What certification, experience does one need to land a sales position?
Hi @Much-Mul,
Thanks for reaching out to the Inbound Sales Study Group!
I wanted to invite our study group members to this conversation.
Hi @TomStaelens, @jolle, @MSchotel - Do you have any sales career advice for @Much-Mul?
Thank you!
Best,
Kristen
Thanks for the mention, @kvlschaefer! And great question, @Much-Mul!
Definitely check out the resources and advice from @MSchotel and @TomStaelens — I agree with them that actually performing sales activities will be the best source of knowledge and experience for you. HubSpot Academy is a great place to start as mentioned, particularly:
If you see something that interests you, check it out! Don’t feel like you need to limit yourself to education that’s categorized as being sales-oriented — you can learn a ton general inbound/inbound marketing courses around buyer journeys and personas that will help make you a well-rounded salesperson.
Echoing the other comments here, your goal should always be providing value and support to your customers. It’s easy to view the relationship as more of a transaction, especially depending on how you’re compensated, but it’s also easy to tell when a salesperson just trying to make the quickest sale. Don’t be another cold email or phone call in a world that’s already plagued by them. Think about what what you can do to make your approach unique and put in the prospecting research upfront. Always keep the customer in mind and consider they type of experience you’re creating for them. Is it worth their time? Is it giving them the answers they’re looking for? Is it the same pitch they’ve heard ten times already? Do the right thing, and the rest will follow.
Best of luck to you!!
Thanks @kvlschaefer for dragging me into this conversation :).
@Much-Mul, being a commercial manager with over a decade of sales experience I think I can be of service to you.
To answer your questions rather blunt: It is the same as asking yourself the question what certification, experience one needs to win at monopoly/chess or learn spanish.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and just start doing it. It’s a numbers game. The more presenations, pitches, conversations you do, the more you learn and the better at sales you will become.
When it comes down to sales you have to have listening, communication and persuasion skills in order to understand the customer and to see where your company can provide added value with product A,B,C.
All of this can be learned by simply picking up the phone at company XYZ and start asking.
If you want to land a salesjob, nothing changes. You do not have to have experience. You want to appear as a diamond in the rough that company X can polish.
1.) Do research on the company that you want to work for
2.) Do research on yourself. Why are you the perfect employee.
- Ask yourself Why you want to work there. (and why not)
- How you are going to do it (and how you are going to fail at it)
- What your are going to do to reach the target
3.) Match your research to that what is being asked/looked for in a person as de job description states.
And start the inbound sales course on Hubspot 
Good luck man!
We are here for you if you need anything.
Maurice
Hi,
There are tons of Hubspot coursed, I’d definitely check the ones about lead management, inbound sales and frictionless sales. There are also a lot of blog posts about how to do calls, voice mails, scripts you can use, and so on, too much to mention everything here. The academy content can teach you the basics, but it’s really up to you to actually do it. You’ll learn a lot actually doing sales, and with that experience you can refine your approach further. Just make sure that you are genuinely trying to help prospects.