4 Keys to Landing and Succeeding in Your First Sales Job!

I can honestly say that I've spent more time in my life in an interview room talking to a recent college grad looking to land his/her first (or sometimes second) sales job than I have spent talking to my own family — sad I know. After the countless hours of time spent analyzing the minds, attitudes, and skills of young professionals I've come to some pretty interesting conclusions of why I believe that 90% of young people miss the boat in being prepared for their first sales job.

If you want to be in sales and you have already or are about to graduate, here is the cheat sheet of what to be doing right now to guarantee your success. If you know someone (friends, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters) who wants to be in sales and has already or is about to graduate please SHARE this article with them.

1 – CLEAN UP YOUR PERSONAL LIFE — You are about to enter into the biggest chapter change of your life's structure to date, and I've yet to meet a sustained successful person who doesn't put work into having his personal life in order. The stress and mental demand of learning a new craft on top of working hard enough to win is more physically and emotionally taxing than you are likely used to. Because of that, don't let additional nonsense like relationship drama, financial stupidity, poor health, or lack of self control keep you from operating at 100% at all times — it's not worth it. Someone else will have control of those areas in their life and will be lightyears ahead of you. Control what you can control, and never lose because you aren't the best version of yourself.

2 – START BUILDING THE RIGHT NETWORK NOW — As I prepare to interview someone in college or fresh out I'm always amazed at the amount of people who don't even have a LinkedIn profile. Our world has never been more social, and it amazes me at the amount of young people who aren't using one of the most important professional social tools. Oppositely, I highly recommend doing a self audit on all of your other social channels. When people look you up on Facebook what impression are they getting? You could make it all private, but I think that's shady. Keep it public but make sure your pictures and content paint a picture of someone who's going to take their job in the real world seriously. Once you have your life on the internet cleaned up and running start using the people around you as leverage. Sorry to break it to you, but submitting your resume to a company’s “apply now” button is the absolute worst strategy known to man. USE YOUR NETWORK! Seek out the people who do or have what you want and ask for their advice. This is literally the last time in your life that Mom, Dad, or your super rich Uncle Todd will be able to “pull some strings” – use that to your advantage. 

3 – PERFECT YOUR INTERVIEW – This is going to sound overconfident, so please brace for impact. You won’t find a better person on this planet to teach and coach you how to do two things: 1.) dominate an interview 2.) crush your Best Man or Maid of Honor Speech. Since we’re not talking about weddings today, we will stick with interviewing. The number one thing I can give in the short scope of this article is to throw away everything your professors, friends, and parents are teaching you – it’s mostly garbage. Your number one objective in any sales interview is to make a genuine connection with the person you are interviewing with. Googling answers to standard interview questions WILL NOT help you accomplish that goal. Some of the best Sales People I’ve ever hired gave some horrible answers to questions. The manner in which they dealt with the situation, however, scored them lots of points. Conversely, some of the most seemingly polished, studied, and researched people failed horribly if they forgot that being themselves and creating genuine connection was the only mission. Sorry for not going in further depth on this topic – if enough people say there is interest on more tactical tips I’ll host a free webinar on it.   

4 – GET PREPARED FOR THE JUNGLE – Here’s the hard truth. At the end of the day, the young Sales People that I either passed on or saw fail usually had one thing in common. They didn’t understand the real world jungle they were signing up for. That doesn’t make them bad people or doomed for failure. Matter of fact, it’s really the fault of Universities, Parents, and people like me and you who probably have not sounded a loud enough alarm to educate and help. Here is what happens. Ever since childhood, for the most part, life for kids and young people is a series of boxes that get checked to move on to the next “chapter.” If you achieve certain grades for the year in school you GET to move on to the next grade. If you graduate high school with a certain GPA and score on your SAT you GET to go to XYZ college. If you pass your classes in that college you GET to receive a diploma that is supposed to grant you some kind of a job. All of this “checking of the boxes” subconsciously creates a outlook of entitlement that tells people that if they do X they get to earn Y. Well, that works in elementary school, high school, and college. But, not in the real world where the entire system comes to a terrifyingly, screeching holt and overhaul. The real world, especially in the sales game, is a jungle in which the fastest and strongest hunters eat and the rest go hungry. It doesn’t care that you did what you were told you were supposed to do. There is no such thing as what is fair or not. The faster you prepare for and realize this one point, the more and more success you will find.

The beauty of the above four points is they are all things that are 100% in your control. There is no IQ test, no royal family blood, and no physical qualifications necessary. When it comes to winning in the sales game, I’ll take the hustler and grinder who has the above under control over anyone else every day of the week. Dream big as you spend your last days preparing for this next chapter. More importantly, start to prepare now to put your habits, mindset, and actions where your mouth is!

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Written by Josh Mastel — Founder, The Unentitled Project

[email protected]

Josh Mastel is an entrepreneur and leading expert on the Millennial Generation as a salesforce. He currently runs The Unentitled Project, a company that helps organizations and sales leaders find, onboard, develop, manage, and lead their Millennial Sales Teams to achieve massive growth and domination of their market space.

Josh is also a public speaker, delivering keynotes and Ted Talks at events, kickoffs, and sales meetings. 

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