For as long as I can remember, my mother was in sales. I never found any interest in the topic and had a general aversion to “salespeople”. Never would have considered it something I would have done professionally. Then how did I end up as an outside sales rep at a software development company shortly after college? I would be lying if I said that at that time it was a strategic decision in order to set myself up for success in my career. Even though the experience was more of a leap of faith than a meticulously planned chess move in my career, I learned a lot during my time in sales at Omnitech. I am positive I would not be where I am now if it wasn’t for the experience. I know sales is not something many people want to read about, but to those people I say: “just give this post a quick read, you might find some little nuggets of info”. Here are some of the most valuable lessons I learned during my time in sales at Omnitech. 1. Relationships are important. This goes for sales, management, family, community, and life in general. You want to surround yourself with people you like to be around. You can take this a step further by saying that you want to buy from people you like. Building relationships is how you lead a successful team, and trust is built through those relationships. I am not going to buy something from someone unless I can trust the person selling it. In my opinion, this is the golden rule for salespeople. Building a relationship takes time and when things go bad (which eventually something will go bad), the solid relationships are the ones that last. A solid relationship doesn’t happen overnight, you have to invest time and energy into it. I strongly recommend everyone read the incredibly popular book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie to improve your relationship building prowess. This lesson helped me so much in my career, because I knew I had to build relationships with my boss, my team members, and coworkers. That’s when you can really get shit done, when you have a solid team in which the team members have relationships built on trust amongst each other.
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My time in sales
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For as long as I can remember, my mother was in sales. I never found any interest in the topic and had a general aversion to “salespeople”. Never would have considered it something I would have done professionally. Then how did I end up as an outside sales rep at a software development company shortly after college? I would be lying if I said that at that time it was a strategic decision in order to set myself up for success in my career. Even though the experience was more of a leap of faith than a meticulously planned chess move in my career, I learned a lot during my time in sales at Omnitech. I am positive I would not be where I am now if it wasn’t for the experience. I know sales is not something many people want to read about, but to those people I say: “just give this post a quick read, you might find some little nuggets of info”. Here are some of the most valuable lessons I learned during my time in sales at Omnitech. 1. Relationships are important. This goes for sales, management, family, community, and life in general. You want to surround yourself with people you like to be around. You can take this a step further by saying that you want to buy from people you like. Building relationships is how you lead a successful team, and trust is built through those relationships. I am not going to buy something from someone unless I can trust the person selling it. In my opinion, this is the golden rule for salespeople. Building a relationship takes time and when things go bad (which eventually something will go bad), the solid relationships are the ones that last. A solid relationship doesn’t happen overnight, you have to invest time and energy into it. I strongly recommend everyone read the incredibly popular book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie to improve your relationship building prowess. This lesson helped me so much in my career, because I knew I had to build relationships with my boss, my team members, and coworkers. That’s when you can really get shit done, when you have a solid team in which the team members have relationships built on trust amongst each other.