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At the risk of getting downvoted: most of the impressions IT people have on other jobs are extremely one-dimensional and naive. In my personal opinion, a lot of

by ToJans 4y ago

At the risk of getting downvoted: most of the impressions IT people have on other jobs are extremely one-dimensional and naive. In my personal opinion, a lot of IT people have the impression that their job is "the most important and complex" job, and they could easily do another job of they put their minds to it. My suggestion is to put your money where your mouth is, and try it. You will most likely figure out soon enough that - like any almost any service job where you have a lot of independence - sales is really hard, nuanced and requires a lot of strategy, tactics and logistics. There's a huge difference between someone who's using a phone script to book an appointment for a utility provider, and someone who is selling high ticket services like the one that most likely pays your wages. The fact that you've had a few people of the first scenario on the phone can give you a hugely wrong impression about sales (pars pro toto). Sales can be as complex or simple as software development: there is a huge difference between someone who uses an if statement in an excel formula and somebody who builds an extremely optimized HFT system with FPGA or whatever they might use... In fact, I think there might be lots of parallels to software architecture: you need to figure out the proper model that helps you to actually sell something: not only making sure the buyer has BANT (budget / time / authority / need), but also making the buyer aware that you exist, that he trusts you, what his triggers are, when he gets triggered, how the buyer process works, who your champion might be, macro-economical factors that make your sale a no-brainer, how the sector you're active in works, what your competitor landscape looks like, how the politics in the organisation work ... Why do I have the need and think I have the authority to say this? I've been doing both sales and development, and being an IT guy first, my arrogance of "I can do sales and marketing too, it's just some ads / SEO / phonecalls and follow ups" has cost me almost a decade of opportunity cost. It's been a humbling and eye-opening experience that finally made me realize that - even though there are some jobs where you don't need your brain - a lot of jobs are way more complex than you can imagine. Parallels to "I can build that in a weekend" are not far away from "I could switch to a high end sales job by just reading a few books over the weekend".

cobertos 4y ago
I admit I fall into a mindset as described surrounding sales. So maybe acting authentically in sales role is doing the best you can (authentic to yourself and the customer) to a point where there comes to exist a conflict of interest with your employer? Though, it still feels like there are too many constraints on your own authenticity? At all the jobs I've worked at, there existed a gap between who I was and what the company saw as an "ideal" me in practice (how I acted versus how HR or company policy or how higher ups would like people to act or how I've seen in brand guidelines for tone and word choice for social media). I feel like the individuality/mindset I bring to the table is a large part of why I'm paid for what I do. But if I applied the employer's constraints wholly and sincerely to myself without individual thought, I would most likely be awful at my job in practice. I feel these constraints apply much more in sales, as an agent of the company, you must _act_ like the company. Maybe I'm overthinking it, and only truly hellish employers would want this. But it still feels, averaged over all employers, the "employer ideal" salesperson could not authentically act as an individual while being an agent of their employer. Which usually inspires distrust, and empathy at their constraints.

by ToJans 4y ago

cobertos 4y ago

I admit I fall into a mindset as described surrounding sales. So maybe acting authentically in sales role is doing the best you can (authentic to yourself and the customer) to a point where there comes to exist a conflict of interest with your employer? Though, it still feels like there are too many constraints on your own authenticity? At all the jobs I've worked at, there existed a gap between who I was and what the company saw as an "ideal" me in practice (how I acted versus how HR or company policy or how higher ups would like people to act or how I've seen in brand guidelines for tone and word choice for social media). I feel like the individuality/mindset I bring to the table is a large part of why I'm paid for what I do. But if I applied the employer's constraints wholly and sincerely to myself without individual thought, I would most likely be awful at my job in practice. I feel these constraints apply much more in sales, as an agent of the company, you must _act_ like the company. Maybe I'm overthinking it, and only truly hellish employers would want this. But it still feels, averaged over all employers, the "employer ideal" salesperson could not authentically act as an individual while being an agent of their employer. Which usually inspires distrust, and empathy at their constraints.