Anyone here work in IT sales?

:D that said at the same time I think it depends what sort of it sales company you are thinking of. I think customers of small local / medium sized firms like ocuk are likely better informed than the customers of say PC world

Staff usually mirrors this too with the smaller firms having people who are actually interested in the industry.
 
After about 10 years in IT I moved into a technical pre-sales role and it was the best thing I ever did.

As for our sales team, they are a varied bunch, some more 'salesy' than others, some with a better grasp of what it is they are selling than others :)

harry5522 said:
:D that said at the same time I think it depends what sort of it sales company you are thinking of. I think customers of small local / medium sized firms like ocuk are likely better informed than the customers of say PC world

Staff usually mirrors this too with the smaller firms having people who are actually interested in the industry.
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Retail sales will be a little different from B2B/Enterprise type stuff. Are you just selling product, solutions, services etc.

anything I don't mind said:
As long as you have a working product to sell it sells itself.
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If only it were that easy ;)
 
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Nix said:
If so, what are you experiences of it?
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Unless the product is really good or you can talk your way well round initial rejections and/or can take multiple on multiple of rejections daily and get moaned at by your boss and made to feel inferior by your winning teammates and go home each night feeling empty and wondering what the hell you are doing but maybe you can do it better tomorrow it then go for it.

Otherwise, it sucks. Companies and the people within them that have to listen to your call, generally have a massive distrust in you and your company and quite rightly so. Any decent company will have someone in-house who knows what they need and know where to go and what to look for.
 
PapaLazaru said:
Any decent company will have someone in-house who knows what they need and know where to go and what to look for.
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Well to a point this is true but does depend on what it is you're selling/they want to buy, what sort of sales organisation etc.

it's a bit of a wide ranging question, bit like the 'I want to work in IT' question, there's a lot to it.
 
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snips86x said:
What do you mean customer to "think" they know better....we do :p
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:D ocuk customers are usually reliably informed.. But you know those few who come on here with a bad mindset for instance those who intend on spending £4000 on a system and putting a 5400rpm caviar green as the OS drive and completely ignoring a SSD because he knows better and drives don't change performance obviously

But at least it's not like big name PC firm customers who don't know the difference between a hard drive and ram both of which naturally they think you can download more of. The staff then have to go and ask a supervisor if it's possible for there system to download more ram :D

As I said there are a few hidden gems who really are enthusiastic and know what they are talking about but it's a big ratio
 
Sales are the same everywhere.

Show the potential customer they need the product and push it using charisma and/or knowledge in the field.
 
You need to be able to handle rejection well in sales, that and the ability to let go of bad events and start fresh the next day.

That said a good sale is a real adrenaline buzz.
 
When I worked on a support helpdesk for a piece of IT software, I used to very much dislike the sales team.

Not only did they get paid more for doing less, they got a bonus for hitting targets, and also sold promises of the software doing things that it couldnt, yet, do. Development then had to drop everything to implement these feautures, which were not available to the client straight away, and we on the support desk were the ones having to deal with the clients moaning.
 
A2Z said:
When I worked on a support helpdesk for a piece of IT software, I used to very much dislike the sales team.

Not only did they get paid more for doing less, they got a bonus for hitting targets, and also sold promises of the software doing things that it couldnt, yet, do. Development then had to drop everything to implement these feautures, which were not available to the client straight away, and we on the support desk were the ones having to deal with the clients moaning.
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That's more the fault of your management for not violently beating the sales team into shape. Made a promise based on a lie and now the customer is upset? Sucks to be you.
 
Caged said:
That's more the fault of your management for not violently beating the sales team into shape. Made a promise based on a lie and now the customer is upset? Sucks to be you.
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Unfortunately the 2 managers - husband and wife - were the owners of the piece of software/company and all they cared about was hitting their sales targets every month, and worrying about the details later.

I didn't hang around too long after, a few others left the company as well.
 
Used to, started out working in distribution (was there for nigh on 13 years in the end) on shifting standard tin (pcs, monitors etc..) then moved onto enterprise storage and high-end servers, the rest is history :p
 
IT sales is rather broad - probably helps if you're more specific - there is a big difference between flogging dell laptops and microsoft office and selling specialist stuff... for example in financial technology the sales process could take up to a year and involve flying out to a potential client with a pre sales team, developers, product managers etc.. and doing pitches, webinars, demos etc.. at the lower end it can essentially involve being a call centre monkey.

Pay can be 20k or can be six figures or even as high as seven figures at the very top.


Whether you enjoy it is going to be partly down to you and your own personality, some people love sales others get stressed by it - only you can really answer that if you're honest with yourself - people with high EQ tend to do well. You made some posts about not liking retail for example and getting stressed with it - some people like retail others don't - I guess you know what the reasons were for not liking it... but if it was related to stress dealing with customers then the low end sales roles are probably not a good idea.

I didn't do IT sales, I did previously have a financial sales role and I've worked in a fintech firm where I'm aware of how the sales process works there - have assisted with webinars etc..
 
A2Z said:
When I worked on a support helpdesk for a piece of IT software, I used to very much dislike the sales team.

Not only did they get paid more for doing less, they got a bonus for hitting targets, and also sold promises of the software doing things that it couldnt, yet, do. Development then had to drop everything to implement these feautures, which were not available to the client straight away, and we on the support desk were the ones having to deal with the clients moaning.
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that isn't uncommon and can work if your product is highly configurable and requires a big project to implement it for example

certainly it is what happened at my old place in the early days - sales team would fill out an RFP and then claim to have certain features the client wanted that we didn't yet have - so long as they're working with the dev team and know they can deliver what is promised then it shouldn't be an issue... an early webinar/demo might have the person giving the webinar instructed to only do very specific things in front of the client as it is mostly just a fancy GUI at that point with lots of the functionality still to be implemented

if, on the other hand, you're shipping a standard bit of software that is never going to fill those requirements then it is an utterly retarded approach
 
^My experiences were similar when I worked for a software solution provider. It did get frustrating though as if you worked on an implementation project you had to battle/manage client expectations on the one side (based on promises / veiled demos) alongside product development priorities on the other side. Although our products were (reasonably) configurable, it was a case of the client being sold a solution that was "80% out of the box, 20% configuration" when the reality was more like 40:60 in some cases. The last such project I worked on took I think 2.5 years to implement compared to the initially projected 1 year (I left the organisation mid-way through).

As for the main topic, personally I don't think I'd be cut out for IT sales. I used to do presales support (product demos, exploratory workshops etc) so had some second-hand experience and I think I would hate being in a position where I've got to answer lots of questions about something I wouldn't have much detailed knowledge of. I remember once being in a meeting with a partner organisation (who were reselling our product) where the sales guy didn't even know that a product the customer was using already was one of his own companies products. It was to be honest quite embarrassing when he had to say "apologies, I should have known that".
 
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