The Ultimate Transition Guide From Post-Secondary Education To Tech Sales

Ah, post-secondary graduation. What a time! There’s nothing like that high of holding your degree in your hand… and the nervousness you feel about figuring out your next steps towards finding a career. You've heard of the tech industry before, but you haven't a clue on how to find a job in it.

What kinds of roles should you be looking for? What’s the best way in – and what’s the best way to set yourself up for a great career into the future? How can you put that new degree to good use?

Take It To Go!

You’ve likely heard of sales before, but here’s what you may not know: it’s an incredibly effective (and lucrative) entry point into the tech world. In fact, the tech industry is chock-full of job openings because salespeople are particularly in demand right now.

The only catch? There are serious gaps faced by new college and university grads in terms of on-the-job experience, sales knowledge, and effective training. And without prior sales experience, you’re either hearing no” on every job application or even worse, entering a new role with no clue how to do the work.

No one wants to start their career off on the wrong foot. And there’s good news: you don’t have to. Arming the next generation of salespeople with the skills and experience they need to enter tech sales is what Uvaro does best. Our 12-week Bootcamp is built for those who want to quickly learn the skills and are serious about landing a full-time career in sales.

(Yes, career – you could say we teach sales” but our grads prefer to think of it as starting careers!”)

We help our students close the experience, knowledge and training gaps through in-class and life-like learning, taught by experts with real sales experience and guest instructors who know the ins and outs of tech sales like no other because they’re selling in tech right now. And we aren’t talking about selling your grandparents’ technology – our course focuses on real tech products that are in use today.

So if you’re a recent grad wondering where to go next, read on for a breakdown of the most popular options for sellers to-be – and how you can gain the skills you need without wasting valuable time and money.

Sales: A Career Path Like No Other

If you think tech sales is all cold calls and pushy tactics in pursuit of that big commission cheque, think again – because for many, it’s a highly satisfying and rewarding career with opportunities galore and room to grow.

- A fast-track career path: A sales career in technology can advance from entry-level to sales pro as quickly as the technology itself. It only takes about six to nine months on the job to get up-to-speed – and within three years, management roles are well within reach.

- Endless opportunities: Looking to stay and grow within sales? Most sales teams have a wide range of roles, so you can keep perfecting your craft. But tech sales also opens doors in other parts of the company, as it’s one of the best ways to get to know a business and its customers.

- Okay, the pay is pretty great: While it shouldn’t be the only reason you get into a sales career, there’s no arguing with an entry-level average that hovers around $47,000 to $50,000 per year with many experienced salespeople reporting higher numbers, even into the six-figure range.

- Fuel your aspirations: Sales roles are perfect if you get excited about tackling important challenges, helping real people solve real problems, continuously learning new knowledge and skills, keeping up with cutting-edge technology, authentically connecting with others… you get the picture!

Uvaro fact: Many of our graduates have advanced in their sales careers after just six months of entering the field!

A Fit For Every Degree

We love sales because it’s not dependent on one specific set of skills – in fact, our grads show us every day that people from just about any background can achieve great things, as long as they have transferable skills! In other words, many pathways can lead to success.

• A finance degree teaches you how to analyze the numbers and understand your prospects’ budgetary hold-ups like no other degree can
• A business degree bestows a broad understanding of how your business – and your prospects’ businesses – run, allowing you to better position your product or service
• A law degree teaches invaluable skills like persuasion and negotiation, which are make-or-break tools in a sales rep’s arsenal
• A marketing degree equips you to uncover buyer motivation, lead generation, market research, consumer behavior, and more

• An education degree teaches you how others learn, making you a master at breaking down complex topics into easy-to-understand explanations
• A communications degree is a perfect set-up for building relationships via social media, email follow-ups, or pitch presentations.
• A computer science degree teaches you the ins and outs of technology, making you the perfect candidate to understand the products you sell at a deeper level
• Customer service or relations education arms you with all the skills you need to listen to prospects and solve their problems on the fly – even on their worst days

Opportunities, Ahoy!

The other great thing about tech sales? It’s got a bright future.

While many companies strive to cut costs by automating processes with increasingly capable AI, the sales process is one that still relies on human interaction. In fact, that kind of direct interaction influences B2B purchasing decisions more than any other factor, including references, websites, events and social media.

Technology is also a fast-growing sector, with global revenue expected to reach $5 trillion in 2021 – representing just over four percent growth over last year. Look forward to 2024, and that growth may look more like five percent as companies continue to digitize their businesses.

As demand grows, so must supply, which is why you’ll see so many tech companies like Appfolio, Netflix, Amazon and Etsy topping lists like Fortune’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies. And as those companies grow, so too do their sales teams – often at an equal, if not greater, scale.

In other words: your job will be safe from our robot overlords (for the foreseeable future, anyway).

Don’t just take our word for it though, catch the state of tech sales in the following major cities.

Going From Degree To First Sales Job

So it’s settled: tech sales is a great career. But how do you prepare for that career if you have a gap in experience, knowledge or training? Wasn’t your degree supposed to cover that? And now that you’re out of university or college, where’s all the career support?

Most colleges and universities offer career services, which can be helpful to varying degrees. Common services include things like skills tests, general resumé building and even some career advice. But very few – if any – are equipped to provide the kind of hands-on experience employers are looking for.

As a result, new graduates tend to turn to two places.

1 - Going back to school

If one degree didn’t do the trick, maybe another will,” you think. And we can’t blame you – for years, we’ve been told education was a sure-fire pathway to a better career with higher earnings.

But research shows the correlation between education levels and job performance is weak at best. Your transcript may show how much you’ve studied, but it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate your ability to learn, reason, and think.

Never mind the gap between what students learn and what they’re expected to know on the job. More important than your grades, 50 percent of organizations say that problem-solving, collaboration, customer service, and communication were the most valuable skills when hiring.

Then there’s the time commitment of earning all those additional credits, the climbing costs of post-secondary education, and the fact that, by the time you graduate, you’ll be years behind in your career advancement.

Uvaro fact: 30 percent of our Bootcamp participants sign a job offer before they graduate from our course!

2 - Learning on-the-job

Okay,” you think, Maybe I’ll just take the first sales job I can get and gain experience the old-fashioned way.” Also fair – and also not the best approach.

First, you’ll need to land that sales job. The traditional way of doing that? Either have a history of selling something, be a very extroverted person with a network that’s willing to make a referral, or have a degree that’s specialized in sales (those are few and far between, by the way, though they do exist).

If you do get the job, you might find training doesn’t exactly set you up for success. Most companies focus on putting new reps through a two- or three-day session full of PowerPoint presentations and mock sales calls. Then you’re thrown in the deep end to put what you learned into practice.

But without reinforcement, nothing really sticks. Research shows between 85 percent and 90 percent of sales training actually fades away after three months.

So you might try and fill in the gap with some self-directed learning, turning to podcasts, books, and blogs created by sales pros. But left on your own, you run the risk of learning bad habits, applying processes and methodologies that don’t fit your product or buyers, spending too much time on learning and not enough on selling, or moving forward with no direct feedback on how to improve.

What if there were a third option – something that combined the benefits of a more formal learning program with hands-on, experiential training?

Meet the Sales Bootcamp

If you’ve never taken a Bootcamp before, think of it like an intense, hyper-focused learning program designed to master the most high-value skills that you’ll use every day, in a short amount of time.

A sales Bootcamp like Uvaro, for example, not only teaches students important skills but also provides a chance to practice and apply them in realistic scenarios. With a curriculum that starts at the very beginning with an introduction to sales basics and moves through to detailed sales strategies, we give our students the tools they need to:

• Successfully prospect new opportunities for complex product offerings
• Develop powerful discovery questions and handle objections along the way
• Harness the sales tools and technology that sales reps use on the daily

And when it comes time to find that sales job, our graduates already have a job search strategy and resumé ready to go – because that stuff is built into our course, too!

The Best of Both Worlds

Plus, we combine the best of both academia and experiential worlds – without the drawbacks:

• Time: Uvaro requires just two hours per day of class time with classmates and instructors, five to ten hours per week of studying on your own time, over a total of 12 weeks. Compare that to a degree that can take months if not years to complete.
• Cost: Uvaro isn’t just less expensive than taking another degree (never mind the cost of not finding a job at all) – it’s also more flexible in payment. You can opt for an upfront payment, a tuition subscription, or a $0 upfront income share agreement, so your choice can fit your budget.
• Focus: Uvaro teaches tech sales – and only tech sales. Everything you learn is proven by experts in the field and hyper-relevant to the kinds of experience your next employer will be looking for.

Uvaro fact: Thanks to this level of focus, our grads, on average, get hired within 17 days of graduation and start contributing within seven days of starting their new job – much faster than the typical salesperson!

• Practice: We don’t believe in one-way lectures. Adults learn best when they’re doing, which is why our course combines interactive lessons with coaching, projects, presentations, role-playing, and more.
• Feedback: We also don’t expect you to learn on your own. With a rotating cast of industry experts leading and coaching our students, you’ll have a helping hand to help you build good sales habits from day one.
• Flexibility: Yes, we’re a part-time online learning program… but how you spend much of that time is up to you. We know our students have rich, fulfilling lives outside of the (virtual) classroom, so we make it easy to fit study, prep, and practice into your schedule.
• Career support: Finding a tech sales job is built right into our curriculum – we give you the tools you need to search for great opportunities, create a sales-specific resume, build a powerful network and get interview-ready.
• Tech and tools: Every student leaves our Bootcamp armed with access to a job board for tech sales and access to sales enablement tools like Playbooks – something employers who hire our graduates love!

Post-Grad Support That Works

Unlike post-grad career services at a university, Uvaro offers our graduates additional hands-on support for those who need a little extra help landing a job or want to really stand out on a job application:

1 - Our paid sales residency program

Nothing sells a salesperson like experience – and that’s what our paid sales residency is designed to provide, by pairing our top graduates with actual tech companies where they sell to real prospects, using the most popular sales tools. (Did we mention residents get paid, too?)

Over three months, you’ll join a software company and do the work that real sales reps do. And because our Bootcamp prepares you so effectively for the job, graduates onboard in just three days, start prospecting on day four, and contribute to the sales team before the week is over.

More than a line on a resume, the sales residency program helps you:

• Practice and hone the sales skills you’ve learned
• Improve with real-world feedback on your sales progress
• Make vital connections with tech leaders and sales experts
• Get a head start on your sales track record
• Prepare for a more senior sales role

What better way to fill those gaps in experience, knowledge and skill?

Uvaro fact: Our sales residency program connects graduates with established tech companies like Vidyard, Easy Projects, HyperComply, Bridgit, and Assured Software – a huge talking point for any resume or job interview!

Meet our sales residency grads:

Name: Kumail Sayeed

Residency at: HyperComply

Company size: Startup (10+ employees)

The Sales Residency program was a phenomenal laboratory to receive guidance, encouragement, and mentorship. I’d recommend it to anyone seeking to become more adept at solution-based social selling.”

Name: Amitesh Sabharwal

Residency at: Vidyard

Company size: Scale-up (280+ employees)

This Bootcamp takes your previous experience as your strength and elevates new skills by mixing the two… As I am giving interviews, the internship program has provided me with the right mindset to engage interviewers with a lot of confidence.”

2 - Our career support services

Alongside the career coaching we provide in-class, every Uvaro student can meet with expert career coaches one-on-one as they go through our Bootcamp. Then, when you graduate, you’re ready to hit that job search running with:

• A sales application that frames your strengths, experiences, and new skills
• Job search support to discover the right companies and roles for you
• Interview prep that helps you understand the hiring team – and blow them away

After you graduate, we offer additional support toward landing a full-time sales job. Our post-grad career support includes six months of regular 30-minute check-ins with a career coach, along with lifetime access to the Uvaro Alumni Network and industry experts from all over the world.

Jump-Start Your Tech Sales Career With Uvaro

Let’s face it: graduating post-secondary education with a degree or diploma is a big deal. It took a lot of work to get where you are right now – so own it… and don’t let it go to waste.

With the right hands-on experience and focused training to back it up, we know you can go far in a tech sales career. We know because we’ve seen it before, and we keep seeing it as we stay in touch with Uvaro’s grads term after term.

That’s right – we aren’t here to simply churn out the next generation of salespeople. We stand behind our program, and we stand beside each of our graduates. You’re in this career for the long haul, and we’re here with you for the long haul, too.

If you’re interested in making the transition from post-grad to tech salesperson, we’re ready to support you. Apply now or contact us if you have any questions.

We can’t wait to see you in class!

Take It To Go!