Administration Consulting vs Tech Gross sales | by A Millennial’s Diary

Abilities that overlap between consulting and tech gross sales

1. Mental curiosity — a pure or discovered intrigue about companies and their issues is required in each roles. In consulting, this can be a fascination about what the world can seem like sooner or later and in gross sales that is about your consumer’s ache level that your resolution is fixing.
2. Potential to work properly underneath stress — consulting is a service-based business and due to this fact if a consumer says soar, virtually on a regular basis you might be saying, how excessive? Most if not all consultants are accustomed to working lengthy hours to fulfill consumer calls for. Gross sales isn’t too dissimilar however the stress is completely different, there are peak durations if you end up finishing RFPs [request for proposals] or responding to many consumers at a time (and attempting to gauge who’s most critical!) however the stress is extra within the second whereas in consulting it’s just about fixed except you might be on the bench (not presently on a mission).
3. Sturdy communication — Efficient communication is essential for chairing conferences, presenting findings, studies, and proposals to purchasers in consulting. In tech gross sales that is very related — pitching and main consumer conferences.
4. Wonderful interpersonal abilities — Tech gross sales professionals have to be outgoing, persuasive, and able to constructing rapport with purchasers precisely the identical as consultants. Each careers have achieved super issues to assist me construct my skilled community.
5. Time administration — Consultants juggle a number of initiatives and tight deadlines, requiring wonderful time administration abilities. Gross sales is identical however you might be managing a number of leads and managing your time between purchasers at completely different levels of the gross sales funnel.

Abilities related to consulting solely

1. Sturdy analytical abilities — being au fait with Excel and tech typically is just about anticipated in consulting they usually usually have coaching targeted on upskilling employees on this.
2. Drawback-solving abilities — the flexibility to assume in frameworks and clear up issues in a methodical means and revel in doing so is exclusive to consulting. When I’m with my consulting pals the dialog has such an attention-grabbing circulation and tempo as a result of we predict utilizing the identical frameworks and use the consulting fundamentals like agendas, mission planning, SWOTs and considering in our private lives.
3. Diligence — consulting in my view could be very a lot about excellent is best than achieved. You’re employed onerous on initiatives and paperwork till there are not any errors or only a few the consumer can disagree with or problem.
4. Enterprise acumen — Understanding numerous industries and enterprise fashions is important to supply related and worthwhile recommendation to your purchasers in consulting. Consulting taught me lots about considering large 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 prospects whereas in consulting you could have a number of KPIs (utilisiation, consumer suggestions, sorts of purchasers your on, how a lot time you could have spent on BD and so forth.)
2. Negotiation — Tech gross sales requires the flexibility to barter offers and navigate complicated gross sales cycles constructing upon the stakeholder administration abilities you be taught in consulting.
3. Resilience — Dealing with rejection is a recurring a part of the job in gross sales, and tech salespeople be taught to be resilient and protracted in pursuit of profitable offers. Though you will get rejected from initiatives in consulting or be on the bench, you already know it gained’t be lengthy until you find yourself on one other engagement or decide up some BD (enterprise growth).
4. Deep product data: A deep understanding of the tech services or products you might be promoting is important for efficient pitching. Whereas in consulting you possibly can excel by chatting with purchasers on the ‘megatrend’ / birdseye view stage.

General, making the leap from administration consulting to tech gross sales (or vice versa) generally is a pure transition.

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

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

If you happen to loved this weblog, catch my half 1 and half 2 conversations with Tamer from CareersTalks beneath masking my profession to this point and increasing on these factors and my expertise.