Who aspires to be a sales rep? I don’t mean its a bad job to be in, but I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to that say they just “fell into sales”. Some people were made for sales but others were made for something different. I started out as a Sales Rep but was made for something different.

It was 2012 and we were just exiting the great recession and the job market was, you could say, less kind to new college graduates with little to know experience holding a B.S in History. I had little insight into what I wanted to do and how I could best use my skills, gifts, and abilities. Nevertheless, I was able to get a full time job helping out at a non profit helping the homeless get back on their feet. I met a volunteer there who knew an entrepreneur that owned a software company who was looking to hire a Sales Representative.

It sounded like an interesting job so I took an interview with the founder. He had sold his previous company for a good chunk of change and was hoping to flip this one eventually. The product was a Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud based software platform (this was a time when Salesforce.com was one of the few early cloud platforms) that specialized in inventory management software. I’ll never forget how odd that interview was now that I have the context of other interview experiences. He went on a long Q&A with me fishing for an answer he clearly wanted that I couldn’t discern; he was asking for feedback about how I would approach a business trip. Long story short, he was basically looking for me to tell him that if we went on a business trip I needed to bring a work bag. Apparently the guy before me who got fired didn’t bring a work bag and that must have been a fire-able offense. I went out and bought a work bag.

Mr. bring your work bag with you founder ended up giving me a job offer because he liked that my parents owned their own business and I guess that undoubtedly meant I was also a hard worker, in his eyes. And boy was this hard work. A computer and a phone and an expectation to make over 100 cold calls a day. You might think of that and cringe, but I was so happy to have a big boy professional job and I didn’t know any difference. I smiled and dialed and even made a few sales in the process.

As you might imagine there was some obvious dysfunction in that environment so I took another job that paid a lot more in an outside sales field type role within 9 months. This might seem like a a pointless story, but the important thing to take out of this is that I fell into a Tech Sales job. I could do the Tech Sales job. I was “relatively” happy in a Tech Sales job. But I was never meant to be a Sales Representative.

I held a few other sales roles after that. But then, in the last week of of the year in December of 2016, I became attuned to an internal ping of curiosity. How do computers actually work? How does code provide the instructions? It all seemed like magic to me and I wanted to learn more. I started out learning online and told myself I would give learning to code a few weeks (or the monthly membership) and if it wasn’t for me, nothing lost nothing found. I fell in love with coding and didn’t cancel that monthly membership. Connecting the various components together to make a statement or a piece of code work was like a stimulating puzzle for me.

I also had the support of mentor who was a friend from college who was now a Software Engineer who was also self taught. He helped me a lot to know where to start. Having a mentor is a huge asset and is a reason I started this blog.

I dove headfirst into the theoretical and read a 641 page Computer Science textbook, just a few pages daily on my lunch breaks. On the programming side, I started out learning JavaScript. I thought “hey, this thing is in the browser, it can run on the server via nodejs, it’s running on IoT devices, I should totally start here right?” I was able to create a few basic web apps to solidify my knowledge. Looking back I wish I would have started with something that was also General Purpose but an easier syntax, like Python. I navigated towards Python and continued to build my own web applications and even got into some basic Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with Python. I was able to create a basic portfolio and display some of my code on Github. This was as important validation for me that I can do it as much as for potential employers.

I wasn’t sure where this would take me but for one of the first times in my career I felt like I had found something I was actually made for. Something that uniquely used my skills, gifts, and abilities. But I also loved the part of the job as an Account Executive that provided interaction with customers, relationship building, and solving real problems and seeing measurable impact. One of the best things about being in sales is that when dollars are parted with, you find that you are solving real problems. Many people would think of a Doctor as helping people. Many people would think a Teacher as helping people. But I think being in Sales (when done right) is also on the front-lines of flourishing and finding solutions for end users and people who are also in real pain.

My move from being an Account Executive to a Sales Engineer isn’t the common shift. Often times, organizations will find an engineer that doesn’t embarrass himself in front of customers and call it a day. Most engineers are allergic to sales.

But I loved sales. I already had the soft skills, the nuance that is required to know what to say and not say and when that many engineers struggle with. I started to wonder what was possible and what kind of profound impact could I make as a business-case-oriented Sales Engineer?

The tech can always be learned, the soft skills can be a bit more difficult. I have found that my background as an Account Executive and being in Sales has had probably the biggest outsized impact in the my performance as a Sales Engineer.

What are you made for? Did you fall into sales? Do you enjoy being an Account Executive? If you’re curious about learning more about the joy, fulfillment (and earning potential) I experienced moving from being in sales to sales engineering, find out more here