How to Know If You're in the Right Sales Job (Ask Jeb)

Yeah.

Hey, Jeb.

It's really great to meet you.

Thank you for having me on.

In my world, I'm currently a business development rep. I'm working at a really small startup right now, and I had this role for a few different companies so far, and I was just kind of curious.

I'm still pretty early in my career for context, and I just had some questions around how you choose the right company, self-doubt, or am I making the right choice? So have you ever questioned if your position was for you? You know, sales is a job with ups and downs.

In periods of downs, how do you deal with that, and what strategies do you use to deal with that?

The answer is all of the above.

I've definitely been in situations where I've questioned, is it the right job for me? And I've been in situations where I knew it wasn't the right job for me, and I had to get out.

That was early on in my career.

So the one thing about understanding or knowing if it's the right company for you and the right fit for you, almost always at the beginning of your career, you're not gonna know that, and nor are you gonna have as many choices.

In a lot of cases, when you're entry level, you're just gonna take what you can get.

You're gonna go interview with people.

If you get multiple offers, you're gonna make a decision, but usually the decision you're gonna make is based on how they make you feel in the interview.

Is the leader that you're interviewing with someone you'd wanna work for? But you're not gonna really know in your heart, is this the right sales job for me or the right role for me? And it wouldn't be fair to tell you or anyone else otherwise.

So if you're at the beginning of your career, take what you can get, go in there with an open mind, and go be the best you can possibly be at that job.

But the likelihood is that it probably won't be the best fit for you, and that happened to me.

Like at the beginning of my career, I had a couple of sales jobs, and in fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to one of my very first bosses who I'm still friends with, but I hated that job.

I couldn't stand it.

As soon as I could get something else, I left.

But at least the experience taught me that that's not something that I wanted to do.

Like I didn't want that particular role.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

I think I look at it the same way, whereas even if it's not the right fit, that's still a valuable experience, and you're still like learning from that experience because if you narrow down what you don't wanna do, then it leads you closer to what you do want to do.

The other thing I would say is for everyone, if you're looking at changing careers or going to a different job, the deeper you get into your career, the more important it is for you to choose the right boss rather than the right company, okay? Because there's real data behind this that when you work for the right sales leader, that you can see upwards to a 20% higher income than people who work for a poor leader.