What's your Northstar?

I was a totally average AE who was able to get hired at Evernote, Outreach, and HubSpot.

Here’s how I was able to do it…

First, some quick background:

• I spent 122 months as a quota carrying rep

• I never finished college, and had to start at the very bottom at a commission-only-high-volume-transactional-sale-cold calling-boiler room

• After 10+ in sales I got severely burned out, left, and went into Strategic Consulting

• I now work at Salesloft and help our biggest clients refine how they sell to achieve better results

• On the side I do some career coaching for sales reps and GTM Consulting

Looking at my background and where I started, and seeing where I am now is wild!

The way I was able to pull it off is painfully simple.

I had an aspirational goal for my career I used as a Northstar.

Every year I looked at where I was, and I asked myself one question…

Am I moving closer to my goal?

If the answer was ‘No’, then I went looking for a new opportunity that moved me closer to where I wanted to be.

While this was intuitive for me, I’ve learned in my career coaching work that this isn’t the case for everyone.

When reps are aimless and unsuccessful in their careers, it’s usually due to any combination of…

• Imposter syndrome and being afraid of trying for more and failing

• Not having any sort of Northstar whatsoever

• Having no real knowledge of what’s possible and what sort of career options they have

If this sounds familiar, you’re actually in a great spot!

All that needs to happen is you need to educate yourself on all the different directions that you can take your sales career, dream big and define a big career goal, constantly evaluate if you’re heading towards that goal, and then have the courage to change course when you’re not.