Why you should choose a career as a tech sales pro

When you think of the term ‘sales’, do you still think of that slick, smooth-talking car salesman? Think again! Sales has evolved from just a job to a serious and challenging professional field over the past decades. We owe a lot of this evolution to tech sales.

If you’d like to know why you should choose a career as a tech sales pro, we’ve listed the challenges and benefits of a career in tech sales below.

What are the challenges of being a tech sales pro?

According to the cliché, what you need above all to be a good salesperson are daring and the power to persuade. In reality, sales are now based on a lot more than just gut feeling. After all, customers have become much smarter. This is partly because of the internet and social media: these days, customers can find a wealth of information about every imaginable product and service with just a couple of clicks.

In addition, they have many more tools available to analyse and monitor business processes and to measure the results of certain actions. This has made it easier for customers to assess the effect of different solutions on their businesses.

Therefore, it’s no longer enough to praise your product to the stars. The contemporary sales pro has to understand their customer’s problems and wishes properly, and how your product effectively solves these problems. This groundwork is essential for you to provide substantiated advice tailored to the customer.

Tech sales is an even greater challenge. After all, in many cases you no longer sell to the IT manager, but to the CEO, so you have to be able to bridge the gap between business and IT. You have to be able to think like a businessperson, but at the same time keep abreast of developments in the tech market.

As a tech sales pro, what tools do you have available?

Sounds complicated? Fortunately, tech sales pros have a number of tools at their disposal.

First of all, there’s the internet, because you can of course do what your customers can do. The internet is full of information that you can use to analyse the market and understand your customers’ problems. It puts you in a position to respond better to their needs and give them targeted advice.

In addition, a basic knowledge of (online) marketing can help you attract interesting leads, for example via social media. A modern sales professional is, therefore, aware of the best practices in marketing. Your marketing colleague can also help you create interesting online content, such as videos, podcasts and blogs.

In any case, it’s a popular misconception that as a tech salesperson you need to be tech-savvy. There are plenty of technical colleagues who can help you keep updated with the latest technologies. A good IT salesperson must, above all, be able to make the link to the business.

Finally, there are also all kinds of scientifically proven sales methods that you can learn and exploit to convince your customers. One example is the ‘Winning by Design’ method. Lots of employers offer you training to master this and other methods.

The benefits of a career as a tech sales pro

You read it: (tech) sales is no longer merely a job, but a real career where your success is based on business analysis, cooperation and proven methods. But it doesn’t end there, because as an IT sales professional you can count on these benefits:

• Unlike large companies with unwieldy structures, tech start-ups and scale-ups give you a lot of freedom to shape your career.
• The IT market is constantly changing. This means you constantly find new challenges and can continue to develop yourself. You won’t find yourself quickly trapped in a golden cage!
• As a tech sales pro, you build skills and knowledge that you can use for the rest of your life, even in other jobs.
• And don’t worry: you can also count on good wages and job security at smaller tech companies. After all, more and more large companies rely on start-ups and scale-ups, because they give them a competitive advantage.

Time to get started?

Because sales has become a serious field, you can learn it to a large extent. However, good support in this context is more important than ever for you to develop yourself as much as possible.

Would you like to work as an IT sales pro? And do you see tech sales as an exciting and challenging career, rather than just another job? Then Headlight can help you make your ambitions a reality. Contact us by e-mailing info@headlight.be or calling +32 472 876 112. See you soon!