Sales is a bustling career field with plenty to do and learn. As a result, it can become easy to get buried in the day to day – and miss sight of the big picture that is your sales career.
Spring’s warmer weather, sunnier days, and blooming plant life offer a great backdrop for revisiting your sales career plans. Here’s where to start.
Where are you in your career?
Take a look at your current role, as well as the steps you’ve taken to reach this position. Ask yourself questions like:
- How long have you been here?
- Is the work still challenging?
- Can you identify three to five things you still want to learn and master in this position?
By reviewing your current position, you can more easily set goals for yourself in the coming year, whether those goals are to learn more in your current role or to seek a new position.
What paths are open to you?
Sales is a big umbrella. Within a sales career are many different career paths and options. Many sales professionals who start in one area of sales move to other areas throughout their careers.
Once you take stock of your current role, look for potential roles you could step into. For each possibility, list what you’d need to learn in order to take on that new role. Don’t hesitate to explore options outside your current employer, as well as options in-house.
Who can help you move forward?
With a clear view of your current career position and a handful of options before you, start thinking about which options sound the most promising. For each one, list one to three people who could help you make the transition.
These may be people you already work with, like your current supervisor or colleagues. They may be people in adjacent departments who can help you start to learn the basic skills you’d need for a move into a new role. Or they may be people outside your workplace altogether, like colleagues who work at a different company or a recruiter who can provide a clearer view of opportunities in the industry.
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