Senior Account Executive Sam Joyce shares his top tips for acquiring a sales role in the Salesforce ecosystem...
Describe your role at makepositive and how you got into Salesforce consulting?
I’m a Senior Account Executiove aligned to Hi-Tech, Healthcare and Life Sciences. I own the relationship between our clients from pre-sales right through to projects being completed and handed over to Managed Services. I ensure that we’re understanding exactly what a customer is trying to achieve, the pain points, the problems they’re trying to solve, and what a solution could look like delivered by makepositive. I’m also there as a point of escalation and continuity to ensure that what we’re delivering is in line with what we’re talking about from day one. It’s quite a comprehensive role, and I actually got into this line of work almost by accident. I ran my own business many years ago, and then I took a sales job at a company very similar to makepositive (called Tequila). They were looking for someone to run an Account Management role aligned to Salesforce SMB teams and, because of my experience owning a small business, they felt that I was a good fit. I enjoyed it and did quite well at it, but had never even seen Salesforce before starting at Tquila.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
It’s very varied. Sometimes I can be up against deadlines, trying to get RFPs or statements of work done and out the door. At that point in a sales cycle, there’s a lot of pressure, several people involved and a number of internal reviews just to make sure that what we put in front of customers is deliverable, robust and it’s not going to set us up for difficult conversations in delivery. These kind of crunch times come along maybe two or three times a month. Alongside that, I could be doing introductions or qualification calls with customers that I’ve never met before, engaging with Salesforce, attending or even presenting at webinars, or hosting dinners and events. So it’s a very varied role.
What is the most rewarding part of your role?
Winning projects and delivering them, and seeing the transformation in those businesses when projects go live. When there’s huge amounts of change going into the business, the sigh of relief afterwards is often quite cool. It’s quite exciting when a project really starts to ramp up and moves from design into build mode, and everyone in the team is pulling in the same direction towards an end goal.
What skills are the most important to perform well in this job?
Communication and being conscientious enough to always ensure that you deliver what you said you’re going to deliver. That often means working late or getting up early and getting out of your comfort zone. If we’ve made a commitment on behalf of makepositive, we need to ensure that we deliver that and not let our customers or colleagues down.
What advice would you give to someone looking to apply for a similar position?
Be prepared to be conscientious, work very hard and be very flexible and thorough.
What is your favourite thing about working at makepositive?
I think the people and the fact that everyone is pulling in the same direction towards an end goal, and everyone’s on the same page. No one says I’ve got to finish at 5pm every day because they’re not a team player. So I think the people and the culture.
Want to find out more about our current opportunities? Email [email protected] (UK) or [email protected] (India).
