We’ve Got To Stop Thinking Sales Is a Mans Game

When you think about working in sales, a lot of things come to mind; cold calling, emailing, hard selling, big targets and even the occasional door knock.

But is this really the case?

I recently caught up with one of our recently placed graduates at carsales.com – Sam Villar. She started in the programme two years ago as an Account Coordinator and explained to us that things were pretty different to what she’d initially thought.

Some of the feedback we get around sales is this perception that it’s a bit of a man’s game – it’s notoriously been a struggle locally to build a strong balanced team – women are often put off by the image of sales.

To clear things a couple of things up, Sam wanted us to point out two things – 1) She doesn’t sell cars and 2) She’s not slamming the phones every day.

“When I try to explain to my friends what I do and I start with saying where I work, they think I’ve left university being interested in media and jumped into selling cars… I haven’t..” She explained.

CarSales.com have a team of 40 here in Sydney and a team of 400 in Melbourne. But there’s actually another side to the company that’s often not realised. Media Motive is a half tech vs half publisher agile start-up that provides online advertising solutions to media agencies and their clients.

Carsales.com actually sits under Media Motives umbrella, as do 21 other websites in the network that offer advertising opportunities to a reach of over 6 million a month.

Many companies work in a way that they’re not always what they look like on the tin, so with Sam we uncovered some key ways sales may not be what you think:

• Really look into what the opportunity is

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking a sales role is just that, purely selling. Sam told us she nearly turned away the opportunity because she couldn’t immediately see an alignment to her degree and broader career plans in media. When first applying for a role it can be all too easy to just think – nope I’m not selling that. In this case, it was cars.

It’s crucial to get to the heart of the role – which may actually end up being a completely different offering – in this case Sam would actually be working in media, which was perfectly aligned. So, when you’re looking at potential sales roles ask questions like, what’s the solution? Who is the audience? What sort of clients will I meet? What’s my involvement in the business goal?

• Recognise that sales has shifted

Don’t expect to have to be on the phone all the time. Sales is always going to have an element of cold calling but one of the things that Sam said is that she found her work these days is a lot more about managing relationships. She has a client portfolio and as part of that she manages all those accounts and, oh yeah, she just happened to bring in a 20k deal today.

Media businesses often have a direct and agency split divisions. Direct is cold calling, agency is pure relationship selling with a portfolio of clients to build relationships with.

Ask which team your role would sit? What sort of skills would be needed? Who you would be building relationships with? How often you would go out to meet clients?

• Keep your options open

Sam really saw this role as an opportunity to get her foot into the media industry. What she didn’t expect was that after one year she’d been promoted to Account Executive and have no plans to leave. When you finish university you’re often seeded with ideals in your head. You may be surprised by your passion for the role so go in there, get stuck in there and have a go. Don’t stop potential avenues in your career opening up because you didn’t give them a go to begin with.

Be open to opportunities – if there’s a seed of relevance in there to where you want to go, then it’s a great place to get started. Don’t expect everything to happen all at once.

• You need to take ownership

Fast growth companies like carsales.com have top talent working in them – you get a lot of exposure to a wealth of experience. Sam says that working around these people, with different experience and different characters who know a lot more than you help you develop pretty quickly – it keeps you going and makes you work even harder she says.

Determination is another topic that came up, you don’t get promoted without working hard for what you want so have clear goals that you constantly update. Sales is very much about team working to make things happen, but you’re recognised as an individual for the achievements you make.

Ask about your team, their goals, their culture, and see where you would add value.

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