Is Tech Sales A Good Career In 2024?
It seems like everyone is talking about tech sales, but honestly, is tech sales a good career?
If you’re reading this, you might have seen a TikTok influencer talking about how you can make a bajillion dollars in tech sales.
Or maybe you heard that sales is the best way to break into tech if you’re not a coder.
You might be a current college student, a recent grad, or a salesperson in a non-tech industry.
Or you just like to read career advice for fun. 🙂
That’s cool too.
My name’s Cole and I was in tech sales for six years.
Now I run Break Into Tech Sales and help other people get into tech sales.
My main goal for writing this post is to answer this question: is tech sales a good career?
Spoiler alert: the answer is yes. ✅
Here are nine reasons why tech sales is one of the best careers in the modern working world:
- No experience required
- Remote work options
- Tech is the biggest industry
- Tech continues to grow
- Job security
- Promotion opportunities
- Sales skills are transferrable
- Cash compensation
- Equity compensation
1. No experience required
When you think of a good career, what comes to mind?
Doctor, lawyer, banker.
But what’s the problem with those careers?
They require a half-decade (or more) of expensive schooling.
For tech sales, you don’t need a degree or experience to get started.
And you can make as much or more than those other careers.
How is that possible?
Anybody can learn to sell.
And a lot of tech companies don’t even require a college.
Tech sales is a meritocracy.
If you’re good, you’re good. Nobody cares about your where you went to school. If you can close deals, companies will happily cut you massive commission checks. It’s as simple as that.
2. Remote work options
During the pandemic, a lot of jobs went remote.
This was especially true for tech jobs.
Now we’re in this weird limbo phase where some companies are saying they’re fully remote forever and others are requiring their employees to return to the office.
But one thing is for certain: there are way more remote tech sales jobs now than a few years ago.
In their 2023 Compensation Guide, Betts Recruiting reported:
“AEs going remote has grown 30% YOY. A majority of AEs and SDRs in the Betts network now work remotely and signs point to this trend keeping momentum.”
And you’ll still be able to make as much money as if you were living in San Francisco or New York.
Don’t believe me?
Check out this data on tech sales compensation (broken down by city) for SDRs and AEs.
You’ll see that remote tech salespeople make just as much as tech salespeople in the big cities.
You can do tech sales from pretty much anywhere.
In the middle of Kansas.
On a beach in Mexico.
You just need good internet connection.
And you can travel whenever you want without having to take PTO. Just bring your laptop and headset with you.
Want to start applying to remote tech sales jobs? Watch this video …
3. Tech is the biggest industry
The Information Technology sector (a.k.a., the “tech” sector) is the biggest sector in the U.S. economy with a market cap of $13.99 trillion (as of July 6, 2023).
The largest American companies (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon) are all tech companies.
And the tech industry is still growing!
4. Tech continues to grow
As of July 6, 2023, the Dow Jones U.S. Technology Index (an index that measures the performance of U.S. stocks in the tech industry) is above 4,500.
On July 5, 2013, the same index was at 772.
Over the last 10 years, that’s an annualized growth rate of about 19.28%. Anybody familiar with stock investing knows that’s a crazy return on investment.
In the graph above, do you see the big dip in tech stocks from the beginning of 2022 to the beginning of 2023?
During that time, everyone was asking, “Is it still a good idea to get into tech?”
People were worried about the layoffs and tech stocks being down.
Some were even saying that tech might be done forever.
And what happened?
AI came along and tech stocks went back to soaring.
And that’s exactly why I’m so bullish on tech, both as an investor and for my career.
For the foreseeable future, tech will be the engine of economic growth.
Tim Mullaney summarizes it well in this CNBC article:
“Experts say the likely conclusion is that tech demand keeps growing — and that companies across the economy will continue to see technology change the nature of their businesses and workers see technology change their jobs.”
— Tim Mullaney, “Why technology spending will rise even as tech stocks tank and layoffs mount”
When choosing a career, you want to pick a growing industry because that’s how your career grows. Based on that logic, the tech industry is a no-brainer.
5. Job security
Let’s run through some different scenarios.
We already mentioned that the biggest companies in the world are tech companies.
So, if you work at one of these large tech companies, you’re at very little risk of losing your job for a reason like the company going bankrupt.
But you might get laid off if you work at a tech company that grew too fast.
Still, it’s not the end of the world.
Why?
Because, like we mentioned before, tech is the biggest sector in the U.S. economy.
There are plenty of other tech companies that will hire you.
Even if you go the riskiest possible route and work for a startup, and the startup fails, it’s very easy to find a job at another startup. Thousands of new startups are launched every day.
Tech employees are valuable and it’s very common for people to move jobs frequently.
Gone are the days of our grandparents when you stayed at the same company for 25 years.
If you’re able to at least break into the tech industry and get some experience, your skills will always be in demand, as long as the tech industry continues to do as well as it has been.
6. Promotion opportunities
We already touched on this briefly before.
Working in a fast-growing industry means lots of promotion opportunities.
Here’s why:
- When a tech company is growing quickly, they need to grow their headcount quickly too.
- So the company usually has two options: promote existing employees or hire someone from outside the company.
- And most companies tend to opt for the former because it’s expensive to find and train new employees.
“We’re seeing a continuation of the trend of promoting and hiring into senior roles with less and less experience.”
— Betts Recruiting, 2020 Compensation Guide
7. Sales skills are transferrable
We’ve been talking a lot about tech. What about sales?
Here’s the beauty of being in sales: the business world will always need your skills, no matter what.
Let’s say you start your career in tech sales and then the unthinkable happens: the tech industry vanishes overnight.
Obviously, that would never happen, but let’s just pretend.
What would you do?
Easy.
Just switch to a high paying sales job in a different industry, like financial sales or pharmaceutical sales.
Tech salespeople are the best salespeople in the world.
Why?
Because tech salepeople are the highest paid salespeople in the world and money attracts talent.
Also, because tech salespeople use sales software that makes us way more productive and efficient.
And this is why companies in any other industry are more than happy to hire a salesperson who previously worked in tech whenever they get the chance.
8. Cash compensation
I bet you thought I was forgetting about the money.
Of course not!
Let’s be honest, the money is a big part of why everyone is so excited about tech sales.
But it’s not the only thing that makes tech sales a great career, which is why I like to mention the other stuff first.
But yes, you can make a lot of money in tech sales.
In the table below, we’ve included compensation data for tech sales job titles in San Francisco in 2022. You can find compensation data for other cities on the Betts Recruiting website here.
| Rank | Job Title | OTE in San Francisco (thousands) |
| 1 | CRO / VP of Sales | $340,000 – $520,000 |
| 2 | Sales Manager / Director of Sales | $240,000 – $400,000 |
| 3 | Enterprise Account Executive (5-10 Years) | $240,000 – $400,000 |
| 4 | Account Executive (3-5 Years) | $180,000 – $250,000 |
| 5 | SDR Manager | $170,000 – $210,000 |
| 6 | Account Executive (0-3 Years) | $150,000 – $220,000 |
| 7 | Sales Engineer | $150,000 – $200,000 |
| 8 | Sales Operations | $110,000 – $220,000 |
| 9 | SDR (6+ Months) | $80,000 – $100,000 |
| 10 | SDR (Recent Grad) | $75,000 – $90,000 |
9. Equity compensation
Your cash compensation in tech sales includes your base salary and your commissions.
We haven’t even included equity yet.
Equity (a.k.a., stock) is ownerhship in a company.
It’s very common in tech sales to get equity as part of your job offer.
If the company does well, your equity will increase in value.
When you hear about people getting extremely wealthy in tech, it’s almost always because of their equity, not their salary.
Is tech sales hard to get into?
At this point, you’re probably wondering: what’s the catch?
If tech sales is such a good career, why isn’t everyone doing it?
I talk to a lot of people who are trying to get into tech sales and many of them struggle to land their first entry-level role.
Getting a tech sales job isn’t easy.
Just because many entry-level tech sales roles don’t require a college degree or experience, that doesn’t mean just anybody can waltz into a tech sales career.
At this point, it’s well known that tech sales is a good career, which means there are a lot of applicants.
And tech companies have an extensive interview process to make sure they’re getting the best salespeople to join their team.
Through my work with Break Into Tech Sales, I’ve noticed these are some of the most common reasons why people struggle to break into tech sales:
- Not sending out enough applications
- Not applying to the right tech sales job postings
- Not applying to the right tech companies
- Not sending direct messages to recruiters
- LinkedIn profile needs to be improved
- Resume needs to be improved
- Written communication needs to be improved
- Interview skills need to be improved
How to get into tech sales
If you’re trying to break into tech sales, here are a couple of options:
1. Try to get a tech sales job on your own
If you don’t have to pay for a course or a bootcamp, then don’t.
Try to break in on your own without spending any money.
Go to LinkedIn, search for entry-level tech sales job titles (SDR, BDR, and ADR), and send out as many applications as you possibly can.
For some, that’s enough to get a few offers.
If you need help, watch this video:
2. Enroll in our online course on Udemy
After working in tech sales for six years, successfully applying to and getting multiple tech sales offers 3x, interviewing and hiring tech salespeople, and coaching tech salespeople through Break Into Tech Sales, I took everything I learned and put it all into a 3.5-hour video course.
Here’s a link to enroll in the course.
If you truly can’t afford it, just send me a message on LinkedIn and I can give you free access.
Conclusion
At the beginning I said I would answer this question: is tech sales a good career?
If you’ve been paying attention, hopefully you can see by now why it’s my strong personal belief that, yes, tech sales is a good career.
Feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn if you have any more questions.
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