The Hardest Part of Sales

I hear the hardest job in sales is Mid-level Manager. I have yet to make it to VP or CRO, nor am I sure that’s the job I want. However, I have been in sales for a decade and in that time I have held the roles of Sales Development Representative (SDR), Business Development Rep (BDR), Account Executive (AE), and Regional Director (RD). Those are all fancy titles that really mean:

SDR/BDR = Cold Outreach Machine

AE = Sales Rep

RD = Front Line Sales Manager

The roles I have zero experience in sales are Vice President of Sales (VP) and Chief Revenue Office (CRO), so I can’t comment on those. What I do know about these roles is you get farther and farther away from the customer aka the sale. I would define these as:

VP = Manager of Managers

CRO = Leader and Visionary of all things Sales, the Sales Chieftain

Now that we have defined the linear roles in sales let’s get back to the hardest part of sales. I recognize this is a controversial topic, especially since this is my own opinion and I recognize opinions are subjective.But I firmly believe getting a real meeting with a qualified prospect is the hardest part of sales.

There would be no sales without any buyers. When I speak to many people outside of sales they tell me they could never do sales, stating the phrase, “I don’t want to cold call people”. Well guess what, that is the entry level in sales and it’s absolutely the most challenging. I love to ask sales people the question, how was this deal sourced? Was it an inbound demo request, a customer referral, from a trade show, partner sourced, or prospecting? The ones that always get me most excited are the ones that come from prospecting, because that’s the hardest type to source.

Don’t get me wrong, it's great to score any lead from any source as long as it's qualified, but I just want to say wow and thank you to all the SDRs and BDRs out there blowing their numbers out the water by prospecting. It’s the hardest part in any sale and if you can score a meeting with a qualified buyer, way to go.

To put things into perspective, companies pay thousands and thousands dollars to be at trade shows, sponsor executive events; like golf, happy hours, fancy car driving events, roundtable steak dinners, you name it. All of these events have two goals and they are to gain market share and score meetings with qualified buyers – the hardest part in sales.?

If you are an SDR or a BDR, keep grinding and working hard, we know it is not easy to land meetings with qualified buyers, but I will tell you it is the most rewarding part of sales, besides having a prospect sign on, which will come later in your career. Thank you for working hard and helping the rest of the sales team look good by generating all those meetings.