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.

By Dan Zehr – American-Statesman Staff

If Michael Lynn didn’t fully understand the instability that military life can inflict on a soldier’s family, he got a better sense for it in 2012.

When Lynn, then a counterespionage case officer in the U.S. Air Force, stepped off a plane in Afghanistan that July, his father and brother were there to greet him. The following day, his wife arrived for her own deployment.

“All four of us were there while mom was back in Reston with the dogs,” Lynn said. “She’s a strong lady.”

Such is life in a family dedicated to the military and the foreign service. But when Lynn’s daughter was born in January 2014, he and his wife also knew they wanted a different life for her.

“My wife and I took a good hard look at where we came from and where we were going,” he said. “We didn’t want to have her face mom and dad deploying.”

So over the next year, they started planning for life after the military. On the advice of a mentor, they saved enough money to cover a six-month transition. And by the end of last year, while starting the official transition process, Lynn linked up with a recruiting firm that placed with veterans with private-sector companies.

He went through multiple rounds of interviews, but nothing quite fit. And then he heard from Justin Ossola.

Ossola worked for Tech Qualled, a firm launched by a retired Austin tech executive to train soldiers for advanced, high-tech sales jobs. The company had just joined the host of training and recruitment firms that try to help the tens of thousands of veterans who transition from military to civilian life each month.

Most training programs focus on enlisted soldiers. But Tech Qualled offered a different approach.

It recruits officers and college-educated enlisted soldiers who, after an intense 10-week training course, can slot comfortably into technically demanding sales roles at high-tech companies. And it supplements that curriculum with a full-service support program designed to help students navigate their transition into civilian life.

Because it was so new, Lynn was skeptical at first. But he had also started to feel increasingly anxious about his pending shift out of the Air Force, which he’d joined straight out of Boston University. The breadth of support won him over.

“We knew it was a gamble, especially since we were class No. 1,” he said. “But having met the Tech Qualled team and seen the dedication and commitment they were bringing to the table, I knew even If I had to give it another few weeks they were going to see it through and put me in front of a company that wanted me on their team.”

All 11 members of the first class have landed jobs. Lynn and his family moved to Austin, where he works as an enterprise account executive with Blackberry.

‘Working for a purpose’

Jim Sherriff has no military experience, but he knows how fraught the soldier-to-civilian crossover can be. His two nephews struggled when they cycled out of the military. One eventually made it through; the other took his own life.

“My brother dealt with his grief by starting a foundation that helped veterans who were struggling with their transitions,” Sherriff said. “It had really good intentions, but it was not a scalable model.”

Having wrapped up a 35-year career in executive and sales leadership roles with Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, Sherriff dedicated himself to developing a self-sustaining organization that could help veterans make that transition.

He and his wife, Karen, developed Tech Qualled. (The name is a play off the military jargon for “qualified.”) They initially saw it as a nonprofit training program, but they made two critical changes while participating in Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative — a program for people ” transitioning from working for a living to working for a purpose,” Sheriff said.

First, they decided to launch as a for-profit company, so they could attract more funding and talent. Then they brought on Ossola and Nick Breedlove, two veterans who were working toward master’s degrees and brought extensive military experience.

And then the Sherriffs took it a step further, designing a corporate and capital structure that, over time, will shift majority ownership of the company to the veterans who work there.

Do something different

Today, Tech Qualled offers an account executive track, which readies students for external sales roles, and an engineering management track, which trains veterans for technical roles associated that support sales teams.

It’s free for the veterans who participate, Sherriff said, with revenue coming from placement fees paid by companies.

For employers like Wayne Fullerton, senior vice president for sales at PCM-G, which sells technology to the armed forces and other public-sector customers, the combination of military experience and private sector skills makes the investment well worth it.

“I think it gives me an unfair advantage over my competitors who aren’t hiring the veterans who know the mission,” Fullerton said. “I’m hiring guys who did it.”

Fullerton said he appreciated the altruistic side of hiring veterans, but he’s run the numbers and seen a financial return on the placement fees he pays Tech Qualled to hire its graduates. He hired three from the first cohort and is already talking to some of the program’s 15 current students.

But that’s not always an easy blend to create.

“The perception is that veterans are too hierarchical and structured,” Sherriff said. “They need to be able to deal with more ambiguity and flexibility, especially in a sales role.”

Tech Qualled bakes that into the program. For example, it leaves instructions in its online exercises vague or open to interpretation, pushing veterans used to the military’s structure to think more creatively. They even bring a Dallas improv comedy troupe in as an icebreaker for boot camp.

The training and support aren’t cheap — currently costing Tech Qualled in excess of $10,000 to put a student through the program, Sheriff said. But he said he expects those costs to drop as the program adds more capacity and they put processes in place to support students without the heavy oversight needed in the startup phase.

For now, Sherriff said he is more concerned about getting transitioning soldiers into the Tech Qualled program. So he, Ossola and the rest of the team are busy reaching out to soldiers like Michelle Kimbrough, one of the program’s current students.

A graduate of West Point, Kimbrough hopes to find a job near Fort Bragg, where her husband is stationed as a newly minted Green Beret. It can be harder to find jobs in specific locations, and as of last week she was preparing for some second-round interviews.

After seven years in the military, she said, the transition was going well, even though she hadn’t followed the same path her West Point classmates took. Many had gone on to graduate school. Most of the rest linked up with recruiting and job-placement agencies.

“And then there’s the rest of us,” she said, “who kind of want to do something different.”

Link to original article: http://atxne.ws/28FiAAT

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.