Getting into sales as an swe

AT&T
johnny_boy

Go to company page AT&T

johnny_boy
Mar 9, 2020 6 Comments

I've been thinking about my long term career and I was wondering making a jump into sales. Obviously I'd have to be very personable and have lot of good connections to be successful. But beyond that how difficult is it? Is it easy to get hired in a new company? Especially for FAANG. I'm guessing the commissions are crazy good?
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What are some things you guys did to transition from pure dev/engineer to sales? Does MBA help or needed?

#salesengineer

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TOP 6 Comments
  • Netflix
    razorlab

    Go to company page Netflix

    razorlab
    Money is good for enterprise level sales. I mean, really good. You want a quick way to millions, yea this it is. Likely not where you’ll start. Try looking into sales engineer. These are the guys who actually demo the product for the sales person. It’s bit** work but gets in the door.

    Selling is an art and very few people can do it right. It’s very political and rarely are you selling a product. If you are dealing with Vp levels and trying to sell them a product for their org, you are literally threaten their job with change. Good luck...
    Mar 9, 2020 0
  • AWIP
    dimsumzim

    AWIP

    dimsumzim
    Solution consulting/Sales Engineer jobs will help you get there. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Asana has roles like that. You’d have to be great at giving demos and presentations. It’s possible without a MBA. I’ve seen a dev go into pre-sales.
    Mar 10, 2020 2
    • AWIP
      dimsumzim

      AWIP

      dimsumzim
      Also customer success engineers at google cloud do the same. I met a person who was from a hardware eng background and went into google (customer success eng)
      Mar 10, 2020
    • AT&T
      johnny_boy

      Go to company page AT&T

      johnny_boy
      OP
      Yea, I see lot of sales positions for these cloud providers where they provide solutions or sell for other companies. I wonder how much past experience (in any sales as opposed to just the product) makes a difference.
      Mar 10, 2020
  • Cisco
    davidbrent

    Go to company page Cisco

    davidbrent
    I’m trying to make the same move right now. It’s very hard if you don’t have any pre-sales experience, especially experience partnering with account executives. I would recommend trying to internally transfer or get into consulting/ implementations and trying to get promoted from there.
    Mar 9, 2020 1