The Pitfalls of Launching a Sales Career with a Market Leader

In the late 1970s, future NBA Hall of Fame legend Michael Jordan was a relatively small (by basketball standards) 5’10” high school sophomore who aspired to make it onto the varsity basketball team at his hometown school in North Carolina. Jordan (somewhat famously now) went through tryouts and did not make the team, yet he would go on to become one of the single greatest basketball players the world has ever known.

That critical moment – a lack of quick early success – forged a well of commitment to perpetual training, ironclad resolve, and an unmatched work ethic deep inside Jordan. He would draw from that well time and time again to push himself towards hoops achievements far beyond the wildest dreams of most players.

But what would have happened if Jordan made that first varsity team? What would have happened if early success came easy? Would there be a Jordan statue outside the NBA’s Chicago Bulls home stadium where he raised six league championship banners, accumulated 10 league scoring titles (an all-time record), and earned five league MVP Awards among his many other accolades?

The world may not be able to answer that question, but Jordan’s personal history could provide practical lessons for many early-career job seekers considering an entry-level sales job offer from a market leader – firms that are industry titans and more than flush with resources.

Namely, be sure to consider these common pitfalls that your overly friendly (and well-funded) recruiter may not tell you when it comes to that seemingly attractive entry-level sales gig with an established corporate powerhouse.

Everything isn’t always awesome (in the long run) when you start a sales career in the land of milk and honey.

Sales is Easy – People Just Call Us!

Market-leading businesses exert a certain gravitational pull on the marketplace that make them akin to a giant snowball running quickly down a hill getting larger as it goes. With established products the business community generally accepts as “some of the best there are” (in any given category), sales cycles are typically easier and more predictable. Convincing a prospect to buy might be as easy as picking up the phone to field an inbound sales call.

These companies are selling solutions that, by definition, have already been stamped as “approved” in the market. Buyers can easily research them, feel safe by referencing case studies of other buyers within their verticals who use them successfully, and generally know that buying from the leader means getting a proven commodity and a built-in support structure.

Using this well-known depiction of the technology adoption life cycle made famous in Geoffrey Moore’s landmark B2B marketing book, “Crossing the Chasm” in the 90s, market leading high-tech firms have bridged the gap and achieved widespread adoption with their products and services (reading it left to right) deeply past the “Early Majority” and have potentially gained traction as far as the “Laggards” segment of the curve.

The famous Technology Adoption Life Cycle curve from Geoffrey Moore’s book, “Crossing the Chasm”

But will entry-level sales jobs at a firm like this help you really learn how to sell? After all, how much sales skill will you need (or will they even ask you to acquire) to develop new revenue opportunities at a company where businesses are already lining up to buy in?

Your first sales job will almost certainly not be your last sales job (unless you leave the profession). Take a moment to make sure your first career stop is a place where you see true potential to learn real sales skills that will serve you well later in your career – at places that might not already have buyers beating down the door to sign contracts.

Everyone Takes My Call, I’m Super Popular

Doing business as a market leader brings massive brand awareness advantages. Go through the latest Fortune 500 list, especially the top 10, and it’s a lock that the majority of people have heard of a great many of these firms.

Now consider the role of an early-stage sales professional. The job typically includes some level of running a multi-touch sales development outreach cadence targeting prospective B2B buyers.

Setting aside the notion that key executives are lining up to buy your product, who do you think B2B prospective buyers are more willing to take a sales call from (as an example):

• Amazon Web Services

OR

• A completely unknown new player in the cloud services space

Simply having a big name to drop right up front is going to produce access, or at least a moment of listening, the vast majority of B2B sales professionals would do almost anything to have.

But here’s the rub: if dropping a big name is the de facto “move” for getting sales conversations, you’ll be missing out on learning all the real skills true sales professionals must learn to become great at their craft. And those skills, once mastered, are the supremely marketable skills that future employers will pay top dollar to bring onboard and unleash on their behalf.

Who loses out if you never acquire those solid gold, hard-earned sales skills? I’ll give you one good guess.

Sales Training Takes a Back Seat

If taking a sales job with a market leader brings the above-mentioned inherent advantages – instant brand name recognition with prospects and buyers who are already interested – then what will these businesses care most about when it comes to educating their new sales staff hires?

The answer is they will care the most about product-specific training and education. Their singular focus for new sales hires (and it’s not a tough argument to make that this is a perfectly appropriate strategy for these goliaths) is to ensure those employees can competently speak about their solutions. It’s not nearly as important that these new hires understand foundational elements of B2B sales such as being able to execute a clear opening value statement on a cold outreach sales call or digest the nuances of dealing with prospect gatekeepers and employ multiple strategies to overcome them.

Why waste time teaching them sales tools their business doesn’t need to arm them with? The buyers are already interested or, at the minimum, attentively listening. Teaching new sales hires the ins and outs of the product set will help ensure these early-stage sales employees simply won’t “fumble the ball on the 1-yard line” with a willing and eager buyer.

Yet training new sales hires simply on products and solutions is most definitely NOT providing sales training. Well-established firms better ensure their desired outcomes with this approach, but all the new hire comes away with is a solid understanding of one product in one space.

Is that product-specific knowledge going to be a highly marketable sales skill future employers will clamor to bring onboard? Very doubtful.

Turning into Jordan

Image Credit: Brian Jackson, Chicago Sun-Times

Michael Jordan became Michael Jordan due, in part, to a very specific set of circumstances. He experienced a difficult start, but it served him well in very critical ways. Becoming great at anything in life requires many of the same factors which led to his rise and eventual dominance.

For anyone considering a long career in professional sales, pay careful attention to the jobs you choose early in your sales career. It may be tempting to start out with a firm that has the many advantages and resources that market leaders maintain. But all too often, the pitfalls mentioned above will prove to be more of a career setback than a line-jumping head start.

There’s usually no shortcut when it comes to acquiring a diverse range of strong and profitable sales skills. If you’re tempted to ignore these warnings and take an easier path, it just might make your professional sales career more difficult in the long run.

To see how memoryBlue offers early-stage career professionals the chance to learn, grow, and refine real sales skills on behalf of both market leading businesses and emerging high-tech players alike, head to our Careers section now.