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Oh hey, a sales thread. I've been selling IT services for the past 6 years, though I'm about to be looking for a new role. Specifically, what I sell revolves around data management - sometimes straight DBA work, but more frequently it will be data warehousing or ETL stuff. It's a job like any other, just requires a certain type of personality to be successful. As for methods, check out Neil Rackham's SPIN selling. When you start talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions, it helps to have a more structured approach.
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Sep 11, 2014 10:47
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 06:47 |
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On the opposite end of the guy above me, I'm looking for something to transition out of sales into. I've been doing tech sales, primarily services around the IBM portfolio, specifically the IM stack around analytics and data architecture. I've been here for about 7 years now, and for the first 5 years it was good - drat good. I liked the autonomy I had working for a small company and for awhile it was good. The last 18 months or so, however, have been rough. I'm concerned about the company's viability in the long run - the business we used to do is drying up as more tools are replacing people and consultants, and the company isn't embracing new technologies that would complement our existing skills - not just open source products such as Apache Spark and Hadoop, but even IBM products such as Watson. I've been looking for another job and whiffing on interviews and I came to the realization last night that I'm burned out on sales. I'm burned out on having a quota, I'm burned out on working for a small company where there is, at times, very little support and zero inclination from the top down to branch out. For the past year now, I've been unable to have conversations with some customers about the technology they want to talk about simply because even if I successfully closed, I have nothing to sell. That said, I do love working with customers on hard challenges, I love the creativity of it, and I love the speed at which technology evolves. I just can't seem to figure out what would be a good role for me though - to be fair, this really occurred to me just last night. Any ideas?
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Apr 8, 2016 18:36
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Lyon posted:I'm curious what other software companies' processes are when it comes to pricing services. We now need to get the VP of services to sign off on every statement of work and the effort before we can book an order. To do that we have to write the statement of work and level of effort which then gets reviewed by services management. They multiply our effort by 1.5-2 and then we need to try and negotiate that # down internally otherwise we get laughed out of the room by prospects when we tell them a simple project will be 300 person days of work. Discovery, discovery, discovery. My primary job currently is selling IT services and my preferred method is to get the perform resource involved in discovery so that we can write a bulletproof estimate of effort and SOW. I also push to do most jobs as T&M. I hate fixed price - the money CAN be better, but you need to be very, very good at controlling scope creep. For pricing, I'm very up front: "I can offer you a senior resource at $XXX/hr who you can put on autopilot and get the job done, working with your team only when he needs access/changes outside his or her permissions. I can put a junior resource on it at $XXX/hr, it will take more time and more project management, but it will help keep costs down. Which is more important - time or money?" The other half of this is to be completely transparent about what this will cost them and what it is costing them ongoing (so when you have a job go from 80 hours to 1600+ you can explain why), and to be vigilant about getting change requests signed on a timely basis.
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Apr 5, 2017 07:43
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Interview question specific to sales, more specifically IT sales. Last few interviews I've had they asked specifically about my previous income, which is a question I can dodge - but a few have asked for recent W2s. I know this is policy at some companies (Salesforce) but I'm not turning that over to someone after an initial interview. I'd prefer not to discuss my current income at all, it does me no good to answer that. Is this common now during the interview process, is this something anyone here would expect to be asked (and be comfortable answering)?
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Jun 12, 2017 04:34
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bEatmstrJ posted:I got asked this question and was asked to furnish W2's. It's hard to get around it gracefully and I'm fairly certain you're not required to furnish that info, but it's kind of tricky when they can walk away from hiring you if you don't. What i've found is that its usually HR that wants this info and there is often a disconnect between HR and the hiring manager who has certain expectations of what you're worth and what they are expecting to pay you, regardless of how much you're currently getting. Although my W2's showed quite a bit less than I mentioned (I fudged a bit) it wasn't brought up and I was still offered a 50% salary increase. My next job didn't ask for W2's but they did ask what I was making at the time. I told them I turned down an offer for X dollars from another company, which was true, but X dollars was also significantly more than I was making at the time. They wound up offering me well over X dollars and I accepted. This is kind of what I expected. In an initial interview I'll just say "Hey, my W2 has sensitive info, can we hold on that until further into the hiring process? I don't want to send it unnecessarily" and then sell myself to the actual hiring manager. Thanks!
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Jun 26, 2017 03:06
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DumbparameciuM posted:What are your salary expectations? This one sucks for me - more often than not, I have recruiters flat out ask me for W-2s from previous years. Obviously I don't want to give them those, how do you dodge that? I can give hard numbers on what I expect, but sending a W-2 is literally taking the ammo out of my gun if I'm going for a position I expect to pay considerably better. Ideas?
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Aug 2, 2017 13:38
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 06:47 |
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JackDarko posted:Thank you sir, I have no idea what to expect and after doing some research I can only find information about their London Office but they are established so they definitely know their target audience. The Recruiter is making sure I even get an interview on the weekend which is nice. I'm cautiously nervous and optimistic, my favorite part of my current job is when I'm on the phone performing discovery on customers and addressing their needs with our products. I think this role is really going to be a good fit. I can't tell if this post is a joke.
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Sep 20, 2017 11:21
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