Tech sales can be painted as a notoriously competitive industry.
But there’s more to being a successful salesperson than just having a competitive edge. From curiosity to time-management skills, successful salespeople require a diverse set of skills and abilities.
The following Boston sales professionals gave us the inside scoop on what it takes to win big in their roles and ultimately help grow their companies.
Profitwell provides business intelligence solutions that automatically boost retention and monetization.
Lilian Mitchell works in sales operations and explained why she gets a rush from the company’s big sales opportunities.
What's unique about selling at your tech company?
You’re getting in the room with C-levels and top execs, selling products and partnerships that directly impact a company’s strategy and revenue. That’s quite a rush.
As a bootstrapped scale-up, you’re literally growing the business. When you close a deal, the whole company knows about it. The DocuSign shows up on slack, and we call them out in the weekly revenue meetings, and the monthly all hands. It’s tangible — closing this deal means we can hire faster, we can invest in development, or we can go on a three-day company retreat.
As a bootstrapped scale-up, you’re literally growing the business.”
What makes your top salespeople successful, and how do you develop their careers over time at ProfitWell?
Our top reps are coachable, internally motivated, curious, and conscientious. There’s a lot more to selling at ProfitWell than closing a deal and throwing it over the fence. There’s project management in navigating the scoping and approval process, thorough preparation before and after calls, and pushing back on the prospect when what they want isn’t what they actually need.
In terms of career development, AEs get exceptional coaching from Peter, our general manager; he guides them with everything from the benefit of building long-term rapport with prospects to the granularity of word choice in a follow-up email. Within the greater organization, if you can prove yourself through your metrics and attitude, very little is off the table for your next step. ProfitWell is in it for the long haul and wants you to be too.
SmartBear uses their suite of powerful tools to help companies test software quality.
Sales Manager Himanshu Bahadur has been with SmartBear for six years and told us why consistent energy is the key to success.
What's unique about selling at your tech company?
Software quality is growing in importance for all companies across the globe, and SmartBear’s products are market leaders in our space. As a result, we generate a lot of inbound interest, and our sales teams are constantly engaging with prospects who have raised their hand to learn more about what SmartBear does. The warm leads, coupled with strong products and well-known brand, make it a fun and fast-paced environment that is ideal for sales.
Software quality is growing in importance for all companies across the globe.”
What makes your top salespeople successful, and how do you develop their careers over time at SmartBear?
Consistently bringing energy and effort to the office every day is what has made a lot of our salespeople successful over the last few years. We are fortunate at SmartBear to have great resources from sales, product and marketing that are constantly training our teams to stay ahead of the curve, both from an industry and professional development perspective.
Riskmethods provides a SaaS, cloud-based supply chain risk management solution.
Sales Executive Melanie Meleney told us why Riskmethods is a great place to work with exciting brands and cover lots of territory.
What's unique about selling at your tech company?
I cover the eastern half of North America for accounts under $1 billion in revenue. Since our team is small, my territory is huge. I’m able to get a lot of sales experience in a short amount of time. We also straddle the line between capital expense and operating expense, so every deal is really different. We also work with some awesome brands. I’m proud of quality products we help protect!
I’m proud of quality products we help protect.”
What makes your top salespeople successful, and how do you develop their careers over time at Riskmethods?
Learning to manage your time effectively. I have a lot of freedom in my role and I wouldn’t be successful if I took a backseat and waited for deals. Also, listening to the rest of my team and learning from their deals is important. Since I sell to small companies, it’s educational for me to hear about deals from the other reps who are selling into much bigger organizations.
Built on ethical hacker knowledge, Detecitfy, provides a web-app security scanner that automates hacker attacks to keep businesses safe.
Head of Sales Wilder Parks III has been with Detectify since the recent launch of their first U.S. office. He told us what it takes to be a successful salesperson with the company.
What’s unique about selling at your tech company?
The product that we sell helps our clients improve their knowledge and work with security. We sell a product that includes a unique combination of knowledge from our crowdsourcing network of white hat hackers and is an automated tool in one product. We are the only company in the market with those offerings. Beyond just selling our customers a product, we also contribute to educating our customers’ organizations about security. There is a big demand for IT security and our customers are open to new technology and trying new things.
The product that we sell helps our clients improve their knowledge and work with security.”
What makes your top salespeople successful, and how do you develop their careers over time at Detectify?
Success at Detectify is a good understanding of our clients’ needs and security space. You should also be good at utilizing internal resources and collaborating with other departments, in addition to having a strong sales process and problem-solving skills.
You will thrive if you want to be part of a fast-growing and security-loving tech company. You will get to come in and take part in all the learning and development that comes with being apart of scaling our business to the U.S. market. We will also provide the resources and opportunities to grow into managerial or expert roles over time.
