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Bad experiences with Direct Sales?

I am trying to move from Sales to Product Management does anyone have any similar experiences to share?

  • Answer:

    I have twice moved from Sales to Product, each time starting out as a Sales Engineer (late night rambly story https://productman.quora.com/productman-origin-story. There is no straight line as far as I can tell, but here are some general tips: Whatever you are doing now, kill it I cannot stress this enough, if you want a new job, you have to first be awesome at your current one. Learn what your PM team cares about Become a field evangelist for the Product's point of view. We definitely notice those things. Provide meaningful, respectful input from the field Too many Sales organizations approach Product like they are out of touch with the "real world" (meaning: whatever feature the last customer they met with asked them for). Field input is super valuable, but it has to be put in context. "Customer X asked for this feature, it seems like this is the problem they are trying to solve. Is there some other way we might solve it for them?" Figure out your unique value The first time I moved into PM from Sales, the PM team was heavily weighted with former Engineers. It was a very technical product, so any PM would still need to know databases and code, but they wanted to balance the Engineering mindset with someone a little more Sales-y. The second time, Yammer was looking for people who understood integrations. From that first PM job and a few years in government contracting, I know how to make two wildly different software systems play nicely. Be clear with your intention Don't be pushy about it, but let the PM team know that is an avenue you are interested in exploring. Moving trusted people around an organization and training them is almost always safer than hiring an outsider. If you are doing well at your current job, they should see you as a viable candidate.

Drew Dillon at Quora Visit the source

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is right on. A few things I would amplify around "Provide meaningful, respectful input from the field" are: Don't specify the solution (e.g. "we have to add a button that does x") Do understand the problem (e.g. "customers x, y and z want to buy more but won't because it takes too much extra effort to scale to that size") Understand what problems are on/off path strategically. You have to say no to some.

Lindsey Smith

I made that move last year, and have realized couple of things: 1. Things move very slowly in Product Management as compared to sales. There is no Instant Karma. 2. You have to be very through and methodical. That is something I struggle with daily. 3. Sales people will ALWAYS hate you. You can try but that's not going to happen, might as well give up on that. 4. The buck stops at you.

Shashwat Nath

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