Thinking about switching to a careers in sales, looking for your experience

[applejuice]

Hi,

I'm 3 years into my project manager position at a marketing company.

I have a university BA and college post grad in Sales/marketing and am thinking about switching to sales.

I want the $$ basically

Does anyone have any experience in changing their careers? Going into sales?

[cannon_fodder]

Some people I know have gradually worked their way into sales from within the same company. Usually, not always, they have had experience in the "field" with customers - maybe it was in a service position or a technical (systems analyst, programmer, solutions architect, etc.).

My experience has been that the higher paying sales jobs always want experience. To get that experience it seems you have to find places that are willing to take on anyone without any experience (or very little) because they are going to pay them very little. Perhaps a very low base salary and a high commission rate. Thus, the company pays for performance without exposing them to a high guaranteed base.

One of the worst things about being in sales, which most people who have never been in sales, is that almost without question your quota goes up each year - and sometimes it is very dramatic. Imagine any other position which states you have to deliver results 15%, 30%, 100% or even 300% (yeh, it's happened to me) more than last year - only to make the same amount of money! In essence, the company can give you a pay cut just by upping your quota.