D1 athletes are the best at sales... Or are they?

Years ago, I was playing rugby at university when I was approached by an older gentleman at an event after the game. 

He told me:

“I saw you playing, you should come work for us.” 

I responded, 

“Really? Why?”

He said, 

“you play rugby, so you’re qualified.” 

🤯

At the time, I thought it was a bit of a silly comment, but I didn’t give it a lot of thought.

But many years later, after being a sales leader in multiple companies, it’s apparent that many people have this point of view when they are looking to hire sales staff. 

It’s only recently I heard:

“I only hire D1 college athletes as grads.” 

Crazy. 

At the moment, I am seeing a massive influx of people trying to transition into sales from other careers. 

Many of these people have previous careers in teaching, military, law enforcement, nursing, healthcare etc. All of which have direct correlations to sales.

But these great candidates are still finding it difficult. 

If you’re wondering why you’re not getting any call backs from your applications, I have a strategy and a solution for you. 

It follows:

Develop yourself a system

First, pick your top 5 skills. For example:

• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Storytelling
• Negotiation
• Presentation

Now pick out five common skills in the jobs that you’re applying for, they may be:

• Skill 1
• Skill 2
• Skill 3
• Skill 4
• Skill 5

Now, find similarities between YOUR skills and the skills in the job descriptions, it’ll look somewhat like this:

• Coaching relates to (skill 1) due to (reason) and will help me in this role because of (reason)
• Mentoring relates to (skill 2) due to (reason) and will help me in this role because of (reason)
• Storytelling relates to (skill 3) due to (reason) and will help me in this role because of (reason)
• Negotiation relates to (skill 4) due to (reason) and will help me in this role because of (reason)
• Presentation relates to (skill 5) due to (reason) and will help me in this role because of (reason)

A commonality between your skills and the skills that are required for the role often need to be spelt out.

The above works. 

Make it clear, make it easier to hire you. 

If you're still struggling to find YOUR role within SaaS sales, we can help. We'd recommend you join the Second Career in SaaS Sales course. You can look into it here.