There is a Right Way and Wrong Way to Land Your Dream Job in Tech Sales

If you’ve ever wondered how to land a job in tech sales, you may be surprised to learn that it doesn’t start with a resume.

Why Your Resume is Not a Golden Ticket to a Job in Tech Sales

Do you want to know the worst way to get a job in tech sales?

It’s going to a job site and just submitting your resume. Then sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.

How many resumes do you think I’ve reviewed?

Just take a guess…

How many resumes do you think a busy CEO reads with 500 employees, over 300,000 customers, and millions of followers at one of the top software companies in the world?

Are you ready?

ZERO.

That’s right. I’ve never reviewed a single resume that was submitted by a candidate.

Activity, Activity, Activity

Now that doesn’t mean that resumes aren’t important because Human Resources and hiring managers will require them just to put you into the HR systems. However, the real reason they require you to submit a resume is for organizational reasons, so they can have your name on a list in a CRM of potential candidates.

So if resumes are only needed for organizational reasons, hoping that this piece of paper gets you your dream tech sales job is just plain foolish. More importantly, just submitting a resume is a terrible strategy because you aren’t doing anything to make an impression or stand out to the decision-makers and the sales team who would hire you.

The only way to win at tech sales, and anything in life, is by doing more activity than anyone else. The more activity you execute, the greater your chances are of winning. Action is the move that sets you apart from all the other players on the field. Activity is the name of the game when you are trying to get a tech sales job.

Massive Action

The majority of the people I’ve hired took massive action to get their jobs. They prospected me via cold calling, emailing, social media, video messages, texts, you name it. They went all out to sell me and show me why they would be the best person to add to our sales team.

The majority of the salespeople we’ve ever hired (and we’ve hired over 1,000 people since launching the company) prospected every single person on the sales team and showed us why we needed to hire them right away.

The salespeople who get jobs in tech sales always go above and beyond just submitting their resume and hoping things work out.

They reach out to every decision-maker on the team. They prospect every influencer and pitch them on how they will transform sales, help them book more appointments, close more deals, and increase the company’s brand awareness.

They essentially sell them on why they should hire them. And they do whatever it takes to show them why they are the best person for the job.

Focused Prospecting Activity

If you doubt how effective it is to take the extra step and reach out like this, I promise you – it works! The people who do this type of activity are the people who get hired in tech sales.

If you want to get a job in tech sales as fast as humanly possible, don’t just submit your resume and wish for the best. You want to prospect and sell every single decision-maker, influencer, and team member at the company who might interview you and hire you.

Now that I’ve shared the importance of doing the maximum activity to get the offer, I’m going to show you the daily activity you need to execute to cut through the noise, book interviews, and get the job.

To Land Your Dream Job in Tech Sales Fast, Track the Following Activity Metrics:

LEADS

A lead is a contact at a company that you need to reach out to for a job interview. A lead can be a hiring manager, HR, talent acquisition, VP, director, manager, etc. really anyone in that “Inner Circle,” from HR to Sales, who’s in charge of filling your position. Depending on how fast you want to get hired, you will want to reach out to 10 – 100 leads per day.

Keep in mind that sometimes you may have to reach 30 people (that’s 30 leads) at a single company to get that tech sales job, so that can be a full day’s worth of lead generation. More importantly, the more leads you research to sell to, the greater your chances of success.

CALLS

Track all the calls you make to leads in a spreadsheet. I would recommend trying to make up to 4 calls per lead over two sales weeks (10 days). Shoot for a 5 to 20% conversion rate.

EMAILS

You will want to track all of the emails that you send to hiring managers and sales leads. You should send out up to 4 emails per lead over two sales weeks (10 days).

Shoot for a 5 to 20% conversion rate.

SOCIAL

You should send out three LinkedIn messages per lead (with the first being a connection request) over two sales weeks (10 days). Shoot for a 5 to 20% conversion rate.

VIDEO

You should also send out custom videos. I’ve hired quite a few people who sent videos, pitching me on why they’d be a great addition to the team.

LEVERAGE DIFFERENT CHANNELS

Always try different channels in order to book that interview. Some will respond to calls. Some will respond to emails. Some will respond to social media engagement. And some will like videos. Always try different channels in order to book that interview.

INTERVIEWS

Next, you need to track the number of interviews you attend. This will help you understand your leads-to-interview conversion rates and your interviews-to-job offer conversion rates.

Depending on the number of leads you contact a day, and how aggressive you want to be, you’ll want to try to book anywhere between 3 to 10 interviews a week.

If you convert those interviews at 20% conservatively, you will generate 2 job offers for every 10 interviews you go on!

JOB OFFERS

Job offers are employment agreements decision-makers put together for you to join their company. Your ultimate goal should be to get as many job offers as possible with your dream tech sales companies so you can figure out which organization is best for you to maximize your success.

The job offer is the ultimate metric all your hard work is leading up to. If you are putting in the activity and tracking your metrics daily, the job offers will roll in and that’s exactly how to land a job in tech sales.

Want to learn more about how to land your dream job in tech sales? Check out Brandon Bornancin’s newest book, The Ultimate Guide to Breaking Into Tech Sales. It will show you how to land your dream job, make six figures, and work from anywhere.