Embracing a Hospitality Mindset in Sales

It’s no secret that the best traits of the strongest salespeople don’t appear in a vacuum; rather, they bolster from soft skills that have persisted for years before these professionals even consider sales as a career path. In the growing tech-sales space, there’s no shortage of a demand for talented prospectors, and there’s no need for salespeople to come from a sales or marketing background. It’s those soft skills gained from past experiences that allow them to hit the ground running in a highly social career characterized by customer-facing interactions, metric achievement, and organizational fluency.

From the Kitchen to the Calls

After my first year in college as an English major, I decided to take a gap year and pursue my true passion: food. I resumed working in restaurants as I had during high school and worked my way into becoming a prep-cook and a manager at a popular spot in Boston. After two years, I had uncovered a part of myself shown to be highly organized, reliable as a leader, and welcoming to the guests we served. I learned to predict the output of ingredients based on customer traffic and placed food orders and conducted prep sessions accordingly. I learned the minutia of communicating with the people in my store to make them feel taken care of without smothering them. I learned to predict the needs of my peers and staff and therefore react proactively to every evolving situation. By the time I ended up beginning my career in sales, I had internalized these skills as baseline traits allowing me to thrive in the initial months as a new SDR.

Hitting the Ground Running

I “fell” into sales initially out of pure curiosity desire for adventure, and after deciding to keep my passion for cooking as a hobby rather than a career. Thankfully, transitioning from the restaurant and hospitality industry to tech-sales came with an unexpected foundation of techniques that allowed me to succeed early on. My experience in restaurant leadership had honed my ability to react adaptively to sudden changes in my work schedule, prepared me for the challenge of accommodating impatient prospects, and bolstered my passion for teaching and supporting my team. In this way, while I had initially felt unsure of my decision to undergo such a drastic career change, I was able to quickly see how helpful my experience was for this

new challenge. The ability to speak personably allowed me to break through one of the most intimidating barriers in sales: having a conversation!

However, while my soft skills proved immediately viable, the realities and limitations of my hospitality-driven mindset quickly began to set in.

Confronting the Reality of Cold Sales

In the restaurant industry, I knew that every single person that walked in was looking for a range of existing services or products. They came into my territory, so there was no need to break the ice, overcome initial objections, or convince them that this was worth their time; they did that part for me! However, in my first few months as an SDR, every time I made a cold call, I felt an unsettling fear as I had to interrupt someone’s day and prove myself to be worthy of their time. That massive change from serving willing patrons to surprising viable prospects in the middle of their day was hard.

Connecting the Dots

Fortunately, due to the unwavering support of my team and office, endless practice, and proliferation of my skills, I've now been able to connect the dots, and embrace that “hospitality mindset”. Let me explain.

One of the most important discoveries I’ve made is that the service I’m providing to prospects is no different from a meal that my customer might request. It’s about truly understanding the benefits of my product to the prospects in my ICP list and communicating that effectively. I’ve learned to view reaching out to companies that may benefit from my product as no different than suggesting a particularly good dessert to a party who would have otherwise gone straight for the check. The main catalyst for connecting these dots was confidence.

I was able to build up my confidence, by seeking to learn from my peers, constantly hitting daily metrics, and forcing myself out of my comfort zone to assume mentorship roles for other salespeople, thus bringing back that feeling of working collaboratively in a busy kitchen. The more weeks that passed, the more I was able to settle into the role and recognize the similarities between my careers. The teamwork, the iterative improvement—it was all there. I trained my mind to see our call-blitzes the same as I saw my restaurant’s busy lunch or dinner hours. My hospitality mindset was beginning to truly thrive again.

Serving Customers and Providing Value

The act of cold calling is a scary one. The uncertainty of what comes on the other side of those dial tones can be debilitating for a salesperson who lacks the skills, support, and confidence to embrace the uncomfortableness and sell the solution. My experience shifting from a confident leader in the service industry into a fledgling and nervous sales-newbie and finally transitioning into a tenured prospecting-professional has allowed me to truly appreciate the mental milestones that have brought me to this point.

As I continue to hone my skills in sales and cook up a career, I’ll always be grateful for the experiences that have shaped me—both directly and indirectly-- into the professional I am today. Tech sales may not have been a predictable path for me, but now that I’m here, it makes more sense than ever.