#59 - Tech Sales 101: The University Lecture I Wish I Had (60 Minutes)

I got a $65,000 job, was like killing it. Year in, I got a 2.7% raise, and I'm meeting people who didn't even have engineering degrees that started in sales, and they're telling me that they're making these outrageous numbers. The average for about people with about five years of experience starting around 3.25 to 350 at companies like Palo Alto Networks or Oracle or DataDog as well. You can in a great year, like clear a million dollars on your W2 in a single year if you do really well. TechSales is one of the most lucrative paths that almost no one talks about or really knows about in college. I didn't learn about it until after I graduated with an engineering degree, and after working in engineering for three years and ultimately making the change, it has significantly changed the financial trajectory of my life. That's why I was really excited when the University of South Carolina reached out and asked if I wanted to partner with their CSIET program, the Carolina Sales Institute for Engineering and Technology. And what you're about to watch here covers everything you would want to know about TechSales if you're considering a career change, looking to break into a more lucrative career, and really trying to understand everything involved with an entry level role in TechSales. For the right kind of person, whether you have a degree or not I might add, this career path is very unique in the sense that if you understand it, you come in and perform very well. It's very realistic within a year or two for you to easily be clearing six figures. And within three to five years, commonly reps that are top performers are making a quarter of a million dollars plus per year. Nonetheless, this is an unedited hour long video that really dives into everything with also Q&A from the students. Big thank you to Verage, Dylan, and Darshan, and everyone from the University of South Carolina that welcome the higher levels team on campus. I hope you guys get a lot out of this, whether you have a degree, you're about to graduate, or you don't even need a degree to break into this career. If you guys have any questions or things I can help with, feel free to comment below. And yeah, hope you guys enjoy. Thanks. - Appreciate it guys. Hey, I'm Eric. By the way, Solomon has a microphone. So we're going to pass that for any questions. Feel free to stop me any time. I got very strict instructions to make this interactive and not be boring. So I'm going to do my very best and really just want to say when Fraud's reached out and the broader team, I'm an engineering student that switched into sales and also specifically with your focus on getting these jobs. That is something that I really found in my own experience both as an engineer and in sales. That I was not equipped for with just your average advice and the things available to you through-- I went to Auburn University. So today I really want to just break down how we have helped people get into tier one companies. I've worked at both Fortune 1000 companies and startups as an engineer and in sales. And I really want to equip you guys with actual, actionable stuff you can do literally today. Ideally, we're going to have about 15 to 20 minutes to do a brief exercise where if you guys brought your laptops, we will actually have you message people like companies you want to work for. We'll talk about how to do that and actually do that. So again, stop me any time. There's a mic for questions and feel free to keep it going. Quick agenda for today. How many people, a quick poll? So I know this is engineer focus. I've seen a few non-engineers. So how many engineering degrees are tracks in here? And then-- OK. And then just to contrast, everyone who's not engineering totally cool. All right, cool, cool. So we've got another student. So how many people are familiar at a high level? Like if I told you what's the difference between an SDR and a sales engineer, do we know what that is? Totally fine, if not. OK, so that's going to be our first thing today. Two, I want to talk about the earning potential of tech sales. Not to make it like, oh, you could earn this much, but I think quite frankly, as an engineering student, I thought that was going to be one of the most lucrative paths for me. Not that that's everything. But I think people are not aware of if you are a fit for sales and that's something you really enjoy. You can leverage your technical skill set and also be in a very high earning career. We'll talk about the skills and then how to break into tier one logos. Just a quick thing on my background. This is a really weird experience for me today. So some of you may know I have YouTube and TikTok. I've been recognized one time ever before this. And so there's like four or five people that have seen my video. So this is surreal for me too. So I appreciate it. It's like, it's weird. But we run higher levels.com. I started that while in corporate America for about four years. Last year, I grew to a point where we're not only helping people break into companies, but we're also now consulting for a lot of venture backed AI startups. And we're also building out sales teams for companies around the US. Big thing I'm passionate about is Team Hannibal. I actually used to be a goalie for Team USA. And more recently, a year and a half ago, I got asked to be the goalkeeper coach for the wheelchair team. Super long story short. But first ever time, we played in the World Championships last year. We won silver. Shocked the world. Awesome tournament. There's actually an amazing YouTube video of that. Only if we have time. So cool. We'll keep it going. So when I say text sales specifically, how many people are going to put people on the spot here? Do you know what text sales is as opposed to sales? You guys should raise your hands. Come on. Anybody else? OK. Break down-- when I say text sales, what does that mean? So text sales is a sale of software as a service. So normally code something that's transportable over the internet. Yeah, fair enough. Anybody else? We got two people at Oracle here. One of you guys. Oh, yeah. Like it's a SaaS to cloud. Anything like that? All right. Basically, when companies evaluate software, this may seem self-evident, but we're going to break this down in more detail. Purchasing software for a company with even 50 to 100 people let alone tens of thousands of people is a very complex process. So the sales rep comes in. There's different levels that I've kind of laid out here. The entry level is most commonly an SDR, where you are making calls and emails and LinkedIn messages and reaching out to potential customers. And then it progresses to account executive, potentially account manager, customer success manager, and sales engineers. The three that we're going to talk about tonight are SDR, account executive, and also sales engineering, because I know there's some interest here. We can go ahead to the next slide. But I think I really want to stress this, because I think credit to you for reaching out, there's a lot of interest in sales engineering. Is anyone here specifically already looking at sales engineering? Couple of people. Very cool. One important distinction, and I encourage you to reach out to sales engineers in the field. But oftentimes, sales engineering is not necessarily an entry-level role. So an SDR, you're making calls, you're making emails, it is a pure sales role. So eight hours a day, you are calling, emailing, reaching out to different customers. Sales engineers are where an SDR has set up a meeting. A company is potentially interested in buying. You're maybe going to scope out and leave a demonstration. Oftentimes, you need engineers with three to five years of experience to actually leave that process, even from a sales side, because they need to know all of the different tools that interact together. From an account executive standpoint, I've kind of laid out the earning potential as well. We have some SDRs in here. Anyone else actively in the interview process? Already? Nope. OK. We got to warm them up. Yeah, a little. No, all good. So OK, let me ask you guys from a university perspective, from an engineering job. What is the-- because this was a big thing when I was a student at Auburn and really anywhere. What is the average salary they're touting now of an engineering graduate? 80,000? 80,000? Any other numbers? Somewhere in there? OK. Awesome. And then let's say like five to 10 years into the career. What do you guys think would be possible? And I know it's going to vary by major. Over 100. Over 100? OK. You can make 200 grand if you want to solve the word. Yep. So it becomes-- Yep. Thank you. [LAUGHTER] In California. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody else? Cool. Awesome. I think one of the things-- and I say this as an engineer myself-- I got a really great job at a reputable company. It was not for me for a lot of reasons. And I thought I was doing great at the time. This is 2016 numbers. I got a $65,000 job. Was killing it. You're in. I got a 2.7% raise. And then I lived in Austin, Texas still do. And there's a lot of tech companies. And I'm meeting people who didn't even have engineering degrees that started in sales. And they're telling me that they're making these outrageous numbers. And in my mind, I'm like-- OK. They're just-- they're a salesperson. They're bragging. But it's actually true. And one of the reasons I talk about tech sales specifically today is I don't think a lot of people are aware of. Again, pending your performance. It is a difficult job. You have to come in and execute. But right out of the gate, one, you can get a 75K to 120K job depending on where you break in. And that's generally 65% of it is based. 35% of that is commission. But if you do well as an SDR within about a year to a year and a half, you can promote to what's typically referred to as an SMB or small business account executive, making anywhere from 120, I would say, on the low side, to about 170. So that's in 12 months. Not five years if your engineering career goes well. So as an SMB account executive, if you do well there for about, I would say on the shortest I've ever seen is about a year. But realistically, a year and a half to two years, you can then promote to a mid market or corporate account executive. I would say on the low end, 150, to the high end around 220 to 230. And now we're talking three and a half to four years into your career. Not five to seven to 10 as an engineer. Then enterprise account executive as well. I would say, actually, recently with the AI bubble in the last year, year and a half, it used to be the standard with $300,000. And that's 50% base salary, 50% commissions based on your performance. Now I'm actually seeing the average for about people with about five years of experience, starting around 325 to 350 at companies like Palo Alto Networks, our Oracle, our data dog as well. Now there's a lot that goes into that. I don't want to sit here and be like, oh, it's so easy. Just get a sales job. You have to perform. It's very demanding. I'm happy to talk about that in depth, but this is a career path I think especially engineers that have that technical aptitude do not take into account compared to engineering. How many, I don't know, are you guys professors by any chance or no, like are any of these your students? (audience laughing) - Okay, it's all right. (audience laughing) - Yeah, okay. So you don't have to answer if they are your teacher by any means or a professor, excuse me, but how many of you are not sure that engineering is the long term career path for you if you're comfortable sharing. - Hey, let me get a picture of you. (audience laughing) - Yeah, hold on. We got it on YouTube, don't worry. You can replay it as much as you want. Yeah, have you guys, for those of you that are in that position, I was as well. Again, I would not change anything about studying engineering. I just knew it wasn't the long term path for me. For those of you that are in that position, have you guys considered any other paths or just kinda like, don't really know right now. Anyone willing to share? - Yep. - I think that mine is a little bit more nuanced and I don't think that corporate engineering is already broader. - Yep. - Ownership is definitely something that I'm looking at more and more. I like, progress. - Yep. Not a great point. Anyone else? - Yep. - Yeah, I think I'm kinda looking at the sales right now. Just the thing that kinda gets me is, I don't know. It feels like studying engineering for so long and then going to the sales where I was like, I'm almost doing too much because you can get to a sales role like studying business, et cetera. So to me, it feels like kinda like, I don't know. - Go on, no, no, this here. 'Cause I know, no, no. No, 'cause I'm the same way. No, this is a very real thing. Like I felt the exact same way. - Yeah, you can make a lot of money, you can be really good at it. But I almost feel like a, I'm not a waste of study engineering. I don't know, it feels like a lot. You're kinda getting over-parried in order to step through a role. It's not currently filled. But there's a draw there like forward sales, especially if I wanted to be like an entrepreneur in the future, like do my own thing, kinda need both those skills per se. - I mean, I always say I wanna own my own business. At some point, I'm also looking into sales at the time. - Oh, thanks. Maybe project management and a company, but I'm not really sure to be honest. I would say I definitely need some sort of freedom and whether that's sales or having my own business. I'm not sure yet I'm gonna figure that out. - Yeah, for sure. Anybody else? Great answer is by the way. - I mean, I was an IT that was partnered this summer and I think that was a cool experience because I was doing just software. But I was also talking to like a lot of managers in the company and I was reaching out to directors in like different branches of the company. Like, 'cause I worked in Louisiana, but I reached out to people all the way in Texas and which talk Kansas. And I thought that was really cool to have like that experience to talk to that many people and make like a different impact versus just like through code or anything like software online. - Yeah, totally. And I'm curious from the ground level too with like internships and full-time jobs. Like how do you guys feel about the job market right now? Like, exactly why I am. So I'm excited for this, yeah, yeah. And by the way, we're passing around a mic if you get a chance, but to Caleb. - Yeah, that's a question. I think, especially in sales right now, how much you know start-ups there is and how the access of the market is getting. I think, you know, the job market, you know, kind of just applying, especially with me. I'm on edge, I'm just a business major. So just applying itself and maybe reaching out to a person or two really, isn't gonna get your foot in the door. So you kind of almost have to take the step in like a pretty sales cycle to actually like make yourself no one, especially for a big topic called the like Oracle sales rules, et cetera. So I think it does take a lot of time 'cause you got score balance as well. And I don't know if you, I'm not like when you go to bed, I'm passionate about it, but you're not gonna do that. So you have to put in like the efforts to get to that point. And honestly, teaches you outreach itself throughout the process. That's kind of how I've just got my experience without past six months of internships and whatnot and just kind of setting informational interviews. I think you kind of got to do the job and get the job, that's the best way to put it. - Totally. Yeah, you wanna do the rest of this? That's basically it. - Yeah. - I learned that from you. - Yeah. Anyone from like an engineering perspective that's applying to engineering specific jobs, I'm just genuinely curious like how that's been. Even if you haven't looked at sales specifically, we got one in the back. - Yeah. - There's a lot of, yeah. Oh, there's a lot of, oh, you don't have experience where looking for people with no experience, but it's an actual level of depression. - Yeah. - So it's a lot more like you have to know people and already give jobs like for my personal experience, the closest even I've gone to like an interview or getting a job that's like, like I've watched it, it's like I meet people at the bar and like I talk to my whole other engineers, like they give you your contact information, like number, length, and that okay, and it just goes to you sometimes. - Yeah, yeah. - You're like, why'd you do that, man? It's okay. - Yeah. - I had pretty much it like, like engineering taught off your life. - Yeah. - You have to know people. - Yeah. No, it's great. And by the way, what we're gonna do, how much time do I have left by the way? - I think it's good. - Good, 'cause this is actually regardless of if you're pursuing engineering or tech sales, that's what we're gonna do today. I saw some other hands over here. I'm not sure. - Yeah. - We'll go you and then you. - Yeah. - I'll do the same. I have an interview at for a value engineer at up and county AI company called Salonis. Nice. And it was just like an entry interview with kind of other like recruiters. And I was thinking about my experience last summer. I was like participating in research. And I'm still doing that now. And so like obviously during my experience, which is asking questions are really and the fact that I have to those technical stories, and she's like, alright, it seems like you have like this passion for technical stuff. And she's like, what, like what about the business aspect? And I'm like, yeah, like I way rather just be sitting there like talking to people and stuff like that and then like banging my head on the desk. - Yeah. - Doing the hard stuff. - Yeah. - And it's like obviously, well, I got rejected. So I don't know, just like, I mean that's like an interview some year. This is the seed. - No, okay. - Yeah. - I emailed her to that, but like I rejected like today. So I emailed her to see if she had to be back. - Yeah. - Still, I hope for that. - Okay. - I think that's like a technical experience sometimes. It feels like over a mile or something. Like you know too much about something, especially in like the research aspect, know too much about something that like, they don't see as a quick role, which it's not necessarily is, but like, it's still like, I'm grateful I did it, but. - Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Like in, so the value engineering was kind of like sales engineering a little bit. - It's like the value engineering, like internship, whatever it needs to be, you know, full time like sales engineering. - I see, okay. - Yeah. Yeah, we can definitely, I'll try and address that here and also we can talk after, but I would guess that you were probably, again, 10 seconds of context here, so don't hold me to it, but yeah, they probably wanted to see more like business acumen in terms of asking questions, making sure you understand their problems, all of that, all of that different stuff. So we can definitely talk about that more. Cool. Over here. - Yeah, I think the bar to hiring for software roles is definitely a lot higher nowadays. - Really? - Just because like, my interview for Doug Crete, I was in, we're here, and I made it to like the final round, and like I solved the lead co-problem right and stuff, but I guess system design wasn't good enough, so I think the bar just like last year, it's gotten a lot higher this year, you know, just from what I'm seeing, 'cause I got a lot of callbacks, like maybe 12 different companies, and then like this year maybe like three or four years, or it's usually like an OA first. So I think a lot of companies are transitioning to like AI, I guess, based interviewing for software to find a candidate. - Yeah, yeah, interesting. Now I appreciate all that feedback. Oh, was there, you're good? Okay, sorry, I just saw you perk up, I don't know if you had one. Sorry, my bad, my bad. No, good stuff. I would say again, I don't wanna dangle these numbers in front of you to make it sound like it's like, you get a sales job and then you can earn a million dollars, but one note that I would say is like, this is very real, colleagues of mine have hit this, I have not yet, where you can in a great year, like clear a million dollars on your W2 in a single year if you do really well. Typically these people have to be in seat for about seven to 10 years. You're usually an enterprise account executive, but I think like for those of you, again, you're engineering students, so with that context in mind, I don't say this to anyone and everyone, I'm not trying to get you riled up on just a dollar figure, but you guys are very smart, and I think a lot of people don't take into account the money that can be made if you wanna go into a sales career. We'll go to the next one. Note on sales engineering to your point, and others as well. I just wanna mention, this is also a very great path. We saw the average salary just recapping for an SDR account executive at different levels. You basically progress from an entry level around, I don't know, 70 to 120, and as an enterprise account executive, you're typically around 275 to 350, and when you're an account executive, 50% of that is base, 50% of that is commission. So again, I'm just kind of using simple numbers here, but the average enterprise account executive has to close about $1.2 million of business per year, and then if you take 150K of that is your commission component, if you close $1.2 million of business, you get that 150K paid out. So I can get into that more specifically, but I say that because a sales engineer, for those of you that maybe do wanna pursue engineering, you get into your engineering career, and say three to five years in, you're not crazy about coding all day. Sales engineering is a great path once you have that experience, to then transition to where you're not gonna do the work of an SDR that is cold calling, cold emailing, reaching out to people, it's an uncomfortable but I think very great skill to have if you really wanna put yourself there, but if you wanna be more sales engineer, work with people that are actively evaluating a product, you come in when they've already identified that there's a potential fit, and you help them as one example of many, like scope out a custom demo, you scope the requirements, and then as they get into a trial, you're basically gonna be the front person that's helping them actually establish the criteria, the use cases they're gonna test, and how they technically validate the solution. From a compensation standpoint, typically at this point, you'll come in around 150k. Again, I say that because a lot of people come in as an engineer with two to three years of experience. Then from there, as you grow, I would say to about five years of experience as a senior sales engineer. You can make anywhere from 220 to 275k. The big difference is it's very rare to see a sales engineer that gets close to a million. Again, this is a great outcome I might add. But the difference is the commission is about 20% of your salary. So if you do like a little bit more stability, you do like, I would say maybe four half of your day is pretty hardcore coding or engineering work. You get 80% of your salary as base and 20% commission. So that rep who close to $3 million deal, you're going to get some of that. But they're getting more upside because 50% of their pay is commission. That makes sense. What keep going? Or questions there, by the way. Kind of burning here. Cool. All right. This is pretty much, I believe, the last slide or two that I have. If you guys want to pull your laptops out, actually before we do that, just get ready to do that. Has anyone here like cold message people at the companies that they want to work for? Oh wow. OK, we got a good group here. I will put you guys on the spot whoever wants the mic. Yeah, give me an example if you can of like a message that you sent. If you remember. I already had a connection based on my internship. So I had an internship at a corporate aviation place. And that led me to reach out to Gold Stream because we kind of had a lot of their aircraft out of our anger. And so I reached out to Gold Stream. I reached out to the vice president of Gold Stream. And I messaged her a little bit about what I'm passionate about. And he led me to sales engineering. Like he told me that that role might be the best fit for me. And so now I'm trying to go to the end of like applying for a internship over like a co-op over the summer. Nice. OK, very cool. Yeah, great example. Anybody else? And/or someone with their laptop open, would you happen to have a message that you could actually read? I'd be curious what you guys are messaging. Yeah. Hiya. So I was like targeting Oracle Nesb for their internship. And one of-- I'm sorry. I was targeting Oracle Nesb for their internship. And one of the guys I'm like very close with, like, new is like body that was a few years old. He was a count manager. And like they're both very conversational. Like they were boys. So I know it's very casual and like approachable person. So I messaged him a couple of times. Obviously I had a temple right here if I could show you your arm. Yeah. And then I mean, he wasn't answering me. And then my friend said that he talked to him at like 5 p.m. And like he wasn't doing anything. So I actually called him at 5.20. And obviously, like my first time was just a credit bill. He was like, hey man, I just spoke with an XYZ person. I know I'm calling you right now. And I apologize, but we talked through what you do. And it's very inspiring to me. And then it was like two-month phone calls, too much. And then I obviously just kind of set a Zoom meeting with them. And now I've had a couple Zoom meetings with them. And then whenever the time comes, like you can be an internal wreck for me. Because he said he was able to do that. Nice. And I mean, I can show you the email if you want as well. And just basically, this is like after the call. I just said, looking forward to the discussion on one of the couple points. Talk through the just set of foundation. And I said, I'm prepared to talk through. I said, four things. Like, value pathway to tech sales. Business development process. We'll be building and maintaining relationships. And like year growth is a new account manager. And I just, the sales cycle app or it will sell for that. There's anything else I can do to master a pair of my conversation. I mean, all I'll make it happen. I just got the short and sweet. And I don't like the cold call people as well as back home. The guy's in the company, they're way basically doing. But I just felt like the kind of energy there. I just thought they took me to pay. Nice. Let me ask you guys a question, too, because I'm very surprised in a good way of how many of you have called message people. Do we feel like we're pretty comfortable there? Because I was going to have us create some messages and actually send it to companies of interest. But also things that come to mind are like, do you guys know how to find people's phone numbers through like Apollo.io? Have you guys made-- I know you've made a quote-- let me ask you another question. Yeah, how many of you have called a hiring manager? You can raise your hand. OK, so two people. Nice. Nice. OK. So I was going to-- in Verage, maybe I'll get your input here as well. I was literally going to have us with your laptops open. Identify five companies. We need to do that. OK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. OK. [INAUDIBLE] Because there are ways, especially when they all start collaborating about that. And you know this. There are ways to do this to go to get seen when they demonstrate what you spoke about-- Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] I love this. Do the job to get the job. Yeah. And so part of it's about you, but part of it's about the company. Who are they looking for? What do they need? Why are you that? Completely. Yeah. OK. No, that's great. And I would just give one example. This was even before I was in sales. But AT&T would come to Auburn quite often. They're big in Atlanta. So it's like an hour and a half away. And I researched ahead of time. Not just that AT&T was coming to campus, but as you guys know, they have job listings with specific requirements. As one example of many, I remember distinctly at the career fair. There was a recruiter and an engineer. And the engineer, she was showing off the antenna. There were 20 Auburn students around the engineer with the antenna. And the recruiter was standing there by herself, bored out of her mind. And I literally just walked up to her and was like, hey, my name's Eric Finch. I saw AT&T has a new grad business development program that I'm really interested in. I'd love to learn more about it and learn what you're looking for. I was the only one. There's 20 engineers around the engineer that was shown off like the little antenna. And I was like, ooh, like trying to impress her. I literally walked up to the recruiter. She doesn't even ask me a single question and goes, scan this QR code. And we'll get you in an interview in Atlanta as early as next week. It was it. And I think the game has increased. You got especially the fact that we have so many people here that have already reached out. I think the level has increased 10 years down the line. But this is like, in my mind, a baseline requirement. Do not worry about-- if you are not willing to do this stuff in terms of messaging people, maybe even going to the length of call calling, which I would recommend. In my opinion, especially now, especially hearing some of you guys firsthand stories, I think you're wasting your time just hitting apply, or showing up to the career fair. Use the career fair. But don't just show up and just be like, hey, here's a generic resume. Find the 20 companies that you're interested in, read through the job description, and go up to them and take away their need to ask you questions. Hey, I'm talking to you because of this specific reason that I found about your company. So I might be getting ahead of myself. But yeah, let's do it. In terms of-- oh, yeah, we can go to the next one. So how many of you-- this is a genuine question, too, because I think when I graduated, I did not know the full scope of how many tech companies were out there. Do you guys know the tech companies that you want to work for? How many people feel like you really have a good grasp? Or-- and there's nothing wrong with this I might add. But is your scope of knowledge the extent of South Carolina's career fair? Or do you guys feel like you have a good grasp on lots of different tech companies out there? I think this scope is something that you mentioned in handshakes. It's not like that. And it's just like-- you know, many things that you're-- Yeah, yeah. OK. No, anybody else, too? LinkedIn, handshake, those are pretty good. How often do you guys check-- I think using USC alum and hearing their stories and where they have-- they have a five was really useful. And putting my list together for internships, that's what I did. It's just a shout-out to a lot. OK, cool. Awesome. Anybody else? Anybody else already doing this by the way? And I would love to, as I transition into this, what is your method to finding companies and messaging? Yeah. I was saying there is a list of basically all Fortune 500 companies, all government, federal contractors, all state federal contractors, on various different websites that have everything for you. And that's basically what I did. When I first was a freshman, I basically downloaded a PDF of all the federal contractors. One of them by one who makes the gross amount of money and go into contracts when I started there, as I wanted to doing a federal go into contract. Yeah, great example. Yep. Thank you, Tommy. If I just find someone that went here and I'm like, oh, you're a fellow game-cocker, you went to the USC fungulum night. Yeah, great example. No, great example. And I think I would say this even as someone else who went to an SEC school, that's a great approach always. And you will almost always find someone at big companies. But especially right now, if you're looking at AI, early stage startups, things of that nature, that's not always going to be there. So I think we've talked a lot about it. Maybe we can quickly work through an exercise. But you guys, if you want to pull your laptops out, I was just going to walk through something. How many of you are familiar with Apollo.io, by the way? Does that-- OK, nice. We'll change the blouse. And this is wondering about AI and sales. You talked about your videos on QPTs and automations to transform your life out. But obviously AI, we need to make sales development that are selling what's still going to need most. Interesting. Yeah, good question. So yeah, question on AI and how it's going to reshape sales, by the way. So basically, I think one across the board-- this is not just sales-specific. But I think three to five years from now, you'll see companies especially tech because of how much more quickly they're able to iterate. And a lot of their go-to-market tools are software first. You will see them try to accomplish the same thing with 60% of the headcount. I think that's obvious in many ways, but that's any industry you go into. So I don't say that to discourage you from going after sales. I think the biggest thing you'll see-- and I would get very antiquated as a rep-- if you are able to use tools like ChatGbt and/or paid tools there to research companies. to do a lot of your automation. As one example of many, so if you're an SDR and you're making 40 cold calls a day and you're sending 70 emails a day, those are like common KPIs averages there. What I would do is like anytime you set up a meeting, anytime you call call someone and you have a good conversation, I would be building custom projects or custom GPCs to then take a call transcript and create all of the follow-up notes that you need to do. I won't get too deep into it, but basically, and it's really not that complicated, but basically if you're using, if you're at Oracle, you call call someone, they take a call, they're like, yes, let's have a meeting. Not only do you have to create a calendar invite, create the agenda, you've got to summarize the notes, you've got to send a message to the account executive that you set the meeting for, and you typically are required by your management to actually formally set up an opportunity in Salesforce where you have to fill out as much information as you have. So this could be things like their budget, if you discover, like describe the need, why they even need this product, very simple examples, but you've got to fill out a lot of that out. You can literally, like, it's relatively easy to do that, not even using code to set up a custom GPT or project, that will take that transcript and parse it for you in three seconds. And now what you've done is just got yourself 20 minutes back to make more call calls, and now you're getting more time back to close more or set up more meetings and become a number one SDR, whereas your peers are just like, oh, it only takes seven minutes, whatever, I'll just do it manually, and that compounds, and meanwhile, you're getting seven minutes back every three hours you have a conversation. So little things like that, I can definitely go deeper, but especially for the SDR role, that's where I see it right now. - What skills can we do now in training programs that you're now getting ahead of that? - I, like, that's a good question. I don't wanna plug the channel, but I do have a call call simulator in ChatGPT. So if you have the $20 a month plan, I would say, like, get really familiar with how to use ChatGPT, but, like, at a more complex level, which isn't that deep. For those of you that have your laptop out, I would encourage you to go to a website called promptcalboy.ai. You may be familiar with some of these different websites, but they literally, you can give it what they call like a simple prompt, so you can say, hey, I make cool calls all day, and I need you to take this transcript and summarize what you find. I am required to get this information, and then put that in promptcalboy, it'll make a super detailed prompt, use that to then create a custom project, and now you just feed it a transcript every single time. So, I don't know, did I get too deep in the sauce there? Is that okay? All right, all right, cool, cool. So, I have my ChatGPT is for the customization version. I have it automatically made a better prompt for my prompt. Yeah. Based on best practices, so that, instead of going to another website, I have it just automatically to a ChatGP. Totally, totally. Yeah. Awesome. Any other questions, too? I had Q&A after the exercise, but we can do that now, too. Anything else? Yeah. Can you cold-call if you're working in the company itself? I don't know if it's cold-calling, but when I was like interning the text drawing systems, what they had was, there's like five different branches, and the thing is, not every branch knows what happens in the other branch, because I was working at the events, so nobody really knows what's working there. Would you call it cold-calling if I like reached out? I reached out to a lot of people in other departments, like in Texas or in Wichita, Kansas, and I would reach out to them, and I'd be like, hey, I heard about this about your company. It was the same company with a different brand, but I heard about this, business. I have these type of, something about me, we should talk, and I set up interviews that way, and actually landed a job like that at a bigger, writing and post-trial. So I was wondering, would you call that cold-calling? Not as much. I mean, yes, yes, it is cold-calling, but to your point, you're doing it the smart way, which is like, call and say you're from this division, so they think it's like internally about business right away, and they're like, okay, yeah, I'll take the call, and then it's like, yeah, that's like an unusual request, but yeah, let's do it, you know, so yeah, totally. I mean, use that to your advantage, yeah. - Thank you. - Yeah, and then, yeah. - I was gonna ask for your, like, thinking all our own cover letters. - Yeah. - So right now, what I do is, like, I have a personal statement that I wrote for, like, a scholarship that's like, I wrote it myself. It has a lot of personal aspects to it, and then I ask, like, chats, right, and you cover letters, like, using my personal statement, as well as the child description. - Yep. - And, like, it turns out, and, like, comes out in like 30 seconds, not just submit that. - Yep. - Do you think it's better off to just not submit a cover letter at all, or? - If it's required, I would submit it, but I think this goes back, so I'm not against it, but ultimately, this comes back to my original point, which is, if you are not reaching out to their team, directly, your chances just went down 90% in my opinion. So. - Well, my question more is, like, if you do that, and then they do, like, reach out for an interview or something, do you think it'll end up hurting you more later? Or, okay. - Yeah. And that's exactly how I do it. I take my resume. I take the job description. I'm like, hey, I need a cover letter based on my resume in the job description. And then, yeah, of course, I edit it. Like, I don't just copy and submit, but, yeah. It saves a ton of time. Cool. One thing I would recommend, too, is we get into this. Just as, like, best practices that I've seen that works well. If you actually, like, there's two things I wanna talk about. Message people at companies that you're interested in. Let's say you're a junior sophomore right now, maybe looking at an internship next year, or a full-time job next year. Build those relationships now. Ask them for a coffee chat. Ask them about their experience, and we'll get into what that looks like. And see, like, hey, I'm graduating. I've already identified text sales as where I wanna go. Can we chat for 15 minutes? I'd love to pick your brain on your experience. You're gonna get rejected some. You're gonna get ghosted. But the vast majority of people, I think, you'd be surprised 20 to 40% of people, if you have a well-constructive message, we'll take the time to help you. The other side, I would say, is, if you're actually going for full-time jobs right now, I recommend actually applying to, like, let's say you wake up tomorrow, Oracle just listed an SDR position. I actually recommend you submit the information, so you can actually call out the fact in your outreach, whether it's email, LinkedIn message, and/or call call, that you've already submitted. Because that makes their life easier. Your information is already on file. So, like, if I'm calling a hiring manager, I'd say, hey, this is Eric, I just wanted to reach out, 'cause I actually applied to the open role this morning, and I'm reaching out to you specifically because, X, Y, and Z. But the fact that your information is already in the system, makes it that much easier for them if the call call goes well to be like, yeah, what was your name again? I'll find that and I'll get the hiring manager on it. So, just a quick note. - My question was, if you find somebody like you're looking at, like, for example, you find someone from South Carolina that you plan on reaching out to, would you recommend, like, how do you find this right? Like, I said, referral, would you recommend putting their name down before you actually have a conversation with them? Or, what do you mean, like, putting their name down? - So, it says, how do you find out about this, like, LinkedIn or something, or if you were referred, would you say LinkedIn, or would you say referral from that person you're reaching out to, and just, I would be meant to be. I would communicate that with that individual. So, I would either ask them explicitly, like, have a great conversation and say, hey, maybe there is or is not a job opportunity open right now. It's like, I plan to apply tomorrow, or, hey, I'm graduating next year, I plan to apply in the spring to Oracle. Would you be comfortable with me using you as a reference? - Okay, so you were saying, like, help you apply right away and then still reach out to them with your information or your system. You're saying just, say LinkedIn, don't use their name yet. Can I talk to them? I guess the, yeah, so all I was saying there is, if there's an active job opening, apply. Because if you don't apply, there's a chance that you would miss it, right? Assuming you're graduating in the spring, right? And then do your outreach and all of that. But let's say you're a year and a half from graduating or you're just graduating in the spring, and there's no open positions right now at your target company. Now is a great time to reach out to that South Carolina alum and say, hey, I'm planning on applying to Oracle this spring. Love your experience in the career you've built at Oracle. Could we connect for 15 minutes to best, to learn about your experience and help me prepare? So if you have time now, I would be making, and then that way, if that goes well, get their name, email, whatever, LinkedIn. And then you wake up in February and a job openings there or Oracle's coming to the career fair. You reach back out to them and it's like, hey, I'm either applying online today. Could I use you as a reference? And or, like, Oracle's coming to South Carolina. Any chance you know the team that would be coming there? And or would you be comfortable with me using you as a reference? So it's a combo of the two if that makes sense. Like, it just depends on the situation, right? So one thing I'd add, not just a plug here, but genuinely, like, I actually started the YouTube channel that we have. Some of you have seen that, which, again, is like a new phenomenon to me, so I appreciate it. But tons of deep dives here. So if you ever want any follow-up reinforcement, obviously you can add me on LinkedIn. I forgot to create a QR code. I can pull that up. But nonetheless, there's tons of deep dives here. If you want to learn more about just my approach to it and our team's approach to it. And then, yeah, we can go to LinkedIn real quick if we want. So it sounds like some of you have this in place. By the way, here's my LinkedIn if you want to add me. So feel free. And then I know we've talked about this a little bit, like, a very simple workflow I like to do. How many-- I know we've got a lot of people that are looking at LinkedIn and handshake. Do you guys that are using LinkedIn actually have alerts set up or do you just kind of log in every day? Similarly with alerts. Yeah, I have the alerts set up, but it's kind of almost the works sometimes. My watch will be like 85 LinkedIn job implications. Yeah. How do you determine-- I know-- to those of you that said, you kind of like crawl LinkedIn and handshake. Is there any like discernment you have? So you see 85 jobs. What makes you decide like, hey, these 20 actually look legit versus the others? Is there any-- I don't know. Any criteria? you've developed there or any thought on that? - I don't know if I consider the origin of the post-ingent. Most of the time, I mean for me, I feel like really very confusing and really competitive. So I just kind of look for like smaller companies, but at least right now, and that's kind of what I have full of flat team. - Yeah. - For those of you that are messaging people as well, are you exclusively doing that for places that are hiring or doing that for other companies as well? - Everywhere. - Everywhere, everywhere. - Cool. - Awesome. So yeah, that's honestly what I was going to walk through today in terms of like jobs available. It sounds like we have a pretty good grasp on that. I'm happy to walk through like a simple workflow. Does anyone like not know LinkedIn jobs or SER jobs or setting up alerts? It's okay. Yeah. - Yeah, I'm a little bit worried. - Yeah, yeah, okay. - How do you feel about like LinkedIn job postings in general? - I feel like there's a ton of you brought up like the legitness of them. Like would you say, and obviously I think it's best to apply on a company website. What do you think? - Yeah. I think if nothing else, the way I think about it is they are a good, so some are fluff. Some are, like you'll see 10 listings, but one is listed in like Wichita, another's in like Atlanta, and they're actually all for like one position. So that's just kind of like stakes the game. Like sometimes you got to find that out the hard way. But I think if nothing else, I use it as a good signal. Again, if I'm not, if I'm actually trying to apply to a job, if they have a listing, I'm using it as an excuse to reach out to everyone. Right? If it's a company I really want to go after, even if hey, it's been taken or it's not what they said it was, you've now got a reason to reach out to people and hopefully strike up a conversation. So a sales manager shoots you down, but it's one of your top five companies. Oh, hey, that wasn't listed. Like are you guys hiring in the coming months? Like reinforce why you'd be good or what you know about that company or all that, it's a good excuse to get your foot in the door, whether it's now or later. So yeah. So yeah, I guess just really quick. Like honestly, like a baseline workflow looking for SDR jobs. Are you guys, is everyone here pretty much open to relocating or trying to get remote? Anybody like die hard remote fan in here? Yeah. I was going to ask like, how do you, is there a way to tell whether or not they're like offering like relocation assistance and stuff like that? Like how would you say that? Usually not. I would say sometimes they will have that in the job description. Oftentimes you will have to find that out when you interview. What do they do if you don't mind me asking at Oracle? Did they? They were all pretty transparent. A bit of time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's going to depend. I've had some huge companies that didn't offer anything. I've had small companies that offered me, I think like, 2,500 or 3 grand, but reimbursable. So it's like whatever I spent up to 3 grand, they would reimburse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That can be part of your Mico-She-A-V skills once you get the job offer for the Relay Fund. And negotiating for your starting salary. And there's a whole methodology that the start of the students can share with you of some of the things that we recommend that students try to do. That said, a company like Oracle starts everybody in a cohort and you all start. Everybody gets exactly the same thing. But there's a way to set yourself up for success by saying when's the first chance going to be for me to differentiate myself from my peers where I start to make different money than them. And we start to say my understanding. What that does is set the pace and set the tone with Oracle that this is a killer person coming in here. They're already looking to differentiate themselves and looking up the numbers that they want to hear. So you're not going to see a post in a job rack. And for the people in here, I just message the recruiting team at Oracle. If there are some of you that are interested in Oracle, please get to your CSIET leaders. And we will do our part to get you around the LinkedIn bots and to a live person. And what Eric said is true. The first thing the recruiter is going to do is say, apply it online. Then they go in and they pull your resume out. So that's why knowing somebody is so helpful. In this case, that's why Craig and I are here. And those are the benefits of being a part of an organization like this. Thank you for giving me the microphone. I'm going to come and talk to you about that. Totally agree. Anything else you guys would add to? This is great. I have a question. Yeah. Okay, so the beautiful thing about this school and this club is there are so many different kinds of engineers and computing students. And your expertise and your backgrounds in tech sales as sales engineer. I'll just add, as a person who did enterprise sales for Verizon, I lived and died by my, with his call systems, engineers then. But I couldn't, I know how to do nothing, but he knew how to do everything. He made everything work. But my question is, for the people that are engineering in a different sense, does your company or do you have perspective on, to me, sales engineering, solution engineering, yes, it's a career path in tech sales. But in any kind of selling of a complex thing, it might be something tangible like HVAC, like steel, rockets, like, golf streams. But all of those have a technical nature. Is your company involved in that? Or are you really just looking at tech sales? And for the broader engineering audience, can you speak to them as well about some of your thoughts on sales engineering? Yeah, for sure. And to clear, so I was an enterprise accounting executive at Page or Duty. And yeah, I just went full sales. I did three years of engineering. I was like, I don't, I don't ever want to do that again. So my company specifically is focused more on the direct tech sales track. We have thought about educating sales engineers, but for that exact reason, I'm sure you've seen as well. Sales engineers are even more, I would say it's a less standard track than entry level sales to an enterprise or senior type of role. So that's one of the reasons we haven't been super confident as to like create actual training for a sales engineer. Because one thing I would say to those of you that have engineering degrees, you have checked off a big requirement for many technical companies. Like, I'm sorry for the non-engineers, and it's totally fine. But if you are trying to be a sales engineer at Amazon Web Services and you do not have a computer science degree, borderline next to impossible. You would not only have to have a CS degree, but you probably have to have three to five years of development experience on AWS tools specifically. So that's one way to answer your question. And then also, yeah, for those of you that maybe do find yourself in an engineering career, if you do get very specialized, I have a very good friend who is an aerospace engineer, started his career at SpaceX, went more to like the manufacturing side. Kind of five to seven years, it's not uncommon for engineers to be like, I can't do this eight hours a day anymore. He transitioned to a sales engineering path there and is doing extremely well for himself as well. So I can definitely get more specific on that, but that's just the one thing I would come back to is if you are selling a very complex product, there is just a baseline level of requirement. And usually a couple years of experience that you need that you just can't get a few no disrespect, but like, I'm trying to transition from being a realtor. Just a big air, maybe you said this, but yeah, so would you explain or share your experience with that moment, happy new ease? This is a CSI YouTube rights. Yeah, that's the main. So that part is who will become the tick in the box. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to get to the question and also ties into your point earlier of like what I call the sunk cost fallacy if you guys are familiar with that as well. It's very real thing. It's very scary to spend a lot of time getting an engineering degree and then do something else. One thing I would say is the first, I'm going to get to your question, but I feel like this is good context. I think people underestimate the first two to three years of your career. I would say to some extent, again, we're in a category of like, you have an engineering degree already. If you have a lot of options more than I think you would be, you would really realize. And let's say you did sales for a year and a half and you didn't like it, but you kept up on technology on nights and weekends. It wouldn't be that difficult if you landed as an SCR at Oracle and said, hey, I want to go the engineering path. There's a way you could make that happen. Again, I don't know if you're studying CS or different engineering, but just a simple example. My progression was generally the following. I worked at a really large Fortune 1000 engineering company and I very quickly realized that the large corporate environment, I was stoked. I was like, this is like on paper, materially one of the better jobs for Auburn felt really good about it. I get there for six months and it's just like, I can do the job. I don't really have motivation to go above and beyond. And even from my own athletic career, it's like all respect to engineers. I would go home for the weekend and I would want to exercise or train or something in that nature. And I would get back and then all of my peers are like, yeah, I got the new Raspberry Pi and I created a home security system with it. I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be the best engineer. It's just not going to happen. So that's like one realization I had. I would say, yeah, I did two years there. I had a performance review that was just like, what, I don't even care about these metrics. That's a super long story short. And then I went to a small company and that was just, that was kind of the straw that broke, Campbell's back. 60 to 80 hour weeks. I actually installed the antenna system in Mercedes-Benz, the Atlanta Falcon Stadium. It was doing a lot of testing there. I had to go there every day. Super long story short, I was also playing with Team USA still. So there was a week where we had a tournament in Mexico. I had to go into the stadium at 6. I left it to, I drove to Auburn to practice two hours and came back. I did that all week. And then Friday, I went in at 6am, worked, went straight to the Atlanta airport, flew to Mexico City for a tournament, and came back on Sunday and worked because I had already used my PTO. And I was like, I'm done. And not only because that was like a lot, but specifically with engineering, they were like, oh yeah, it's going to be a 40 hour week. And then we would get on site. And every single day, it's like, for two months now, I realized I've just signed myself up for 12 to 14 hour days. And I was done. I can work that hard, don't get me wrong. But not getting paid for that, as competitive as I am, was like a non-starter. I just had no motivation to keep doing it. So hopefully that answers your question. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I was really good. Yeah, we're going to have to cut that part. Yeah. Just let me know your hourly rate. Yeah. Yeah. So how about you guys? Was that-- did you-- Yeah, except I did it for 25 years that way. Yeah. I figured out that moment. Yeah. But yeah, very similar. And I worked at an interior company, but I'm actually not an engineer. Nice. Yeah. Awesome. That story. I bet that everything had been rising. Yeah. But I was not an engineer. Like I said, I worked with an engineer, but I will say this. After being in sales and then crossing over and being in a marketing job, I distinctly remember saying, why does anybody do sales? I also hate like you get your salary, and then you get a commission check. So you get like two big chunks of money every month. And I then I go to marketing, and it just straights out. And I'm like, wait, what? Yeah. Why did I make this change? How are you getting a bonus? I'm like, once a year. Yeah. That much money. So compared to making the money in sales, it was a world of difference. And my competitiveness and the fact that it could be that I made of it, the harder I worked, the more money I made. And just the endless challenge, I did not want days that all looked the same. I wanted it to always be changing and dynamic. And those are the things that I love to about sales. Absolutely. Well said. Yeah. And I would say for those of you especially that want to be entrepreneurial, again, the engineering foundation is great. I would not change that at all. But I will tell you, we can sulk for AI companies that are backed by like A16z and other things. And they're like one of our most prominent ones right now is completely disrupting like a manual year-long process and health care and doing it in one week. And there are definitely nuances. There's definitely a lot that goes into it. But sales in particular when you're selling business to business, your ability to uncover and quantify real challenges, problems, short or pitfalls of things they're doing today. That is a real skill that a lot of people, especially that are super technical, do not have. So if you have both, it's certainly an advantage. But I will tell you, even though AI is disrupting everything, you see cursor grew to 100 million in like eight months or whatever it was. The average AI company still has to run a very complex sales cycle. And your ability to sell that effectively is still I think an even more demand today if you are highly specialized and have the technical aptitude to understand that. So yeah. I know how we doing. OK. Yeah, I'll just keep it Q&A. Because I feel like I'll be honest. There's videos on the channel that walk through this. So we can just Q&A it. Yeah. So what comes with it, actually? All right. Sorry. I was going behind-- sorry. Yeah. I'll go to you next. Yeah. My back. Yeah. So I know you already touched on it kind of like you were saying, I'm a finance marketing major. And I'm doing like the sales stuff with correct there. So you already touched on like, if you're not an engineering major, it's going to be basically impossible. But so like, this past summer, I did an internship with like an accounting firm. And I was doing like audit and tax. And we actually presented to the firm two or three different AI software. One being like mind-bridge AI. If you ever heard of that, it basically looks for misjudgment in the auditing. I guess you could say. So I guess from like a bent head standpoint, do you think like-- I know in the finance industry, I don't really know if you know this stuff or not. But the finance industry, there's like, you have the fundamental analysis. And then there's like quantitative analysis. Big finger right now. With like the quants, they're hiring all software engineers and mass physics, those people. But then the fundamentalists are hiring like your typical finance bro or whatever. But so if I was mind-bridge for say, and I was trying to work with them, since when they come to a company like the accounting firm, they're talking to them and selling them their products like an account. You should know I'm saying something. No, totally. You should know I'd be able to get a job for a company like that without having that software back. 100%. Yeah, yeah. It depends. So SDR or sales engineer? So I'm sitting more like SDR. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to-- and if I didn't make that clear, the SDR role is generally open-- I'm not going to say to anyone. But like if you demonstrate the skills and you reach out and have very effective outreach, they're open to any background, more or less. Like even people without degrees to some extent. Now it's not to say or trivialize that job. It's very difficult. But really, like that is a big thing that would stand out if you're applying to that company, as you mentioned, Stripe, Ramp, Brex, like all the Fintech companies that are huge right now, plads, and other one. Yeah, absolutely. They would love that background. Because you understand at a pretty good level what the end user is thinking about, what their challenges are, how they would even use a product like that in the first place. And that's very important when you're actually able-- like you don't have to know the ends and outs of the product. But you have to understand what they do today and be able to communicate succinctly why they would benefit from using that. Among many other things you would have to do. So yeah. [INAUDIBLE] It's more important to be able to communicate the person you're selling to the same linko and language than-- Yeah. --actually understanding it. Yeah. Being the person actually engineered the product. Yeah. And like many engineers, again, not that you have to have an engineering background, but let's take cloud infrastructure or language models or machine learning. A lot of engineers who do that for three to five years and then go on to sell do really well because they can have more involved conversations with that persona. So the takeaway I would say for you is if you like finance and you want to be in more of a sales role, specifically target Fintech companies because they're going to love your accounting background. Because even compared to some of the engineering students here, nothing against it. But you'll have even more in-depth knowledge of where that solution actually fits, why it's valuable, the types of problems it solves, who it solves it for, why it's important to the business, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah. Yeah. And then yeah, we'll go to-- Yeah. So when it comes to the actual interview process, how do you go about differentiating yourself from other candidates that's pretty long-time question? How much time do we have? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, first of all, from the outreach, little things today I would say too is like-- I'm not going to be like an old head talking about like Gen Z or something. But I genuinely think like a lot of young people today do not do simple things like follow up emails after every round, like genuinely. And even like-- this sounds basic, but you would be amazed at how many people reach out to me and are using like text-- like text message language to ask me questions. Immediate turn off. Then as you go throughout the process, I think it's really-- I mean, man, I don't know how much time we have. I'll try and keep it like super short. But really, it's like there's a couple of different things. Like researching the product, obviously. I would say networking, a little thing to get you an extra notch, is don't do this, like look at me, I'm a good student, like good job, like teacher's pet kind of thing. But if you weave naturally into your conversation like, hey, yeah, this is really great. I actually reached out to Sarah, who's on the team in Austin already, or I reached out to Steven, who's on the team in Dallas. And he's telling me he loved it. And like told me this, those are like little ways you can do it. I can definitely-- like I have a million things to unmind, but-- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, yeah. So those are a couple of things that come to mind. Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] This is a generic question, especially just interviews, especially interviews, and competitive market, and kind of comedy. What do you think of doing follow-up hourly strategy for emails is 24 or 48, 24 hour model? Great question. What do you think is the best kind of framework to use there? Yeah, so-- I do, but I don't like spamming that. Totally, totally. No, this is a great question. I just want to restate it for everyone in the room here. So the question is, we've talked about doing outreach. We've talked about messaging and co-alling managers, to which frequency should you do that. So we actually partner with a company. It's called a lease AI. You can look them up. And that manager specifically told me while it is annoying to get blown up, it usually takes people that are applying to that job because it's a very hot startup right now. They just raised 250 million. It's the person that reaches out three to four times respectfully, like you said, and runs kind of like a full sequence on them that actually gets noticed. So typically, if I'm thinking about this, let's just use Monday as a very simple example. I wake up Monday, at lease.ai has a job opening. I'm going to apply to the job. I'm going to immediately send LinkedIn outreach to the recruiter, to the sales manager, and also an SDR. And try to-- the SDR, like that works as an SDR. I'm just going to try and pick their brains, set up a coffee chat to learn more about it. And then the manager and recruiter, I'm going to send a message that is basically asking to interview. That afternoon, I'm going to call them. Both every single one of them, maybe not the SDR, but the recruiter and the hiring manager. Even if you don't get them, leave a voicemail. I'm gonna wait till Wednesday, and then I'm gonna follow up on every single one of those messages if I haven't heard anything. And I would call call the recruiter and manager again. And then same thing Friday as well. I usually like to space it like one business day off. And then Friday I'm gonna do the same thing, usually emailing morning call in the evening, or afternoon. 'Cause little tip at least I find, especially as you go up higher and higher with managers. People with kids, especially that like in three that three to five p.m. window, an unknown number might be like a teacher because their kid got into tension. So I find like that three to five p.m. window in their local time zone is like a pretty good time where they're more likely to pick up than not. So yeah. - Sorry, yeah. - Oh, yeah. - Please, that can be our last question for the whole group. If you guys have any more questions, please feel free to stay after that question. We'd like to conclude the slides. - Of course. - I was gonna say as, I'm a mechanical engineer, I didn't know much about sales engineering until this past summer 'cause of Rudge introduced me to it. And what would you say, like something niche, like skill, I should learn, differentiate myself from other engineers, like one client for a sales engineering job? - I honestly, I don't wanna beat this and just sound like it's this simple because it's not. But every single engineer in your position is asking that same question and they're thinking about it from a technical perspective. What skill, what search should I get? What thing should I understand that the average engineer doesn't? And if you wanna be a sales engineer, in my opinion, your ability to actually do a little bit of outreach. And then also, I would say, so that's like one, and we've talked about that a lot, so I don't need to reiterate that. But when you actually get into these conversations and you're actually interviewing, it's not about showing your technical prowess so much as it is showing your understanding of engineering thinking to uncover problems. So instead of saying, hey, this product does this and it helps engineers do this thing. When you're actually interviewing with someone, it's like, hey, I would love to understand how you're doing that today. Then there's like 10 follow up questions you will have based on that to even understand what they do to then be able to use your technical knowledge to fill in the gaps of where their inadequacies are, et cetera, et cetera. Does that make sense? That's like a high level analogy. But I would just, I would answer your question by saying, can trust that to every other engineering student right now. Think, what do I need to know technically? And it's diminishing returns at some point. Focus more on the business mindset. What questions do you ask to uncover value to a business that you can then layer on the technology to solve? So yeah. All right, we're going to give it up for Eric. [APPLAUSE] I think we'll see how much you're being with us today. Yeah, thanks for the invite, guys. Thank you so much for being here. I have to travel from Raleigh. Yeah, yes. I'm going to appreciate your time. A special thanks to the CF, the Association of Engineering, or being here with us, we've got a couple of members that I know of. But any other members, thank you. We've been here a time and a few years. Well, I'm here because that was very insightful for a lot of us, and not just like text sales, but overall, any engineering, roller, any job that they were great insights. Our next event will be a social event on November 18. It will be at Steelhead's Brewing. And we will be sending you guys the adverse and sign and more commission of the group meeting. Bye. Next slide. Now it's pretty much it. Once again, please give it a round of applause for Eric. [APPLAUSE] If you're walking a little late, please go out to the attendance forum and please show me your green cabin. I have a chance to join you yet. We may have one more professional events after the social event, but we will be updating everything. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]