Pearls of Wisdom: Sales Career Lessons from Alum Ben Carlson (’07)

memoryBlue alum Ben Carlson (’07) recently sat down with company CoFounder Chris Corcoran and shared a litany of important sales career lessons he’s learned since starting out on his professional path with us. Carlson joined memoryBlue right out of college, was hired by his high-tech client (Agami Systems), and has gone on to work for some of the biggest names in high-tech: Symantec, Amazon Web Services, and Google. He was also a Finalist for the inaugural memoryBlue Alumni of the Year Award in 2015.

Although he is based in Seattle for his current role with Google, Carlson dropped in at our HQ office in Virginia to share some knowledge with the current team.

In this fireside chat, Carlson shares some incredibly compelling insights for individuals either just starting out or considering a career in high-tech sales. These insights include:

• How he tapped the network of one of his former fellow memoryBlue SDRs to crack into Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• The move he made to turnaround his candidacy with AWS – which he later learned prevented him from getting knocked out.
• The pros/cons of working from home.
• The value of working for a company no one has heard of versus a market leader.
• How he beat out Google for a $75M deal that took 1.5 years to close.
• The deal he lost with Giorgio Armani. Why he lost the deal and what he learned.
• Why he thinks the worst thing you can do when you leave memoryBlue is “chase money” (and what to do instead).
• How to get the most from your sales manager.
• Why he’s taking night classes to earn a degree in Computer Science and why he chose this route over an MBA.

Catch the full audio from this excellent discussion right here.