Abilities that overlap between consulting and tech gross sales

1. Mental curiosity — a pure or realized intrigue about companies and their issues is required in each roles. In consulting, it is a fascination about what the world can appear to be sooner or later and in gross sales that is about your shopper’s ache level that your answer is fixing.
2. Capability to work nicely beneath strain — consulting is a service-based trade and due to this fact if a shopper says bounce, nearly on a regular basis you’re saying, how excessive? Most if not all consultants are accustomed to working lengthy hours to fulfill shopper calls for. Gross sales will not be too dissimilar however the strain is totally different, there are peak durations if you end up finishing RFPs [request for proposals] or responding to many purchasers at a time (and making an attempt to gauge who’s most severe!) however the strain is extra within the second whereas in consulting it’s just about fixed except you’re on the bench (not at present on a undertaking).
3. Robust communication — Efficient communication is essential for chairing conferences, presenting findings, studies, and suggestions to shoppers in consulting. In tech gross sales that is very related — pitching and main shopper conferences.
4. Glorious interpersonal abilities — Tech gross sales professionals have to be outgoing, persuasive, and able to constructing rapport with shoppers precisely the identical as consultants. Each careers have achieved great issues to assist me construct my skilled community.
5. Time administration — Consultants juggle a number of tasks and tight deadlines, requiring glorious time administration abilities. Gross sales is identical however you’re managing a number of leads and managing your time between shoppers at totally different levels of the gross sales funnel.

Abilities related to consulting solely

1. Robust analytical abilities — being au fait with Excel and tech usually is just about anticipated in consulting they usually typically have coaching targeted on upskilling workers on this.
2. Downside-solving abilities — the flexibility to suppose in frameworks and clear up issues in a methodical manner and revel in doing so is exclusive to consulting. When I’m with my consulting associates the dialog has such an attention-grabbing move and tempo as a result of we predict utilizing the identical frameworks and use the consulting fundamentals like agendas, undertaking planning, SWOTs and pondering in our private lives.
3. Diligence — consulting for my part could be very a lot about good is best than achieved. You’re employed arduous on tasks and paperwork till there are not any errors or only a few the shopper can disagree with or problem.
4. Enterprise acumen — Understanding varied industries and enterprise fashions is important to supply related and priceless recommendation to your shoppers in consulting. Consulting taught me loads about pondering huge and understanding megatrends.

Abilities related to gross sales solely

1. That one KPI, gross sales! — In tech gross sales, the first focus is on producing income by promoting to clients whereas in consulting you’ve gotten a number of KPIs (utilisiation, shopper suggestions, varieties of shoppers your on, how a lot time you’ve gotten spent on BD and so on.)
2. Negotiation — Tech gross sales requires the flexibility to barter offers and navigate advanced gross sales cycles constructing upon the stakeholder administration abilities you study in consulting.
3. Resilience — Going through rejection is a recurring a part of the job in gross sales, and tech salespeople study to be resilient and chronic in pursuit of profitable offers. Though you will get rejected from tasks in consulting or be on the bench, you recognize it gained’t be lengthy until you find yourself on one other engagement or decide up some BD (enterprise improvement).
4. Deep product information: A deep understanding of the tech services or products you’re promoting is important for efficient pitching. Whereas in consulting you’ll be able to excel by chatting with shoppers on the ‘megatrend’ / birdseye view degree.

Total, making the leap from administration consulting to tech gross sales (or vice versa) could be a pure transition.

The transferable abilities gained in consulting, comparable to problem-solving, analytical pondering, and enterprise acumen, present a powerful basis for a profitable profession in tech gross sales.

It’s important to evaluate your strengths, pursuits, and profession targets to make an knowledgeable determination about which path aligns finest together with your aspirations.

For those who loved this weblog, catch my half 1 and half 2 conversations with Tamer from CareersTalks under masking my profession to this point and increasing on these factors and my expertise.