Have an interview for a tech sales job next week.
Have never worked in this kind of job before. What’s it like? What should I talk about in the interview? Have you got any good stories about this kind of work?

Background:
It’s for a company who sells hops to breweries. I’ve just done an MSc in Brewing and have lots of (small scale) brewing experience, so the tech side of I have covered. Have ran a couple of small businesses, so have some sales experience but not really in the business to business side of things.

The territory seems to be central Scotland and northern England which doesn’t seem too bad as far as travelling goes. I guess I’ll need to get a base model 3 series, a shiny suit and practice my outside lane of the dual carriageway apoplectic road rage face?

I’d be googling “Sales Career” as fast as you bloody well can.

They’ll be wanting to know – in short – how you specifically plan to bring regional revenue into their business and why they should pay you to do so.   You need at least a basic plan to discuss this, plus a backup in case your biggest deal / customer /industry falls through.  Whinging in Sales is not usually tolerated.

Google “Sales Territory Plan”, think of it as a small business where below target = bust, on target = as you where, above target = growth potential.   You need to plan for the latter, a fall back plan for the on target.

Pretty good gig in our (IT) company. You get lots of travel, lots of autonomy, you often end up owning the relationship with small clients at least, and in ours you aren’t on commission but you do get bonuses. They get to deal with clients pre-sales but they aren’t actual sales people in that they sit down with techies and work stuff through instead of sitting and bullshitting in meetings. No shiny suit required. They get the hand-off from actual sales who do all the cold calling, lead creation and business development etc.

Perhaps not the same everywhere though.

Been to some wonderful and amazing places like the Indian Space Centre (and some shit holes too 😀 Fords Dagenham plant) met some amazing people. (and some wrong uns) from Heinz Wolf to James Cameron. Too much flying and driving though.

Thanks Kryton – some good points and a bit of research for me.
I guess it’ll be pretty different if they already have customers in this area (i.e. I’m taking over from someone else) or if they’re trying to move in to a new area…

Also, I just sold 24 cans of Irn Bru to someone for £90 yesterday, so I figure I got this sewn up ….. hmmm!

I guess it’ll be pretty different if they already have customers in this area (i.e. I’m taking over from someone else) or if they’re trying to move in to a new area…

Not really. In both of those scenarios they’ll still be looking to grow the business