My Career Story
(so far...)
My first sales role out of college was rough...
Employment Length: 12 mos.
At Comcast Business, I was a door to door salesman selling internet, phone lines and tv to small mom & pop shops in the farmlands of Pennsylvania.
Every morning, I'd drive 75 minutes into my territory, park my car and "door knock" 25-35 businesses every day.
I think I set a Comcast Business record in terms of consistency. I went a perfect 12/12...in missing my quota.
It was a brutal & poor start to my sales career (I made $37K that year), but I learned A LOT of lessons which help me perform today.
Then Formcraft came calling...
Employment Length: 1 yr 9 mos (😔 furloughed due to COVID)
Making $37K a year at Comcast Business wasn't helping me move out of my parents house to rent an apartment with my twin brother & 2 buddies in Philly.
Luckily, I was featured on Stu Heinecke's sales podcast. Stu is the godfather of contact marketing & the author of the book, "How to Get a Meeting with Anyone."
At CB, I read his book & started implementing some of his strategies to set meetings with prospects.
They worked! Only problem is I couldn't close to save my life.
Regardless, one of the managing directors at Formcraft heard me on the podcast and recruited me to be their first SDR.
Formcraft designs and builds office spaces in the Greater Philadelphia area.
A typical day for me was 75-100 cold calls, lots of cold emails, in person drop ins, networking events...and hopefully a booked meeting or two!
I also hosted a video series called "The Corner Office" where I would interview some of the top CEOs in the Philly area (it was a good way for our executives to meet other executives for pitch opportunities).
This job was a ton of fun.
Unfortunately, I was furloughed when COVID hit (no one is redesigning an office during a nationwide lockdown).
6 months of unemployment led me to Watchdog Real Estate Project Management...
Employment Length: 12 mos.
After the furlough from Formcraft, I was out of work for a long 6 months.
As you can imagine, it was a difficult job market and I wasn't as savy as I am now in terms of landing interviews at target companies.
I finally got a call from the President at Watchdog offering me a role...he knew me from the real estate networking community in Philly.
I needed to pay rent and I accepted the offer immediately.
A typical day for me was 150-200 manual cold calls...I was an SDR for the project managers who would pitch and close the business for projects.
As you can imagine, making 200 cold calls daily gets old fast and can be soul crushing.
One night during my train ride home, I stumbled on a YouTube video of this guy talking about his tech sales job and how much money he was making.
He was 3 years younger than me and making triple what I was making.
I decided that night that I needed to find a way into tech sales.
Nothing against Watchdog. The leadership and benefits were the best I have experienced in my career...there was just no spot for me to grow into...I'd still be making 200 calls today if I was still there.
The BEST job I've ever had
Employment Length: 3 yr 9 mos.
I still don't know how it happened, but I blindly applied to an account executive role at IBM and received a phone call from a recruiter who put me into the process.
5 interviews later and I finally broke into tech sales.
Safe to say I was nervous and had a lot of imposter syndrome as I never ran a tech discovery call or demo.
Luckily, my direct manager & sales engineer were INCREDIBLE.
After 6 months of consistent practice & coaching, I was off to the races.
To see how I performed in my role to quota and against my peers, you can click on the "Past Performance" tab at the top.
You can also watch a few of my discovery calls & demos from my time at IBM by clicking the "Watch Me Sell" tab.
This was the BEST job I ever had.
I had ZERO intentions to leave...if it was my choice, I'd still be working there selling MaaS360.
Sadly, IBM decided to close their Philly office.
I had the opportunity to retain my role if I moved to Austin, Texas.
Austin doesn't have cheesesteaks, so I declined.
In all seriousness, I'll never move for a job...no matter how great it is.
My friends & family are in Philly. This is where I belong.
My time on Titanic...
During the end of my time at IBM, we became an OEM partner with Zimperium, a mobile threat detection & application protection company.
I had the opportunity to sell Zimperium to a few of my install accounts at IBM.
The technology is "fantastic".
As we were getting enabled on Zimperium's product, I got to know their VP of Sales, Mark Tilkes.
When I lost my role at IBM, Mark called and offered me a role to head up Enterprise accounts ($500M-$3B) on the East Coast.
After what I thought was a thorough evaluation process of the product, leadership, and market, I gladly accepted the offer.
Within 90 days, I knew I made a mistake and I was in trouble.
That's 100% of me and NOT Zimperium.
To learn in a bit more detail with the mistakes I made in my evaluation, the challenges thus far in my role, and why I am in the market for a new job, check out the video on my homepage.
I own the fact that I put myself on a sinking ship.
Lesson learned...won't happen again (fingers crossed).