Administration Consulting vs Tech Gross sales | by A Millennial’s Diary | Aug, 2023

Abilities that overlap between consulting and tech gross sales

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

Abilities related to consulting solely

1. Robust analytical abilities — being au fait with Excel and tech typically is just about anticipated in consulting they usually typically have coaching centered on upskilling employees on this.
2. Downside-solving abilities — the power to assume in frameworks and resolve issues in a methodical manner and revel in doing so is exclusive to consulting. When I’m with my consulting buddies the dialog has such an attention-grabbing circulation and tempo as a result of we predict utilizing the identical frameworks and use the consulting fundamentals like agendas, undertaking planning, SWOTs and pondering in our private lives.
3. Diligence — consulting in my view may be very a lot about good is best than accomplished. You’re employed exhausting on tasks and paperwork till there are not any errors or only a few the shopper can disagree with or challenges.
4. Enterprise acumen — Understanding varied industries and enterprise fashions is crucial to offer related and precious recommendation to your shoppers in consulting. Consulting taught me quite a bit about pondering large 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 prospects whereas in consulting you have got a number of KPIs (utilisiation, shopper suggestions, sorts of shoppers your on, how a lot time you have got spent on BD and so on.)
2. Negotiation — Tech gross sales requires the power to barter offers and navigate advanced gross sales cycles constructing upon the stakeholder administration abilities you study in consulting.
3. Resilience — Dealing with rejection is a recurring a part of the job in gross sales, and tech salespeople study to be resilient and protracted in pursuit of profitable offers. Though you will 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.
4. Deep product information: A deep understanding of the tech services or products you might be promoting is crucial for efficient pitching. Whereas in consulting you’ll be able to excel by talking to shoppers on the ‘megatrend’ / birdseye view stage.

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

The transferable abilities gained in consulting, akin to problem-solving, analytical pondering, and enterprise acumen, present a robust basis for a profitable profession in tech gross sales.

It’s important to evaluate your strengths, pursuits, and profession objectives to make an knowledgeable determination about which path aligns finest 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 so far and increasing on these factors and my expertise.