The first 12 years of my career I was a technician. I topped out my earning potential as a technician within the company. Short of a service manager moving on there was nowhere up for me to go. The owner let me switch over to sales rather than lose me to another career path.
When I was a technician I had no real clue what the job entailed other than that it had very good earning potential and that I could pretty much be my own boss. I remember being pissed when I'd turn in a lead and the sales rep would sell the machine and I would get little or nothing for my efforts while I thought he was making a killing off the deal. I remember seeing the sales reps come in late and leave early. I knew they were at chamber of commerce events having drinks on company time or out on the golf course during work hours and I had absolutely do idea why or how they got away with it. I had no idea the sales guys got cell phone calls from customers, and went out to solve problems for customers after hours and on the weekends. I had no idea they were up late at night typing proposals and preparing for appointments. I had no idea that they had sleepless nights worrying about a deal or how a major account threatened to leave because of a service or IT department goof up. I had no idea of the pressure involved when working deals that involved the future of the company, technician jobs and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line for the company.
The years since have had plenty of ups and downs that a technician would never understand. The sales job is filled with incredible highs and equally incredible lows. Winning big hard fought deals or making a huge commission for a day's work. On the flip side there is constant rejection, rude treatment because you're a "Sales Person", lost deals and economic downturns. When the real estate bubble burst and the economy went off a cliff in 2007/2008 I lost over 1/3rd of my accounts who either went out of business or damaged their credit so badly that I can't get them financing and my income crashed by about 60% in a single year. Equipment sales in this industry has never recovered from that downturn.
Reading the comments in this thread I see a lot of the same resentments and lack of understanding I had back when I was a tech. Think about it.
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