Foolproof framework for screening companies

Use this 3 step process to keep yourself from taking a sales job that you’re going to be miserable in:

Determine your preferred company funding type:

• PE Backed - They want fast results and will have a heightened focus on performance. Structured growth and career advancement opportunities.

• Bootstrapped - Stability and a close-knit culture. Slow growth and limited resources.

• VC Backed - High growth. Career acceleration. Uncertainty and frequent pivots.

• Public - Clear career path. Market recognition. Lots of bureaucracy and little personal influence.

Determine the best size for you:

• Small - greater influence and potential for career growth. Unstructured. Lower base salary

• Large - clear career path and loads of resources. Not a lot of flexibility or opportunities to make an individual impact.

• Mid - Balance of structure and flexibility with some growing pains and pivots

Decide what buyer persona you want to sell to:

• B2C - transactional. Price sensitive.

• Finance/Accounting - risk averse

• HR - tight budgets and attached to old systems

• IT/Security - skeptical of sales. Long evaluation periods

• Legal - cautious, detail oriented, really concerned with compliance

• Marketing - demand fast results and need to integrate with existing stack

• Sales - won’t tolerate a steep learning curve. Already juggling too many tools

Is this rundown exhaustive? No, but it should get you started in the right direction.

Ideally you’ll be able to come up with something like “My ideal employer is a Mid-Sized Publicly funded company that sells to HR”.

Once you have that you’re a big step closer to finding your next great opportunity in sales.

Caroline Maloney was an SDR, then a SDR Manager, then a Sales Enablement Manager, then a Marketer, and now she’s back in an SDR Manager seat.

We talked about:

• how to go from SDR to manager

• how to go from SDR to Enablement

• what you should start doing now if you want to be a manager

• what you should do now if you want to be in enablement

• the good, bad, ugle of all those roles