The Tech Sales Job Market Is Growing
Your grandparents call you on FaceTime, everything’s somewhere up in The Cloud, and soon you’ll be able to live your whole life in Virtual Reality.
It’s no secret by now—tech is booming!
In public markets (at the time of writing in early 2020), the five biggest stocks (by market cap) in the S&P 500 are all tech companies (Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook).
In private markets, “over $1.5 trillion was invested in venture capital deals, worldwide between 2010 and 2019,” according to the Crunchbase 2019 Global VC Report.
“In 2019 alone, roughly $294.8 billion was invested in nearly 32,800 deals across the venture spectrum.”
And this doesn’t just apply to tech behemoths (like Microsoft and Apple) and VC-backed tech startups. Like we’ve been hearing a lot lately, “Every company is now a tech company.”
According to KPMG’s Venture Pulse Q4 2019,
“Companies across every sector are seeing a need for digital transformation, are looking to diversify their business model, and are looking to obtain the learnings offered by different startups as a mechanism to drive their own capabilities forward. Corporate VC investment is expected to continue across a number of areas … ”
Increased investment leads to job growth.
Increased investment leads to company growth, and company growth leads to job growth.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
“Employment of computer and information technology occupations is projected to grow 12 percent from 2018 to 2028, much faster than the average for all occupations. These occupations are projected to add about 546,200 new jobs. Demand for these workers will stem from greater emphasis on cloud computing, the collection and storage of big data, and information security.”
But how does sales fit into all this?
Only engineers and coders work at tech companies, right? Wrong.
Let’s look at growth in the labor market for tech sales more specifically.
In their Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics splits tech salespeople into two different sections:
- Technology
- Sales
In the Technology section of the Handbook there are Computer Support Specialists who “provide help and advice to computer users and organizations.”
Here are the stats for the Computer Support Specialist occupation:
- Employment projected to grow 10% from 2018 to 2028.
- Median annual wage of $62,770 (in 2018).
“More support services will be needed as organizations upgrade their computer equipment and software.”
In the Sales section of the Handbook there are Sales Engineers who “sell complex scientific and technological products or services to businesses.”
Here are the stats for the Sales Engineer occupation:
- Employment is projected to grow 6% from 2018 to 2028 for Sales Engineers.
- Median annual wage of $101,420 (in 2018).
“As a wider range of technologically sophisticated products comes on the market, sales engineers will be in demand to sell these products and services related to these products.”
P.S. Customer service and customer success would likely fall into the Computer Support Specialists category, while account executives (a.k.a. “closers”) would fall into the Sales Engineers category.
This would explain why the median annual wage is higher for sales engineers.
So we know that tech sales is a growing job market in the U.S. on the national level. But what about on the individual company level?
The top tech companies hire tens of thousands of salespeople.
Let’s take a look at the number of salespeople employed by the biggest tech companies.
According to LinkedIn data (gathered in April 2020):
- Amazon employs 26,599 salespeople (8% of total headcount)
- Apple employs 17,855 salespeople (11% of total headcount)
- Google employs 10,138 salespeople (6% of total headcount)
Some of the other companies mentioned in the table below have even larger sales forces:
- Oracle employs even more salespeople than Amazon, despite being half the size.
- 45% of Yelp’s total headcount is in sales.
- And Salesforce, well, it’s Salesforce.
| Company | # of salespeople | % of total headcount |
| Oracle | 26,139 | 16% |
| Amazon | 26,599 | 8% |
| Apple | 17,885 | 11% |
| 10,138 | 6% | |
| Salesforce | 9,516 | 23% |
| 3,905 | 19% | |
| Yelp | 3,758 | 45% |
| Adobe | 2,672 | 11% |
| Box | 550 | 19% |
| 513 | 16% |
Source: LinkedIn Insights, April 2020.
And the tech sales job market is still growing!
The BLS projects 6-10% growth in tech sales positions from 2018 to 2028, but that estimate may prove to be conservative if the tech sector as a whole outpaces its expected growth.
If that’s not enough to get you excited, here are two trends reported by Betts Recruiting that suggest now is the perfect time to be starting your career in tech sales.
1. More pay
“Junior industry changers in sales are getting the same OTE as industry-experienced professionals. In some cases, it’s even a little higher.”
2. More promotions:
“Similarly, we’re seeing a continuation of the trend of promoting and hiring into senior roles with less and less experience.”
Being in an industry that more people want to get into is a recipe for rocket-ship career growth.