Tech Qualled will be releasing several videos over the next few months in an attempt to educate transitioning veterans on the ins and outs of high tech. We encourage an open dialog to include insightful comments, professional advice for veterans and helpful tips regarding military transitions to the technology space.

If you are a veteran looking to land a lucrative high-tech sales role or are seeking a proven trajectory to high-tech leadership, contact our Recruiting Director, Meredith Davis, at meredith@staging.techqualled.flywheelsites.com.

www.compton-recycling.com levitra without prescriptionYou can’t take a quantum leap forward without taking some risks, and you don’t really develop quickly if you don’t allow yourself to get outside your comfort zone.

Tech Qualled will be releasing several videos over the next few months in an attempt to educate transitioning veterans on the ins and outs of high tech. We encourage an open dialog to include insightful comments, professional advice for veterans and helpful tips regarding military transitions to the technology space.

If you are a veteran looking to land a lucrative high-tech sales role or are seeking a proven trajectory to high-tech leadership, contact our Veteran Recruiting Manager, Meredith Davis, at meredith@staging.techqualled.flywheelsites.com.

Justin Ossola is the co-founder of Tech Qualled: a boutique training and placement company dedicated to preparing transitioning veterans for success in tech sales. He is a 13-year Navy veteran, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former Oracle sales consultant. For more on Tech Qualled, visit www.staging.techqualled.flywheelsites.com.

Allow me to use a brief illustration. Our CEO heard the following story from one of his sales leaders. The sales leader asked someone why they wanted to be in sales, and the person answered that he really wanted to help other people. The leader responded, “Then think seriously about becoming a social worker because if that’s really what you want to do, that’s the greatest path you can go down.”

Salespeople have to be about winning – winning for themselves and winning for their customer. Make no mistake, it’s about winning on both fronts. So people skills are important, but believing that sales is all about “being a people person” is really a misunderstanding.

In the vein of relationships, you try to build relationship equity as a salesperson. You invest in relationships as a practical exercise to make the relationship profitable for both parties. The people that are simply “all about relationships” have an infinite supply of equity but never actually monetize that equity to advance their business careers. Good salespeople are not shy about dipping into their savings account of relationship equity and relying on that to move things forward. They build equity, then they translate that equity to produce mutual benefits in business.

Sales is a tough, competitive, sometimes grueling, but highly rewarding career path. The absolute best salespeople make seven figure incomes – it’s that lucrative just in sales.

But the value of sales to your career goes far beyond your bottom line. Sales gives you a skill set that will propel your career forward, no matter what direction you choose. Business is all about reading people, selling them your ideas, and ultimately, getting them to move in the same direction. Your sales experience will prepare you for a solid career path to executive leadership.

So how does this insight into sales careers uniquely apply to veterans?

The veterans I talk to about the Tech Qualled opportunity typically fall into two categories:

1. They have never considered a career in business-to-business (B2B) sales, or
2. They know they want sales, but they are barred from direct entry into lucrative roles because of lack of sales experience.

And that’s when we get to have what I call the “red pill” conversation. As Veteran Recruiting Manager at Tech Qualled, many veterans I talk to are top performers and accomplished leaders, looking for the chance to be paid what they’re worth. They want limitless earning potential. They want a meritocracy where they can jump the corporate ladder quickly. They want a degree of autonomy… to be trusted by their employer to get the job done without micromanagement.

And that’s where we come in.

Tech Qualled is inherently mission-driven, and our mission is this: to enhance the lives of military veterans by training them and placing them into rewarding careers in high technology. We are here to offer access to a whole new world and provide the training and trajectory for lifelong success in the world of high-tech sales.

For a clearer picture on the qualities of successful salespeople, we recommend reading The Challenger Sale. It will give you further insights on the distinct set of skills and traits characteristic of successful salespeople. If what you read resonates with you, we highly encourage you to consider a career in sales, and contact us to start a discussion about your future.

First of all, let’s describe what Tech Sales is, and then we’ll talk about the necessary attributes for success in this challenging, yet highly rewarding career.

Tech Sales is a business-to-business (B2B) transaction of technology solutions from a provider to an organization. This is not to be confused with business-to-customer (B2C) transactions that are defined by a shorter decision-making process and a smaller number of decision makers. Forbes columnist Chuck Cohn provides a clear contrast on B2B versus B2C here.

In Tech Sales, you’re selling to business executives. These sales typically happen at the executive level because of the perceived risk and enormous expense involved. Also, these decisions can catapult a company toward their strategic objectives because the technologies purchased have an enterprise-level impact.

When selling to business executives, you have to convince them that:

1 – You know what you’re doing,

2 – You can orchestrate resources, and

3 – You have a company that will stand behind you

Particularly when you’re selling for a re-seller, the executives have to believe in you and trust you personally before they’re going to make this type of investment.

So at a very cursory view, these are the activities of a Tech Salesperson:

1 – Establishing trust

2 – Digging to understand the customer needs

3 – Orchestrating the resources to make sure that you can solve the customer’s problems, and

4 – Following through with your customers and with your company. Put simply, doing what you said you were going to do.

So what do you need to be great at Tech Sales?

First of all, you need to be extremely accountable. You have to be willing to be the go-to person… the person that is ultimately responsible for the success of the mission.

And what is your mission? Your mission is to get the order, and have a happy customer at the end of the project. All of your efforts must be focused toward these two objectives.

What else do you need? You need to be creative, you need to be resourceful, and you need to be resilient.

You have to love to win… You have to be driven to win and achieve superior results.

Most great salespeople have a higher than average drive to make more money. Their reasons for this vary, but successful salespeople are often wired that way. We consider this a critical ingredient.

Ultimately, sales is a people business, and your ability to relate and create relationships is extremely important. This means that you have to be a great listener and a great communicator.

We believe strongly in some principles laid out in the insightful book The Challenger Sale, which is about Teaching, Tailoring, and Taking Control.

• Teaching, where you possess a unique point of view and help the customer be successful by advising them on what they need to do.
• Tailoring is your ability to take your messages and what you’ve learned, and match the benefits and impacts of your products and services to the things that are most important to the customer. And finally,
• Taking Control. You have to be an active versus a passive person in sales. You have to take the bull by the horns.

And if you have these attributes, Tech Sales is a highly satisfying and profitable career!

Find out more about breaking into Tech Sales at www.staging.techqualled.flywheelsites.com.

Even before I began my transition from the Navy (Surface Warfare Officer, Naval Academy Class of 2010) to the civilian sector, I was confident that I wanted to make a career in sales. I’ve had the unique benefit of observing my father’s sales career progression in the healthcare industry and felt that I would be a good fit for a similar role. As I prepared for my transition, I sought to build relationships with several different points of contact in the healthcare sector early, as I had been advised by those who made this transition before me. I had an obvious lack of sales experience, but felt that the skills I had acquired through military service, along with natural personality traits I possess, could be directly translatable: intrinsic motivation, leadership, drive to succeed, work ethic, and adaptability.

In the midst of this process, I was approached by two fellow Naval Academy graduates who proposed a different path: one that would place me into a customer-facing sales role in the technology industry. The proposition was one that was different and attractive, but not for the initial reasons they assumed. They thought breaking into the tech industry in itself was the biggest attraction, and while that did eventually become highly attractive, I was more interested in the other half of the proposition: a customer-facing sales role. Through my prior research on different sales positions, I had learned that seeking out a customer-facing sales role with no tangible sales experience is extremely difficult (and for good reason!). Very rarely (if ever) will a company hire a candidate into a customer-facing (or “outside”) sales role without prior experience. A common offer for someone who clearly has the aptitude for sales but no prior sales experience is the suggestion that, “We see your aptitude and think you could be a good fit, but need to expose you to sales and our company before putting you in front of new customers. We want you to start in an inside sales role with a clear path to outside sales in a year or two.” Unfortunately, this path is not guaranteed and is often more difficult to follow than the initial offer might suggest.

For those who may still not be clear on the differences between inside and outside sales, I can offer one MAJOR point of emphasis: the difference is monumental in terms of earning potential. Additionally, the tech industry is the most lucrative and also one of the most difficult to break into from a sales perspective. Tech Qualled (TQ) leadership was always clear that their training pipeline would bridge that gap: “We will only sign hiring companies interested in hiring you, after completing our sales training, into customer-facing, outside sales roles because we know you will be ready to succeed in those positions.” At that point, I was sold. I saw the potential and opportunity that existed in the tech industry and wanted to be a part of it.

TQ delivered on their clear objective from the beginning. I was injected into conversations and interviews with hiring companies who never even broached the topic of inside sales, which I found to be a stark difference from the conversations I was having pre-TQ.

Participating in the first iteration of this unique and revolutionary business model was certainly a risk, but one that in my eyes was absolutely worth taking due to the potential advantages that could exist on the back side. What I experienced was world-class technology and sales training from proven, successful executives (past and present) with a personal and caring touch that both surprised and impressed me. As I progressed through the interview cycle, not only did my interview skills improve dramatically, but I found I was better able to communicate the value proposition I could represent to a company bringing someone like me on board.

In the end, I have decided to accept an offer to work for a company that I would have never been exposed to without the help of TQ, and I couldn’t be happier. I encourage all transitioning veterans to do their best to exhaust every option in searching for that first career move out of the military, and not to undervalue the worth and applicability of the experience they gained through their service to our great country.

Everyone wants to find the perfect job; high school graduates, college graduates, MBAs, and especially veterans leaving active duty. So why do so many of us search, agonize, and pray for years for the perfect “post-military” job at the right company and then, like that, we are off to the next opportunity in a time period measured in months?

As a veteran who served for a decade and a half, I have observed hundreds of transitioning veterans whom all seem to experience a similar pain; a stark dichotomy between how eager they are for stability and how rarely they find it. Recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce data shows that veterans leaving active duty will change employers twice in the first three years out of uniform. Personally, having moved ten times in fifteen years for the Navy, the last thing I want to do is move two more times in less than a full “tour of duty.” So what’s the disconnect? With all the military headhunters, military job fairs, and military hiring initiatives, one could presume that veterans have more than enough resources and options from which to find the “perfect job.” And after that research, preparation and third party assistance, shouldn’t they be less likely to change so soon? Of those surveyed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the underlying causes are always tied to compensation levels first with location preference a distant second.

Regarding the disharmony between veterans’ expectations on compensation and the reality of what is offered them, I offer this: I had a rude awakening when I realized that we just don’t pay as much in taxes while on active duty as our friends in the “real world.” Between BAH, BAS, and all the tax-free checks accumulated from 10 years of Middle Eastern conflict, military members “net” much more on average than our civilian counterparts “grossing” the same amount. When you combine this not so subtle line item with a move from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky to your “dream job” in Palo Alto, Austin, or Northern Virginia/DC, all of a sudden that salary doesn’t take you nearly as far. It’s not rocket science, but it still strikes so many of us square in the face, and frankly, it’s hard to swallow.

Nestled neatly under the same talking point, veterans need to realize that we were compensated for our unique skills (pilot, tank mechanic, ship driver, information warfare expert, special operator, et. al.), but when we go to work for Apple, Citibank, or Exxon, we don’t bring the same out-of-the-gate value in $$$ to those organizations, so we shouldn’t expect to see the same paychecks.

This isn’t fun to talk about, but doing so returns us to the issue we started with: veteran attrition. All veterans leave at some point, and we all need to think about these things. Therefore, my challenge is universal to officers and enlisted, retirees and those separating: don’t just look at the shiny numbers companies flash in front of you, but get a mentor, preferably in the general vicinity of where you want to end up, and ask them the hard salary questions. Use their network to create your own and then you can validate job offers that are based on bonus, commission or both. It’s a brave new world out there, and we have to be clear-eyed about how our experiences serving our country translate to the civilian world.  Having a mentor will provide a trustworthy foundation for when you finally make the leap!

Mentoring Resources:

American Corporate Partners Mentor Program http://acp-usa.org/Mentoring_Program

LinkedIn Veteran Mentor Group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Veteran-Mentor-Network-4466143/about

US Chamber of Commerce eMentor Program https://ementorprogram.org/p/veteran/about

Warrior-Scholar Project http://warrior-scholar.org

Nick Breedlove is the co-founder of Tech Qualled: a boutique training and placement company dedicated to enabling transitioning veterans for success in tech sales. He has been a Naval Aviator for over fourteen years and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard University. For more on Tech Qualled, visit www.staging.techqualled.flywheelsites.com.

My military-to-civilian transition story was unlike any other. Okay, it was probably pretty run of the mill, all things considered. I had a college degree; I performed very well in all of my leadership roles; I even got some marketing/sales experience in my last military billet working as a recruiter. And yet, I struggled to find a path that fit with what I had in mind.

Military transitions are tough. Throughout the process, you cling to what is comfortable and you end up reaching out to others that are also “figuring it out”. You do the best you can. Running a veteran transition firm that focuses on training and education, I’m in constant contact with active duty veterans that are in exploration mode and going through a very similar set of motions. Since we focus on the tech sales space, we do not see many female veterans. I apologize upfront if that sounded blunt. The resounding thud of this statistic smacking us in the face every week forced us to start having internal, and then eventually external, conversations about this phenomenon.

Now this may vary from community to community within the military, but some of the best junior officers on my ship were women. Smart, charismatic, confident and not afraid of anyone or anything could all be used to describe them. They stood right next to me and took the same oath I did. So where were they now? And what was it about working in the fastest growing, most lucrative industry in the history of the world that was so repulsive to them?

Donning my market research hat, I decided to hold an ad hoc focus group at a local (Washington D.C.) women’s alumni event to find out what was going on. Here were the top 4 reasons why female veterans MAY not be thrilled to jump into the technology space:

#1   I’m under qualified.

Rebuttal: I get it. Sorting through all of the requirements listed under the “desired skills and experience” tab of a job description can be intimidating. But if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that everything is negotiable. Work experience can sometimes be negated with a master’s degree from a strong university. Low grades in college can be overcome with an unforgettably impressive interview. And so forth. But after speaking with this group of Harvard-educated young women, I found that not having the right “quals” almost always results in immediately moving on to the next opportunity.

This surprised me. So I asked my wife, who sheepishly admitted that she had similar tendencies. Shocked. Here is a breakdown of the requirements of my first job out of the Navy (which coincidentally was in tech sales):

• Two or more years of professional experience in an Accounting, Procurement, Supply Chain or Business Technology function – NOPE

• Previous experience with Cloud applications – NOPE

• Four-year bachelor’s degree with a concentration in Accounting, Business Management or Computer Science – SORT OF, ECONOMICS

• Previous work experience or internship in a sales, pre-sales or product management – NOPE

• Experience demonstrating ERP software (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, NetSuite or Workday) – NOPE (NOT EVEN CLOSE)

So don’t shy away from jobs that are seemingly impossible, and don’t place too much emphasis on not having the right certifications. With a negative unemployment rate in the high tech industry, more and more technology executives are looking to veterans who offer durable skills and may be willing to overlook your lack of corporate professional experience for some kick-butt leadership experience. Go forth and do great things. Here are some of the other sentiments I gleaned from the focus group:

#2   I want to start a family.

#3   I just left a male-dominated industry (military), and I don’t want to jump right back into another one (high tech).

#4   Lack of S.T.E.M. training in school.

Our mission at Tech Qualled is to help veterans (both male and female) land rewarding roles in high tech, so please chime in on this matter if you have an opinion, an experience or any relevant data. The insight process never ends.