Should I Take a Ticket Sales Job? Should I Take an SDR Job In Tech?

Should I take a Ticket Sales or SDR job edition.

 

A common piece of advice when starting your career is to find what you love and get your foot in the door. There are a lot of examples - Jack Welch at GE, Erik Spoelstra of the HEAT, Bill Belichick of the Patriots, Barry Diller etc. Businesses and teams use these inspirational anomalies to recruit. 

 

I started in a Ticket Sales job and I've managed SDR's for 15 years. Three things I learned about taking a ticket sales/tech SDR job

 

1. If you don't want to sell for your career - not IN your career- FOR your career, do not take an SDR job. The most common mistake made. It is a sure fire way to failure. It's okay to not love sales or even to be good at it. 

 

2. Stay away from the Hunger Games. A common, and lazy, approach is to hire a large class of underpaid kids and promise the top few will get promoted. Add in the gossip, favoritism and nepotism, and it makes them death traps for careers.

 

3. Nothing matters more than reputation - both company and department. At many firms, SDRs are viewed as second rater citizens. They'll never tell you this in the interview, but it limits upward mobility