Who are sales people?

While sales is one of most widely-known field, it’s also an incredible diverse field with positions ranging from entry-level business-development roles all the way to director-level roles that include sales, operations, and other critical responsibilities. 

Other common positions include: 

1. Sales Representative

2. Account Manager

3. Sales Associate

4. Inside Sales Representative

5. Business Development Manager

6. Account Executive

7. Key Account Manager

8. Sales Coordinator

9. Business Development Coordinator

(and remember, these are just a fraction of the roles you might see in this field.)

 

A dive into job descriptions

EdTech

Using this job search, I pulled 9 Sales positions from the EdTech space. 

Some examples include:

  • “Create and execute a sales plan and territory strategy to meet goals”
  • “Manage a high volume of daily outbound emails and calls to targeted accounts”
  • “Develop targeted call lists”
  • “Engage with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) via phone, email, and/or social channels to qualify and set meetings for the Account Executives (AEs), logging all activity in CRM”
  • “Assist with hosting virtual conferences, webinars, and company events”
  • “Work efficiently through a high volume of leads provided by marketing to qualify customers for sales opportunities”
  • “Meet or exceed Demand Gen targets for total influenced pipeline and revenue”
  • “Ability to travel as needed to perform compelling and engaging demonstrations”9

Mixed Careers

To compare EdTech against Sales in other fields, I used this job search. I pulled 9 Sales positions from a wide variety of fields. 

Some examples include:

  • “Meet metrics that could include but are not limited to customer satisfaction and daily sales targets”
  • “Manage your territories book of business to achieve growth goals”
  • “Educate customers about terminology, features and benefits of products in order to improve product related sales and customer satisfaction”
  • “Kick-start the sales process by prospecting potential customers; develop creative tactics, campaigns, and strategies to reach target prospects and generate qualified meetings/demos”
  • “Prospect for new business opportunities using LinkedIn, Google and other prospecting tools”
  • “As a trusted advisor, identify the prospects’ pain points and develop solutions-focused sales strategies on how to assist”
  • “Research organizations and relationships between prospects to create a penetration strategy”

Sound kind of familiar?

At their core, sales roles are intended to identify and pursue new revenue opportunities by, building out, managing, and maintaining a sales pipeline to meet or exceed sales targets. Individuals in the field have to stay up-to-date on industry trends and often deliver sales presentations, though now, in our age of remote work, that is just as often done remotely as it’s done in person. 

Visual Learner?

Compare the two images. The word clouds are the responsibilities list that I fed into a word cloud generator.  

EdTech Word Cloud

Mixed Careers Word Cloud

Do they need a portfolio?

Let's ask ourselves some important qualifying questions.

Does this job have content creation as a focus? 

No. 

Unless the position or type of Sales you’re applying to is very niche, I have yet to come across a Sales role that requires much (if anything) in the way of content creation. You may be required to create email templates or tweak a presentation here or there but it will likely be very light.

Should someone applying to this job highlight a process they’ve created? 

Maybe. 

But more likely someone working in sales is supporting an already established process. Rarely are you coming into a team where a sales cycle, metrics, goals, and all of the other processes and procedures have not already been outlined by a Chief Revenue Officer or Head of Sales. 

This might be different if you’re applying to those roles or if you’re the first sales person hired at a start up but for the vast majority of applicants – you won’t be inventing the wheel, it’ll already be rolling when you get there..

Is this a job for which you should highlight any work (i.e. publications, blogs, podcasts, creative materials, etc.) that they’ve already created? 

Probably not. 

That isn’t to say that if you have a blog or podcast that specifically talks about your contribution to the sales culture at your company or your insight into sales wholistically that it wouldn’t be helpful, but I wouldn’t go out of your way to create one. 

Now that we've established that they probably DO NOT need a portfolio, what's should they do instead?

If you don’t need a portfolio, what can you do to showcase your field-readiness instead? 

1. Identify hard skills and technology certifications that demonstrate field-readiness

Look at what kinds of technologies you’ll be expected to use. 

I’m willing to bet you’ll need to know a CRM like Salesforce or Hubspot. 

You’ll probably also need to know some kind of ticketing system like Zendesk. 

You’ll also probably need to know how to navigate a project management tool like Jira, Asana, Trello, Monday, or Click-up. 

If you’re planning on applying to a couple of specific companies, it might behoove you to brush up on your product knowledge as most sales folks are expected to have some level of product expertise to be able to sell the product and answer customer questions (thought they may not have to answer significant technical questions). 

Any kind of certificates, badges, or courses that you can take (the freer the better!) and add to your LinkedIn or other social profiles help make you a stronger candidate. It lets a hiring manager know that you should be just that much easier to onboard. But don’t over do it. Remember that you need to be splitting your time strategically.

Cautionary tip: it can be really tempting to jam all those courses on your resume or CV – don’t. Add the really beefy, meaningful ones. Otherwise, make them available on your public facing profiles, maybe even make a link on your resume to a place where they’re all aggregated for ease of access but do not add a whole page to your resume for your 120 certs. 

2. Your Resume

The tried true method: your resume. Use your past experiences and metrics to show that you have the chops to make it in the realm of Sales. Sales is all about identifying needs, communicating the benefit your service or product brings, and managing timelines and expectations. While I would argue that teaching isn’t directly analogous, there are plenty of ways for you to gain experience in the field, from certificates, boot camps, contract work, and even internship/shadowing opportunities.

Think you might need some support creating or working on your portfolio?

Have awesome content but web design isn’t your forte? 

We can help with that. Web services, including custom sites and extended website management services are coming soon. Sign up for our services newsletter to be notified when we’re ready to start taking on portfolio design work. 

Just have questions? I got you.

Want to talk with someone about your portfolio face to face? 

Need some quick feedback on your portfolio but don’t have time for a 1:1?