What should I do now if I am not ready to start the next Google? (PART 1)

I think about this question every morning when I wake up. Having met with many professors, VCs, serial entrepreneurs, and advisers to help me figure this out, I wanted to pass along the cliff notes:

There are 3 common positions that one can take after their MBA to train them for their own internet startup:

1) Sales
2) Product Management
3) Business Development

Today, we’ll look at sales:



1) SALES JOBS:
- % of HBS Graduates in 2009: <1%
- Avg HBS Sales Salary: $104K/year (I’m assuming this includes base + performance bonus)

This is probably the most important skill one must acquire before becoming an entrepreneur; part of your job is to always be selling to your team, investors, customers, partners, etc. In addition, sales professionals are a key part of any organization since they bring in the revenue; this is critical to any startup’s survival and experience here counts. Plus, have you ever talked to someone who is good at sales? I met with Joe Lassiter last week (a legendary HBS professor who teaches entrepreneurial finance and used to work as head of sales) and it’s amazing to witness the power someone with his skill set can have in influencing others – it’s simply an art. Lastly, it’s a skill set that is never wasted, since it’s easily transferable to anything you both personal and professional.

My initial impression was to fully focus my time on finding a Sales Job. I mean, why not? You go work somewhere for a couple of years and have them teach you everything you need to know about the art of selling. Sound simple enough? Take a look at the advice I received:

- STAY AWAY FROM SMALL COMPANIES: In a small company, you will not receive formal training and will have to learn on your own. This can be dangerous, since it may take you a while to come up to speed and could cause you to learn “bad habits”. Therefore, any companies with less than 150 employees should be off the table (unless you can find a fantastic mentor that is willing to teach you everything!).
- STAY AWAY FROM LARGE COMPANIES: Large companies are also off the table since no rising rock star performers work at large companies. By definition, a large company is very inefficient (the opposite of a startup) and decaying (as Joe Lassiter put it), also causing you to learn “bad habits”.
- STAY AWAY FROM COMPANIES WITH COMPLEX PRODUCTS: Going to work at Oracle, SAP, or any other large tech company that sells large technology implementation projects is also a bad idea. You will need to spend a great deal of time learning the product and the sales cycle will be too long for you to get significant sales experience within only a couple of years.
- STAY AWAY FROM B-2-C COMPANIES: This is a no-brainer as B-2-C sales are either retail or door-to-door selling.

So what on earth is left? Possibly only a hand-full of cool companies that are medium sized and sell simple B-2-B products. Well, here’s where it starts getting even more complicated for the MBA folk. During my conversation with a VC from Advanced Technology Ventures last week, he mentioned that he was struggling with the same dilemma after his MBA. He pointed out that are 2 types of sales people out there: 1) Those who carry bags and 2) Those who smile & dial. If you want to be one of the guys who carries bags, you are heading for long-term sales careers and require the long training. If you’re looking to smile & dial, congratulations: you just spent 200K on an MBA for no reason. You’ll be making $50K + performance bonus sitting next to 23 year olds who just graduated college and not leveraging your degree for much. Lastly, if you’ve got enough of the entrepreneurial bug, you probably already have the basic sales skills you’d need to sell a project (assuming you’re passionate about it) to others – so you may already be “skilled enough”. Exhausting, isn’t it?

My conclusion: While sales skills are invaluable to an entrepreneur, I am starting to believe that a sales position (one that gives you the adequate training; probably where you smile & dial) may not be the best role for a recent MBA graduate.

THOUGHTS?

On to PRODUCT MANAGER!