanding why you didn’t is your path to future success. Key Takeaways? Know your numbers, come prepared, and communicate with your references.
Here are the top ten reasons why you didn’t get the sales job, and what you can do about it:
1. You didn’t know your numbers
In sales, numbers reign supreme. Simply put, it’s rarely possible to ace an interview without knowing the specifics of your performance metrics. Top sellers know their performance metrics, so be specific in your knowledge. Before attending your next interview, ensure you are able to answer the following questions:
What was your quota?
How much of your quota was new sales versus repeat business?
What was the average deal size?
How much of your quota was made up of up-sells?
How long was your average sales cycle?
How many leads were given to you versus hunted?
What percentage of your targets did you achieve in the last year
2. You failed to come prepared
We live in a job market where each open corporate position is met with 250 resumes on average. Hiring managers are too pressed for time to allow for second chances if you fail to come prepared. It becomes clear to an interviewer when a candidate doesn’t know the product, market, industry, or challenges facing an organization. Often, they will be quick to cease communication with a candidate who has failed to commit at the most basic level of spending time to know the company.
The best sales candidates research the history, structure, and competitors of a given company. They go deeper by understanding the corporate strategy, key markets, ideal customer base, and corporate growth targets.
Come prepared with facts, statistics, or your own insights on how the company can surpass their sales goals and you will demonstrate your commitment to the role.
3. You weren’t the right cultural fit
While skills and experience are the first things to be analyzed in an interview process, it’s also important that the organization deems you a good fit for the company culturally. Generally, employers can judge whether or not a salesperson will be a cultural fit by asking you about your personal values and communication style, your understanding of the company’s values, and how you approach conflict, coaching, and feedback.
It can be hard to determine whether or not a candidate will be a good fit with a potential organization solely through the interview process, but employers need to ultimately determine if a candidate will integrate well with the current employees. While it’s frustrating to lose out on a sales job due to lack of cultural fit, studies have shown that 89% of hiring failures are due to cultural fit.
Your resume should be tailored to the specific skills, experience, and selling environment of each and every job you apply for. Because employers are only interested in hiring A players, you do not have the luxury of coming across as an “almost perfect” fit. You need to display from the first point of contact why you are an exact match for the position available, how your selling history matches this, and how your sales performance makes you a “can’t miss” candidate.
Read here for the best tips on how to construct a standout resume employers can’t say no to.
5.Your cover letter was not targeted for the position
Much like a resume needs to be tailored for each sales role you apply for, your cover letter needs to add depth and texture to the basic information of your resume. Use your cover letter to tell a compelling story about your work experience. Instead of simply describing how you are a “motivated, driven, or ambitious individual,” give a succinct example about a time when you displayed these characteristics.
A cover letter is used as a way to evaluate a candidates ability to communicate. The best letters address the employer’s requirements in the position they are hiring for. Highlight key sales accomplishments, awards/accolades, sales methodology training, and industry experience.
6.Another candidate was more qualified
Unfortunately, this is the reality of any job candidacy. Ask the hiring manager for the specific reasons why another candidate was considered a more qualified candidate. It will ultimately aid your job search going forward and provide you insight into what skills and experiences you need to build upon.
Some of the most common reasons another candidate attains a sales job candidacy are because they have:
More experience selling in the required verticals
Built out a larger book of business
A longer proven track record of success
More experience in a hunting role/developing new business
Sold into the C-Suite
7.You lacked professionalism when speaking about past employers
Owning responsibility for your performance is a quality top salespeople fully embrace. While it is possible that your departure from a previous company was under less than ideal circumstances, this should not factor into how you speak about a previous employer in an interview.
If the reason for separation between you and your last employer was due to personal differences or conflict, ensure you speak only to professional differences in the interview. Refrain from speaking badly about a former boss. Maintain a respectful demeanor and keep it professional.
Keep emotions out of any conversations regarding former employers, and always guide the conversation back to what you learned from the experience.
8. You failed to differentiate your value
As we have explained, top performing salespeople are different. The key to value differentiation in the interview process is to display your value early, and display it often. Above and beyond knowing your numbers and demonstrating a successful track record, demonstrate your ability to effectively communicate and build rapport. This is a competency employers need to see in their sales force. From the first point of contact, exhibiting your people skills and ability to establish relationships will gain any employer’s attention.
9. You didn’t leverage your network properly
It’s common knowledge that networking often leads to a job interview. In fact, hiring expert Lou Adler conducted a study which found that well over half of sales roles are filled through networking efforts. Candidates are successful at using networks to learn about positions, but overlook attaining information that will provide an edge in the interview process.
Think through what you would like to know about the culture of the sales team: the scope and expectations of the job, sales methodologies used, unique aspects of the interview process, or any specific requirements the sales team has.
Privately reach out to your professional networks, such as LinkedIn, and you will find the information you need. Be specific rather than general in your questions. You are getting information, not asking how to get the job.
10. Your references didn’t check out
According to a CareerBuilder survey, 62% of employers said that when contacting a reference, the reference didn’t have favorable things to say about the candidate. This is significant because prior to an offer of employment, reference checks are often the last step in the interview process.
Ensure you have spoken to each reference in advance. Instead of hoping they will provide positive information on your behalf, ask them if they would recommend you to a potential employer. This is a clear way to determine if they will provide a positive reference. Inform your references that they should expect a call from your prospective employer. Remind them of any past accomplishments you had with them. Prepare them to speak to how you performed in your role with them.
Learn from your experience and advance your career
Rejection at some point of your hiring experience is to be expected given the competitive landscape of the sales workforce. While some aspects of job attainment are out of your control, understanding why you didn’t get the sales job will allow you to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Pay attention to the details of your resume and cover letter, be proactive in your communication with references, and know your numbers.
Even in the midst of some serious fiscal problems in Chicago – the city is facing a budget crisis and so is the state – the outlook for job growth in Chicago is positive. Chicago is welcoming new Fortune 500 businesses as they bring their headquarters to the city. There is a boom in the technology sector and in health care. Unemployment is down, and wages maintain a healthy bump over the national average. While some sectors – particularly manufacturing – are experiencing economic challenges, there is a great deal of growth for jobs in general, which is good news for sales professionals and employers who want to locate themselves in a growth region with plenty of opportunity.
“Unlike New York, and its connection to the financial sector or Los Angeles with the entertainment sector, Chicago’s economy is built on its diversity. That allows us to be a world leader in many different areas all at once.” – Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago
The big picture in Chicago
This past May, Crain’s Chicago Business, the business journal of record in the city, reported in their article ‘Chicago Economic Growth Slowed in First Quarter‘, that “Chicago, like the rest of the country, hit some economic bumps in the first quarter but is still likely to be expanding its economy a year from now.” The article also noted that Chicago now ranks 18th of 20 large cities – up from 19th last quarter – in odds that its economy will be growing in a year. This prediction is echoed by the latest Chicago business analysis from the Regional Economic Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which noted, “given Illinois’ economic performance of late, recovery to the prior peak (adjusted for changes in labor force participation and population growth) within five years would seem feasible.”
More recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Midwest Region office reported in its Chicago Area Economic Summary, updated September 1, 2015, that “unemployment is down from 7.3 percent in 2014 to 5.9 percent in 2015 in the Chicago area, and trending down for the Greater Chicago area.”
A potential driver lowering the unemployment rate could be due to the fact that Chicago has a well-educated population that employers can draw from when recruiting. The University of Chicago, The University of Illinois, and Northwestern University serve as three of the city’s higher education anchors, along with institutions like DePaul, Loyola, the Illinois Institute of Technology and a host of mid-sized colleges and junior colleges.
Chicago is also a popular destination for recent graduates from all over the Midwest – Ohio University and the University of Michigan both report that Chicago is a primary destination for large numbers of alumni. It’s a great place for employers to find candidates with MBAs, with the Kellogg School of Management and the Booth School of Business offering executive MBA programs as well as internationally recognized executive leadership and training courses on an ongoing basis. Northwestern’s executive leadership programs, for example, offers several of study that zone in on specific skill sets for sales leaders such as how to accelerate sales force performance, how to lead high impact teams, and how to leverage customer insights to drive sales.
What is propelling the growth?
A mix of Fortune 500 companies choosing to locate their headquarters in the city combined with a tech and healthcare boom is spurring growth. The Metro Economic Outlook: Chicago report published by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) in 2015 notes, “among the locally-headquartered members of the Fortune 500 list are aerospace interest Boeing, technology company Motorola, fast food restaurant giant McDonald’s, and agricultural processor Archer Daniels Midland, which moved to Chicago in 2014.” Other major names like Kraft Foods Group, The Allstate Corporation, and Baxter are also headquartered in Chicago. For a full list, visit World Business Chicago and download their curated list of Chicago-based companies on the Fortune list.
Rick Mattoon, Senior Economist and Economic Advisor for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago notes in his report, The U.S., Illinois, and Metro Chicago Economic Outlook for 2015, that Chicago is attracting more big companies. “Since 2011, 27 companies have chosen to locate headquarters in Chicago. Thirty-one Fortune 500 firms in the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and eight in Chicago.” Google is also making waves by building new offices in the city’s West Loop neighborhood, and the business boom is attracting more real estate developers. “JLL (formerly Jones Lang LaSalle) ranked Chicago 8th in the world for commercial real estate investment in 2014 (9.1 billion),” Mattoon notes.
The SHRM report observes that technology jobs, in particular, are increasing in Chicago. “The local tech sector is anchored by Internet marketing company Groupon, which has more than 2,000 people working at its Chicago headquarters,” notes the report, adding, “San Francisco-based online review website Yelp is expanding locally throughout the remainder of 2015 and will bring 300 jobs to the city.”
Sources, including SHRM, credit Chicago’s strong commitment to technology as a harbinger of growth in the community. The city sponsors a technology incubator called 1871 that’s located in Chicago’s legendary – and gigantic – Merchandise Mart building. The incubator is now credited with being “the home to almost 400 startup companies, and 40 companies have graduated from 1871 to create 500 local jobs.”
In addition to technology, the Federal Reserve Report notes that “the Chicago (city) economy has expanded by an estimated 12,445 private-sector jobs since September 2013, mostly attributed to professional and business services, transportation and warehousing, and education and health services sectors.”
As the city builds on its reputation for innovation, investors are taking notice and earmarking funds for Chicago-based companies. According to the Federal Reserve report, “venture capital investment in the metro area increased to $210.2 million during the third quarter of 2014, a 42.2% improvement over the same time period last year.”
Some complain that there aren’t enough angel investors and venture capital funders looking at Chicago, but the city is attracting attention.
“The missing link has always been venture capital, a problem that in the past not only forced companies but individuals to chase capital to the East and West Coasts. We have reversed that direction and today, money is chasing companies here to the Third Coast.” – Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago
The ChicagoInno blog keeps tabs on the startup community in the Greater Chicago area, and reports on events such as The Chicago Venture Summit. Anchored by venture capitalist and Chicagoan J.B. Prtizker, this event is meant to draw the attention of investors everywhere to showcase what’s happening in Chicago. And more recently, the Venture Capital Post predicted that Chicago is in the lead to become the next Silicon Valley. “Chicago is considered to be a haven for VC funding,” notes the publication. “The average salary in Chicago technology sector is over 65 percent higher than other industry verticals. The real estate sector is also huge and affordable for the industry as the price is increasing over 10 percent annually. All these positive factors put together make the Affordability Index of 182.3 for Chicago city on ULI report.”
Opportunities for employers targeting sales professionals
The kind of news being reported about Chicago by economists impacts employers looking to grow their sales force. The city is experiencing growth in high-earning-potential sectors such as technology and healthcare, with a mix of enterprise companies and innovative startups, which is driving demand and increasing the competition over rare, top performing salespeople, which represent only 10-15% of the entire sales population.
“(A bad hire) to me is what’s most risky.” If you even get a few people that are wrong for any number of reasons, be it they are just not great people, they’re political, they’re bureaucratic, they’re not good at their job, yet they advance. It cascades dow very quickly.” – Al Goldstein, CEO of AVANT
REAL reports that “Chicago’s employment rate in May 2015 was 103.21 of its pre-recession level,” and adds, “the 12-month forecast shows that Illinois is likely to experience an employment growth between 26,600 and 44,200. The greatest increase is likely to occur in professional and business services (23,100 more jobs) while the largest decline will happen for manufacturing (5,800 less jobs).” Peak Sales Recruiting CSO, Brent Thomson, notes that demand in the region has skyrocketed over the past 2 years, particularly in the technology and professional service verticals.
“The biggest challenge Chicago tech should tackle is finding ways to drive large, scaled and sustainable revenue streams. And this is no easy task. If I were to make a recommendation to all tech entrepreneurs for 2015 it would be to start consuming books on selling and marketing.” – Shawn Riegsecker, CEO & founder of Centro
Naysayers will caution that the fiscal problems at the city and state level threaten long-term growth. The State of Illinois Economic Forecast, January 2015 published by State of Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability, Moody’s Analytics, Economic and Consumer Credit Analytics noted in its summary that “Illinois’ economy has improved over the last year, but progress has been slow and the state has underperformed the region and nation in key gauges such as jobs, income, and output.” The report adds, however, that over the “longer term, Illinois has a lot of what businesses need to thrive — talent, access to customers and capital, transportation — but painful fiscal reforms are needed before it can fully capitalize on these strengths.”
Employers in the manufacturing sector should approach expanding its Chicago sales force with caution. Each of the major reporting bureaus noted some real problems in the manufacturing sector. The State of Illinois Economic Forecast, notes “a dramatic weakening of sales concentrated in the resources segment, and mining in particular, has led to significant downsizing that has spilled over into other parts of these economies.”
The impact on sales salaries
Companies looking at Chicago should note that the upturn in the economy is having an effect on wages. “The mean wage for sales and related jobs is 14 percent higher in Chicago than the national average,” notes the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Midwest Division. Over the past 3 years, we have seen the median base salary for senior technology sales representatives, those with 5+ years experience selling SaaS, Software, and/or Hardware, rise 8%, from $75,800.00 in 2012 to $82,000.00 in 2015. Similarly, the base salary for territory managers in the software vertical has risen 9%, from $125,000 in 2012 to $139,000 in 2015. Compensation plans have remained steady with a 50/50 base commission split, however, technology start-ups in the Greater Chicago Area have introduced more lucrative draws – up approximately 10% from the past two years – in an attempt to reduce the impact that long sales cycles have on first year earning potential.
High-growth companies looking to hire top performers in the Chicago market should therefore be prepared to find ways to economize on the higher-priced labor. Introducing new technology that can reduce rep travel requirements or administrative functions, for example, can mitigate the impact on rising wages over the long term. Firms can also pass on the cost increases to their customers by raising the product/service price. This outcome, however, is more likely in industries where demand for the product or service is relatively insensitive to price increases.
Chicago’s a smart choice for employers
Good wages and lots of opportunity are important, but top performers like to lead the charge for a company from a perch in one of the world’s leading metropolitan areas. If you’re considering opening an satellite office or a new headquarters, consider that Chicago is big enough to offer the sales challenge that top performers demand while delivering a lifestyle that’s family-friendly. It’s also centrally located so that sales people with significant travel requirements can navigate distance and time zones with more ease than those on one or the other coasts. A growing job base, a good economic outlook, and all the trappings of big city life with a dose of Midwestern charm makes Chicago a top choice for employers looking to expand their sales force.
Companies 
n Valley and the high cost of living, San Jose also has the highest paying sales opportunities.
Glassdoor’s ranked San Jose #1 in its list of 
San Francisco also offers a higher level of job availability than San Jose at a lower average pay. In 2015, Glassdoor listed close to 3,000 jobs in San Francisco — almost 2,000 more jobs than in San Jose — at a median salary of $100,000. Between 2011 and 2015, requests for Peak to headhunt enterprise software sales leaders in the SF region rose by more than 15 percent, suggesting B2B companies are doubling down on their recruitment efforts in the city.
A 2016 
headquarters, which have consistently rebounded from the recession. For this reason, New York City boasts over 5,000 open sales jobs according to Glassdoor — the highest number on their list of top cities.
In addition to trade, LA has seen 
Salespeople in DC benefit from the proximity to government — contractors, think tanks, and consultants drive innovation and policy in the public sector, contributing to long-term growth in the private sector. In particular, salespeople with experience working in the consulting industry will see plentiful opportunities in DC. 
The 
Manufacturing still drives the economy here despite a 
Tech firms employ the greatest percentage of Boulder residents with large employers like 
Most notably, 
Atlanta remains firmly rooted as a key area for pharmaceuticals and life science industries while making gains in technology, transportation services, and professional services. Specifically, the region’s professional and business services sector has outpaced the U.S. economy at 5.3 percent job growth.
Hartford’s appeal doesn’t stop there. In addition to a strong presence in the insurance and financial services industries, Hartford benefits from a thriving manufacturing sector led by Fortune-500 companies 
Chicago area.”
Sources, including SHRM, credit Chicago’s strong commitment to technology as a harbinger of growth in the community. The city sponsors a technology incubator called 1871 that’s located in Chicago’s legendary – and gigantic – Merchandise Mart building. The incubator is now credited with being “the home to almost 400 startup companies, and 40 companies have graduated from 1871 to create 500 local jobs.”
Naysayers will caution that the fiscal problems at the city and state level threaten long-term growth. 