Quarter life crisis: investment banking to tech sales?

Longtime lurker, rare poster.

Been in IBD for 3 years and I’ve realized that it isn’t for me, nor is the buyside or finance at a corporate. While I enjoy the business analysis and client interaction, I absolutely hate the mundanity and excruciating level of attention to detail that the job requires. I’m the kind of person that would much rather hop on the phone, bullshit a bit with the client and have a conversation about a detailed problem.

I’m a very type A person and quite driven, but have difficulty motivating myself in environments where performance and results (ie comp) are not correlated. I’m very extroverted, love talking to strangers, mingling at parties, shooting the shit, fraternity in college, etc and feel like sales would be a great personality fit.

My question is how common is it to “lateral” into a junior SaaS sales role as a 25 year old with a business background? What should I expect in terms of responsibilities, growth trajectory, title, comp and commission structure?

My sales pitch would be something along the lines of motivated, highly organized professional with strong business background, used to selling ideas (M&A, securities) to senior decision makers.

Would to be keen to hear any insights and resources that I should look into. Thanks!

5 Comments
 

Hi modelsandbottles69, no, I never sleep and so I can respond to any lonely threads (like this one) at all hours of the night. Impressive, I know ;-)

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I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

Sales is you eat what you kill, sky's the limit. Junior sales rep roles at top tech usually start at 100k on target and goes up from there. I don't think you'd have a problem getting the initial interview, given your IB background, but you'd just have to convince them from there.

 

I would suggest checking out Blind, it's like WSO but for tech companies. You'll get a lot of solid advice there from entrenched sales people.

 

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