Quote:
Originally Posted by DETRoadster
I think the questions you gotta ask yourself are:
1) Do you enjoy what you do?
2) Are you proud of what you do?
3) Can you see yourself doing this for the next 30 to 40 years?
4) Is this a job or a career?
Dont be that car salesman who wakes up at 40 and tries to re-invent himself. I think you got lured into this by fast, easy, money. And there's nothing wrong with that provided the answers above are all "yes." But if you think there might be a "no" in there, especially for #3, start making a plan B now. Not saying you need to drop what you're doing but maybe consider doing this full time for a couple years. Save up some cash then start taking some classes. Maybe some business or finance classes. I think you've got 5 years max in the car business before you have pigeon-holed yourself into a corner you cant get out of. A guy with 5 years of car sales experience and a fresh degree can pivot into a white collar job, particularly if you can say "Oh yeah, I was just working my self through school." A guy with 10, 15, 20 years of car sales experience and a fresh degree is going to just keep hitting walls as he tries to escape. The stigma is too great. White-collar corporate America views car salesman as kinda sleazy. Most white collar corporate businesses don't want a car sales guy on their sales team because the pitch and the approach is different; they worry you'll piss off customers by appearing pushy and dishonest. I'm not saying you are any of those things but understand that your job is going to get you profiled and the longer you are in it the worse it will be.
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It's interesting you made the sleazy car salesman analogy. The two past companies I worked for pushed us into this being sleazy car salesman. I may be as bold to say sleazy used car salesman. The later more than the former. I've been highly technical my entire career. And going into sales was a big leap for me as I didn't want to be what you're saying. But both companies and more so the later didn't value that from any of their sales engineers. We are first and foremost sales people. Our training consisted of being Powerpoint jockeys. There was more emphasis on us being in Salesforce to manage the sales pipeline versus focusing on the technical knowledge of the products/solutions were were tasked to sell. And we were put into all sorts of sales related training to teach us how to "talk" to customers.
I was successful because I got connected to an AE that knew what I am and leveraged that to his advantage. He took all the sales related crap off my plate and let me be me. A technical trusted advisor for all of our customers. My customers related to me a lot more because I approached them from the technical side solely and then built a sales strategy/approach after figuring out the problem and solution. It also helped that they can tell I was one of them as I used to sit on the opposite side of the table when I was a Federal contractor.