Administration Consulting vs Tech Gross sales | by A Millennial’s Diary

Abilities that overlap between consulting and tech gross sales

1. Mental curiosity — a pure or discovered intrigue about companies and their issues is required in each roles. In consulting, this can be a fascination about what the world can appear like sooner or later and in gross sales that is about your consumer’s ache level that your answer is fixing.
2. Means to work effectively beneath stress — consulting is a service-based trade and due to this fact if a consumer says bounce, virtually on a regular basis you’re saying, how excessive? Most if not all consultants are accustomed to working lengthy hours to fulfill consumer calls for. Gross sales isn’t too dissimilar however the stress is completely different, there are peak durations if you find yourself finishing RFPs [request for proposals] or responding to many purchasers at a time (and attempting to gauge who’s most critical!) however the stress is extra within the second whereas in consulting it’s just about fixed except you’re on the bench (not presently on a mission).
3. Robust communication — Efficient communication is essential for chairing conferences, presenting findings, reviews, and proposals to shoppers in consulting. In tech gross sales that is very comparable — pitching and main consumer conferences.
4. Wonderful interpersonal expertise — Tech gross sales professionals should be outgoing, persuasive, and able to constructing rapport with shoppers precisely the identical as consultants. Each careers have performed large issues to assist me construct my skilled community.
5. Time administration — Consultants juggle a number of tasks and tight deadlines, requiring glorious time administration expertise. Gross sales is similar however you’re managing a number of leads and managing your time between shoppers at completely different phases of the gross sales funnel.

Abilities related to consulting solely

1. Robust analytical expertise — being au fait with Excel and tech usually is just about anticipated in consulting they usually typically have coaching targeted on upskilling workers on this.
2. Downside-solving expertise — the flexibility to assume in frameworks and remedy issues in a methodical approach and revel in doing so is exclusive to consulting. When I’m with my consulting pals the dialog has such an fascinating circulate and tempo as a result of we predict utilizing the identical frameworks and use the consulting fundamentals like agendas, mission planning, SWOTs and considering in our private lives.
3. Diligence — consulting for my part could be very a lot about excellent is best than performed. You’re employed arduous on tasks and paperwork till there are not any errors or only a few the consumer can disagree with or problem.
4. Enterprise acumen — Understanding numerous industries and enterprise fashions is important to offer related and useful recommendation to your shoppers in consulting. Consulting taught me quite a bit about considering huge and understanding megatrends.

Abilities related to gross sales solely

1. That one KPI, gross sales! — In tech gross sales, the first focus is on producing income by promoting to clients whereas in consulting you will have a number of KPIs (utilisiation, consumer suggestions, kinds of shoppers your on, how a lot time you will have spent on BD and many others.)
2. Negotiation — Tech gross sales requires the flexibility to barter offers and navigate advanced gross sales cycles constructing upon the stakeholder administration expertise you be taught in consulting.
3. Resilience — Dealing with rejection is a recurring a part of the job in gross sales, and tech salespeople be taught to be resilient and protracted in pursuit of profitable offers. Though you may get rejected from tasks in consulting or be on the bench, you realize it gained’t be lengthy until you find yourself on one other engagement or choose up some BD (enterprise growth).
4. Deep product information: A deep understanding of the tech services or products you’re promoting is important for efficient pitching. Whereas in consulting you’ll be able to excel by talking to shoppers on the ‘megatrend’ / birdseye view degree.

General, making the leap from administration consulting to tech gross sales (or vice versa) generally is a pure transition.

The transferable expertise gained in consulting, comparable to problem-solving, analytical considering, and enterprise acumen, present a powerful basis for a profitable profession in tech gross sales.

It’s important to evaluate your strengths, pursuits, and profession targets to make an knowledgeable choice about which path aligns greatest along with your aspirations.

If you happen to loved this weblog, catch my half 1 and half 2 conversations with Tamer from CareersTalks beneath masking my profession up to now and increasing on these factors and my expertise.