How to Move from a Retail Sales Job into a Sales Career at a High-Growth Company

If retail isn't stimulating you as you'd like it to, the transferable skills you've built in that role can help you to land a non-retail sales role. Transitioning from a retail work experience, a sales opportunity at a high-growth company can be challenging. At your retail sales job, you may have had a set of sales techniques you followed and always knew what was expected of you. Once you move into a new role, all this comfort and familiarity goes right out the window. This kind of sales job requires resourcefulness, ambition, and lots of innovation. At a fledgling startup, you may have to create the entire sales process on your own, or sell a software solution that isn't even on the market yet. Perhaps your company is on the brink of a revolutionary product or idea, but the rest of the industry hasn't caught on yet. So how can you ensure this career transition is a successful one? You'll have to gain each of these four skill sets:

[bctt tweet="How to Move from a #RetailSales Job into a #SalesCareer at a High-Growth Company, by @dVencis" username="StartupInst"]

1. Engaging customers throughout the sales cycle

In retail, you meet your customer, assist them, and then close a sale. While you may have repeat customers, this sales cycle looks far different than it does at a high-growth company. To keep your customers engaged throughout the sales funnel, you must move beyond simple brand awareness. You need to continually show them not only the advantages of your product or service, but also the disadvantages of not having it. Keep them informed and educated with statistics, videos, infographics, whitepapers, and anything else that would be relevant during this process.

[bctt tweet="In high-growth sales, you need to engage customers throughout the #salescycle, says @dVencis" username="StartupInst"]

2. Knowledge of how to use Salesforce effectively

If you do not yet know how to use Salesforce, or another customer relationship management system, this technological skill should be at the top of your list. Salesforce and other platforms like it are a salesperson's best friend. Not only do they help you identify key leads, but it can also turn those leads into long-term customers.

3. Handling objections and closing sales effortlessly

Objections are simply a part of the sales process. The difference between retail sales employees and sales professionals at high-profile companies hearing objections is that the latter will ask the right question and listen to the customer to understand why the customer maintains these objections. Then, they use their selling techniques to turn those objections into enthusiasm.

[bctt tweet="Learn how to turn objections into enthusiasm to be successful in sales, says @dVencis" username="StartupInst"]

4. Strategies for inbound and outbound selling techniques

As a retail salesperson, most of your customers were coming into your store to specifically buy your products and services. If you are working for a high-growth company, you may make a mix of both inbound and outbound sales. You will need to hone your inbound and outbound strategies if you want to be successful in this particular sales career path.

If you are looking to get out of retail and think you may have been born to work in the fast-paced sales industry, start by evaluating how you can improve the selling techniques you've built in retail to make an impact as part of a high-growth sales team. Assess your current skill sets and consider how to best showcase them on your sales résumé. If you need to build new skills in order to transition your career from retail into the tech sector, consider enrolling in our full- or part-time sales skills training.[bctt tweet="Consider #salestraining programs to transition from #retailsales to #techsales, says @dVencis" username="StartupInst"]