Inside Sales Folks: There Is Light At The End Of The Awful Job Tunnel!
Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you another guest entry from one of our BDRs, Jill Ryan.
I sat down to brainstorm with some fellow UMass alumni and my boss recently, about the most effective ways to bring in new talent. We talked about appearing in lectures to discuss social media and the work we do here at AG, followed up with meet and greet pre-interviews with candidates interested in AG Salesworks.
We bounced back and forth between a couple of ideas to bring in new people, but still weren’t positive we had a bull’s-eye proposal. A business’ success is a result of the culture and talent they bring in. The maintenance of the “well oiled machine” that is AG, involves training, motivation and culture. It is easy to arrive at career fairs where undergraduate students are starving to put their degrees to good work, but how do we actually connect with the working world? How do we speak to the individuals that are 1 or 15 years out of school that are still feeling the effects of a tough economy?
The no brainer is referrals. The staff members we currently have at AG that are a few years out of college are successful and feeling pretty good that they found us. Most of us bounced around in the land of “commission only” and jobs that assured us that we would be making 100k in the year 20-NEVER. We continued on with our summer jobs for as long as possible and spent countless hours on employment search engines. It is an extremely discouraging feeling to go from being a number in college to a number in the work world. We all went to college to excel professionally, and that is something that continues for everyone at AG.
Speaking from experience, I was one of those recent graduates that was trying to make ends meet, pounding the phone and working at a job that left me broke, tired and awake at night. All I wanted to do was prove to myself that I had the skills to make it. I knew I was good on the phone and I wanted to be a part of something I could add value to while building my resume. Sounds like an awesome plan, but where could I find this “fantasy office”? I certainly didn’t seem to locating it on Monster.com no matter how many hours I searched.
I was one of the lucky ones who took an interview here at AG. I knew someone currently employed with AG, and I immediately felt at home. Ahhh… bliss. Jeans, flip flops, and Pandora radio. Who would have known that I could go to sleep on a Sunday without waking up to the Monday morning blues? I walked in here with the mentality that I would be working my tail off doing a sales job, while adding a legitimate name to my resume. After passing my one year mark with AG, I realize that this job is more to me than a resume stacker. This position is a career and I’m part of an extended family. I was able to bring my 2+ years of sales skills to this office, apply them to the training and really learn how to multi task and apply myself as a professional in sales, marketing and client relations. I have seen my own referrals and other referrals grow in the exact same fashion. We are a well oiled machine because of the skills we have acquired here at AG and through our education. The people I work with, referrals and career fair recruits, are all bulls’ eyes… but we are in a position to throw a couple more darts. If you have any interest in AG or know anyone who fits our criteria; reach out to us. In a market that is constantly growing and where there is always room for improvement, our motto is, take a risk. So take one, and check us out.