The beginning of the year is a time for taking stock of the previous year and setting the stage for the year ahead. There will be plenty of account reviews, territory planning, and kickoffs over the next several weeks. It is also the time of year when sales professionals are either starting or looking to start a new job.
It is inevitable that folks will change jobs, especially in sales. While the Great Resignation will contribute to some of this, the nature of being in sales is that we want to find the most upside and maximize our opportunities. That is not to say we are entirely motivated by money, but ultimately that is a big driver for almost all the folks that stay in sales long term.
That was what led me to Siebel and later Oracle way back in the day. I was still pretty early in my career and was the youngest rep by at least a decade. So when I jumped from my previous company to Siebel, I doubled my salary. With commissions and bonuses, I did much better than that. Given that the company was in a dominant position, it was a guaranteed winner of a role as long as you did the work.
Money can only motivate you so far. This is not meant to bash Oracle, but from a corporate culture perspective, it was not a fit for me. I joined because the money and the potential was a deal I could not turn down. I was just starting a family, so money was very much on my mind, and so I indexed hard on how much I could make every year.
There was no doubt the money was good. The role also connected me with some of the key players and leaders in the telco industry. These IT and technology leaders were not just seeking better deals on software, they wanted insights and strategic vision. They wanted to tap into innovation and build for the future. Unfortunately, that was not in my purview for the role. At Oracle, the only thing that mattered were the licenses and maintenance fees.
I remember one conversation vividly with the CIO of the mobile division for my biggest customer. He wanted to know how my company could support a new model for mobile digital asset subscriptions and the management of the royalties of those assets. After several weeks, I pulled together several teams internally to present a roadmap for the CIO and his team. Then my management squashed the idea.
Over the next decade with the release of the iPhone and the growth of Android, mobile became the most important platform shift in a generation. Instead of being on the cutting edge, leading the charge into changing and molding the future shape of the industry, I was pushing contracts and shuffling papers on database and ERP agreements.
Since that time, my thinking has shifted on how I evaluate new roles. Money is important, but I also want to be part of the future. As the great Wayne Gretzky said, skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been. If you are focused only on the money, you are focused on the now, not on what is to come. Now I focus on opportunities with the biggest impact that are forging the next big wave of innovation.
Finding those big waves is not so easy. What is hot this year may not be hot next year. Especially in the technology industry, those cycles of hype and disillusionment can move quickly. Just looking over the past decade of Gartner Hype Cycle reports proves the point. How can you be sure you are finding the right wave to ride?
I attended the North American Bitcoin Conference this week in Miami to dive into an area that I had pretty much ignored the past decade. I shared some of my thoughts from the conference in my other newsletter, but it finally felt like the reality was overcoming the hype (despite the mania around NFT’s). If anyone is looking to make a big impact and earnings in this decade, one of the best bets is in the rise of web3 (which encompasses cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and NFT’s).
There are five factors I explore when looking at what bets to place on the future. These were the same things I looked at when listening to the talks and speaking with startups at the conference:
What is the leap to broad adoption? A lot of technologies seem cool like 3D printers. I looked at this space nearly a decade ago when the first sub-$1000 units were being sold to hobbyists. But would this be something broadly adopted in the home by less technically adept users that some were touting? The answer turned out to be no. While niche can be a good bet as well, the trends that change societies are the ones that societies at large can tap into.
How many dips has the trend had? The initial interest in a new technology is often mostly about hype because the user experience is god awful and the use cases are too narrow. These types of technologies will go through a number of boom-bust cycles until it finally hits on a use case with potential. We saw this with crypto, first with Bitcoin reaching $1000, then the rise and fall of ICO’s. It took NFT’s to truly establish crypto as a legitimate trend. A trend that survives the dips has a strong chance of sticking around for the long term.
Where is the smart money placing their bets? While not always definitive (there is a saying about following lemmings), if there are a ton of people that are paid to make big bets all converging on a particular trend, it is likely that trend has legs. When two of the biggest venture capital firms a16z and Sequoia both launched huge crypto focused funds, you could be certain that there is something to pay attention to.
Are you hearing about the trend outside of your circles? We tend to live our lives in the bubbles of our friends, families, and co-workers. This means our internal network has an outsized influence on our thinking and what we think is reality. When we start hearing of trends that break through our bubbles however, it probably means that this is something to pay attention to because there is value being created and perceptions being changed to adopt a new way of working or living.
How easy and accessible is it to learn more about the trend? Some trends seem like secret societies where outsiders are unwelcome or are so difficult to learn about that it just seems too daunting to start. That was in some ways what Bitcoin felt like to me a decade ago. Now it is very different with books, videos, conferences, and software to help you dive in and get started. There is a foundation of learning and people to learn from to enable you to dip your toes into the technology in a way that pulls you in deeper. That is not to say that it will not be hard or take time to gain real understanding. The point is that there are no barriers to learning.
For me, that big trend is in the growing adoption of NFT’s and tokenization of a broader tapestry of use cases beyond the initial use cases of digital arts. I am also looking closely at the new development stacks for software engineers building web3 apps. And of course, being at AWS, I am always interested in the platforms and infrastructure needed to support the shift to web3.
As you think about your next career jump, what is most important for you? It could be money, or career growth, or just something you are passionate about. If big ideas and the impact those ideas have in the world is what gets you most excited though, make sure you ask yourself the questions above so that you find yourself in the emerging trend, not the techie dead end.
Mark Birch, Founder of Enterprise Sales Forum
The Enterprise Sales Forum is a professional community championing the practice of sales through monthly sales talks at chapters globally. Our chapters provide an open, collaborative and diverse environment to share new ideas, network and learn actionable insights for professional sales development.