You are in your 20s and don’t know what to do with your life? Start with sales…

As you grow up, a common question keeps on coming back to you: what do you want to do with your life? It’s like people are expecting you to know by your 20s, what you want to do for the rest of your entire life, as if you have had the time to figure that out yet.

 I have been through the same process. Questioning myself to know what would make me happy in life. I came to the conclusion that unless you were born with some kind of "god-giving" vision, it’s almost impossible to know by your 20s which career path would satisfy you the most, simply because you haven’t had the chance to experiment the job market yet. Simply because you should be focusing on discovering what type of individual you are first. But that is another debate…

 If you are in this situation, you should be considering starting with an entry level sales position.

 It does sound scary for many people. It was for me. Rejection is something really hard to deal with and the idea that you will spend most of your time being denied, can be a turn off. For others, being a sales person is somehow diminishing. They can’t be blamed for that. The expression carpet salesman rings a bell? A lot of salespeople have tainted the profession by their harassing behaviors.

 So why sales?

 No matter what you do in life, you will have to sell. Yes, I know it might not be what you want to hear but it’s the hard cold truth. Whether it’s a service, a product, an idea, a concept or even yourself, sales is part of everything in life. The foundation of any organization starts with sales. You might have the best idea, the best product or you might be the best qualified individual for a job, if you don’t know how to sell yourself, you will not be successful! If you don’t know how to market and sell your product or service, you will not be able to demonstrate the value of your idea to the world! The sooner you understand this simple fact, the better prepared you will be. 

 As a recruiter, I had the opportunity to interview a lot of potential candidates for one position. The candidates that stood out were not the one that had necessarily the best qualification (don’t get me wrong, in order to get an interview, you need to be qualified for the job…), but were the ones that I bought into.

 Any successful organization is focused on two major things: building great products or services and sell them!

  Rei Inamoto, the chief creative officer for  AKQA, shared a nugget of wisdom that I’ve observed to be true:  “To run an efficient team, you only need three people: a Hipster, a Hacker, and a Hustler.” The Hispter has the vision, the Hacker makes it happen and the Hustler sells it! When I look at the best teams I’ve been a part of, this has absolutely proven to be true. – Andy Ellwood, Forbes AUG 22, 2012 

No matter what you’ve build, you will need a hustler to sell it! Why can't you be that person!

 By pursuing this type of position, you will learn the life basics. You will learn how to articulate yourself. You will learn to make people follow you and your ideas. You will get to know your limits and more importantly, learn how to push them. You will have to get out of your comfort zone and do things that you don’t want to do but that only successful people do. You will learn how to deal with stress and how to manage your fears. You will learn to embrace being uncomfortable! You will learn how to strive when facing adversity and how to deal with people. After all, isn’t it that what life is all about?