 It took me three months to do the course, and once I did, it all went very smoothly and got that offer letter in about four months since I started. What's happening guys? It's Shane here and in today's video I am going to be interviewing Ben. So Ben basically started off as a janitor and he wanted to get into a job where he had a lot more vertical growth because, you know, being a janitor you're probably not going to be able to make too much more if you stay in that for the rest of your life. So we wanted to get himself into an in-demand career where there would be a lot of vertical and horizontal growth opportunities. And this is when he discovered tech sales and he was able to get a job without any previous experience or a college degree. Now Ben's story is honestly really awesome and inspiring. He went from janitor to having a really promising career in tech sales and he was able to do it in a very short amount of time. So I really think you're going to love this one. Go ahead, gently tap that like button. Let's aim for 500 likes on this video and let's jump into it right now. Welcome back to the channel guys. Today I have a very special guest on the channel. Ben is with us. Ben is a sales development representative and he has one of the coolest stories I've heard. I'm actually really excited to have him share his story today. So thank you so much for coming on the channel Ben. Thanks for having me. All right, so let's get into this right away. Basically this is going to be about how you got into tech sales. So let's start at the very beginning before you even discovered tech sales. Just kind of let me know what your professional life was like and you know you can share as many details as you want but just kind of paint the picture of what your professional life was like right before you discovered tech sales. Sure. So right before I was in tech sales I was a janitor actually and before that I had well right when I got into high school I was trying to start businesses left and right. I think I've started about eight businesses. All of them have completely failed and eventually I recognized that it was because I had zero skills and zero capital and I was raising the bar like so high right I wanted to be a millionaire by yesterday and I got the opportunity to listen to things while I was working so I listened to a lot of self-help books and stuff like that and eventually I stumbled across tech sales probably through TikTok or something like that and it really it really shined like in my eyes because a light bulb went off in my head where I realized oh I'm not I'm not making any success in any of my business ventures because I have no skills or capital and tech sales allowed me to lower the bar for myself and develop a sales skill and actually build up capital to use and you know I guess being a not not an entitled child anymore. Got it and then just a few quick questions first of all how old were you at the time when you discovered tech sales? I was 24 years old. Got it and then the second question is did you ever go to college or did you ever like try to go to college and if not kind of explain what your thought process there was? Yeah so I definitely did try to go to college. I went for about two semesters two different colleges both of them were gen eds and when I took them there were a bunch of stuff that I'd already learned before and I was not learning anything that I wanted to learn and so I just figured you know this isn't for me. I can learn this somewhere else and not spend six years for a piece of paper that says that I learned it. Yeah when you're when they're charging like a thousand two thousand dollars per class it's like and then you're learning stuff you already learned in high school and you're forced to take those classes even though you don't want to take them. Yeah definitely pretty pretty frustrating and yeah one thing Troy actually told me about this this stat and that was in Switzerland college is actually free and only 20 to 25 percent of people choose to go to college whereas in the United States college costs on average about 80 thousand dollars and people go on average about 40 thousand dollars in debt and it takes like four to five years and yet 70 percent of people choose to go to college in the U.S. so we've got this really really weird cult psychology thing going on here where we think that college is the only way you can get educated which is just not true because there's many other countries out there where people get educated in many other ways whether it's you know learning online yeah this is the modern age or it's like an apprenticeship internship etc there's many different ways to get educated other than college college definitely has its place don't get me wrong but there are many situations and many different people who probably would be better served taking a different route to get into certain careers and sales development representative business development representative tech sales is one of those careers that I highly recommend to people who choose to not go to college or to people who did go to college but they didn't like it or they got a degree that's not really helping them out or they're in a career that they don't like and they want to transition into something but they don't have any experience so with that being said how did you discover tech sales walk me through that story yeah so I think like I said I think it was something to do with tiktok or social media there was a point where maybe it was like 20 I was trying to find jobs that didn't require college and I think I stumbled upon it then but then later on it was it was definitely tiktok I saw people working remotely from South America or something like that and a lot of them said they were in tech sales and then you have people who are like account executives and the enterprise level making quite a lot of money and I saw a couple of videos of them too and so that kind of sparked my interest in one tech sales and then two having a remote job and that that full package kind of came with course careers got it so you found course careers maybe through tiktok or google or blogs or something along those lines you decided to take the plunge and actually use course careers as a service what was the curriculum and course careers and everything like let me know about that yeah so at first they have you read three books how to influence people just like a total staple when it comes to this kind of stuff fanatical prospecting and spin selling which are also staples in sales but then they kind of go into different terms and vocabulary that's very often used and you go through different technologies that's used they're like hour long courses for a couple of technologies that you're going to see very commonly in the industry and then there's a level of practicing some of the things that you read about in some of the books and practicing the knowledge that you learned in the course later on throughout it you're also trying to build up your LinkedIn profile and getting used to interviewing questions and researching companies and stuff like that got it okay so how long did it take you to get a job from when you started the course to when you signed the offer letter or or actually I guess when you got your job offer because you might have gotten several job offers and then you decided to accept one later on yeah I uh I would say it was about four months it took me three months to do the course and then an extra month because my LinkedIn profile wasn't quite where it needed to be and I had to do some more interview prep before I was ready to reach out to companies and once I did it all went very smoothly and got that offer letter in about four months since I started so what is your current job like now compared to your past job yeah so my past job was like so it was just a janitor um nothing special there wasn't much thinking involved it was very laid back very easy job um but you know I mean the pay was nice I was still making more than any of my friends it was about 40 000 a year but uh now I you know I work from home which is great um I work for a company called Dunham Bradstreet which is a very big conglomerate they're involved in just about every business ever and uh it's really cool being a part of a huge company like that there's plenty of benefits which I've never had before and making more than double that now than my previous job all right so all right let's let's talk money hey listen if you're not comfortable telling me the exact numbers totally understand I don't want to be too nosy but if you're not comfortable telling me the exact numbers um maybe just kind let the audience know just ballpark what they could expect uh and kind of like an entry level job in tech sales yeah so I think a good expectation would be 55 to 60 000 a year um I make a 50k base with 30k commission so I make 80 a year as long as I hit quota and um I that's definitely realistic uh the thing is is that I'm in that higher paid position because I'm willing to do the the outbound and the outreach and uh and the calls and all that stuff to make sure that I can you know a higher value asset to the company but I think a very realistic goal would be 60 000 um you know and that's within four months of four or five months of starting the course so 60 000 is amazing um 80 000 is even better that's awesome congratulations and then by the way how long have you been working for Dunn and Bradstreet so this is still my first month um when I got my first job it was kind of strange they had kind of they canceled their internship program and then I actually worked with course careers for a month while I was transitioning to Dunn and Bradstreet and yeah I think that was your question oh got it so you actually did land an internship before you started with uh Dunn and Bradstreet yes okay got it got it okay awesome so that was that the internship that you landed at the the four month mark or was that uh earlier yeah four month okay gotcha gotcha makes sense yeah and to get an idea so within three months I've had three sdr jobs and um two of them were a 100 uh interview to job offer rate wow yeah and I would totally put all of that on just the interview prep that I was able to do with Troy the owner of course careers and some of the students that were in there and just how much effort I put into making sure I was good with the interviews there's a lot of careers out there where like the average percentage in terms of like how many resumes you send out to these companies versus how many job offers you get is something like one or two percent you know sometimes even less than that there's a lot of careers so when we're talking like you know 80 hundred percent for when you send your resume in I mean that just shows you how like that there's just a ridiculous amount of demand uh for these positions market sure yeah you mentioned that you started a lot of businesses and I was the same way I started so many businesses in high school and college I tried everything I had you know limited success here and there but nothing that you could really scale it basically would have just been a business that's like a job but I learned a lot from it so you know um definitely you know I'm happy that I did it but do you think the skills you're learning right now um in tech sales if you do decide to start a business in the future are going to help you out oh I mean undeniably I think sales in general gives you a confidence and the skill to take with you in any area of your life just talking with people interviewing you know getting a date I mean there's all kinds of applications for a sales skill um but actually like finding leads and understanding how to reach out to them and getting that first sale is just invaluable when it comes to a business and it's a skill and knowledge that I didn't have all right well hey Ben thank you so much for coming on the channel again and uh sharing your story really awesome how you were able to transition into a career that has just so much potential and you know the sky's the limit for you now and and I really think you're gonna do well in the career and later on if you want to start out a business I think you're gonna have a very good chance of being successful there as well so uh thank you so much again for coming on the channel thank you so much for having me Shane