(139) I Got Promoted to VP of Sales at 29. Here’s how. - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD_9mJuG2k

Transcript: (00:00) I'm not talking be like 10% better than everyone else. If you want to jump people in your career, you have to be so far ahead of them that it would literally be insulting to not promote you. I became a VP of sales at age 29. And guess what? I didn't even start my career in sales. And so, I was already behind, but I learned how to get promoted way faster than most people do in sales. (00:26) And today, my goal is to break that down for you. If we haven't met before, my name is Armon Faro and here's what my sales trajectory looked like. At age 20, I got my first sales internship selling insurance where I became a top 2% sales rep in the country. But then I realized I hated insurance sales and so I actually left. (00:43) I worked in finance for 3 years from ages 21 to 24. And then my best friend and co-founder Nick got into sales and was making more money than me. And so I decided that would be a good idea. I got back into sales. I became a mid-market AE at a company called Carta. And I was there from ages 24 to 27. And in those three years, I climbed from mid-market AE to director of sales. (01:03) I was a mid-market AE for one year. Then I became a senior manager of sales development where I was running the whole sales development or managing managers for a year. And then I did so well there that I ultimately became a director of sales running all of SMB sales and sales development, an org of about 40 or 50 at the age of 27 at which point I was poached to join a company called PAVE where I was their ninth employee and there was one other sales rep and I hired out a team of 40 between sales and marketing over 2 years which (01:31) eventually led me to become their VP of sales before I left to go full-time on this business. So there are four steps that I will walk through that will make this path seem semi-re repeatable. they are. One, be so good that you cannot be ignored. Two, be better than the next reps at the next job. (01:47) Three, run your promotion sales cycle. And then four, pick the right company, which might be the most important one. I'm going to give a huge disclaimer on the front end of this. If you are the rep who's doing like 89% of your quota or you're like number three on the team or like in a really good month you're number two but then some months you're number four or five like this advice is a force multiplier for your performance. (02:14) If you're getting average performance this might give you slightly above average career trajectory. You might be able to like get promoted 2 months faster or something like that. But the reality is like if you want to like jump quick or even like skip levels or like get promoted in 9 months or 6 months, you've got to be so stupidly better than everyone else. (02:37) And I think there are way too many people who like spend too much time on like the mechanics of this company won't promote me instead of thinking like how can I be so good that it would literally be like an insult to promote someone over me. So I'll give that disclaimer. Old man angry upfront. Let's go into step number one which is be so good you can't be ignored. (02:54) There are three ways that I think about this. Number one is you work harder than everyone else. Number two is you learn faster than anyone else. And then number three is you figure out how to become a sales floor legend. So when I was at Carta, when I joined as a mid-market AE, they were in the middle of a transition from inbound to outbound. (03:13) Okay? And so all of the sales reps on the floor hated cold calling. And I was part of the new reps that were brought on to like double the team size. So like inbound was drying up but like no one was changing the behavior. They were also nice, fat, and happy and working 9 to5 and refused to go and pick up the phone. (03:30) And so I worked 8 to 7 every single day for the first 9 months that I was at Carta and I showed up and at 8:30 or 9:00 I would start picking up the phone and before the VP of sales even got situated at his desk, I was the guy who was dialing down folks and I was booking three, four, five meetings alone on the phone. (03:49) usually eight outbound meetings total per week as a rep. That was more than most reps were booking in a month. I was frankly just willing to work 10 times harder than anyone else at the thing that no one wanted to do. From there, outside of my job, I would literally be like practicing my opener on the way to work. (04:09) I would be listening to podcasts on the way to work. I would listen to podcasts like this one on the way home. And like sales is one of these weird careers, folks, where like the skills literally pay the bills. Like if you acquire a new skill in sales, like a cold call opener, you can use that to book another meeting that you wouldn't have booked tomorrow, and that meeting will make you money because you listen to a podcast for 30 minutes. (04:34) Like, it's amazing. Like, if you learn a negotiation trick, you could use it in a negotiation tomorrow and like save $5,000 on your next deal. And it was amazing like how many people would complain about like my manager isn't developing me or the enablement trainings are good. And I'm like I actually would rather have it be that way. (04:54) You know why? Because I want everyone else to get like the really bad training if I'm competing on a sales floor and like I'm going to go find the good training. If everyone's getting like really really really good training at the job, I'm like shoot like how am I going to get better training elsewhere? This is actually like an opportunity to differentiate yourself if your company doesn't train you well. (05:15) Sometimes like it pays to be a shark in a swimming pool when all the other people in the swimming pool are kind of lazy. So that's number two which is learn. And then number three is a lot of people really really really underestimate the power of having a superpower on a sales floor. And the reality is not every salesperson is good at everything. (05:35) And that is myself included especially early on in my career. I honestly kind of sucked at discovery. I went from insurance straight to mid-market AE, which is another story. I never really ran a consultative deal cycle. I had to learn that stuff later on, like multi-threading, no idea how it worked or anything like that. (05:52) When the new VP of sales came in and they saw my numbers, I had literally done 300% of my ramp quota in my first quarter. And then the next two quarters, I was the number one rep way earlier than anyone else had become before. He was like, "The reason that that person is successful is because like Arma knows how to prospect, the director of SDR quit. (06:14) " And he was like, "I only know one person at this company that can prospect that well, and it's that guy." And that's how I actually got promoted to senior manager of sales development where I was managing the existing SDR managers. The current SDR managers were not ready to go to that next step, but I had proven that I had a certain like name and notoriety across the sales floor that got me known as the prospecting guy. (06:37) I'm not talking be like 10% better than everyone else. If you want to jump people in your career, you have to be so far ahead of them that it would literally be insulting to not promote you. The second step is you can't just be good at your current job. You have to be better than the next reps at the next job. (07:01) So if you're going from SDR to SMB or if you're going from SMBEE to mid-market AE, you need to be better than the midline of the reps who are in that next level. In other words, my litmus test was if I add this person to this team in 6 months, does quota attainment go up or down? If it goes down, then I do not want this person on my team. (07:23) I don't care how good of an SDR you are. If you can only prospect, but you can't do anything related to closing whatsoever. Like, you can't be unapologetically bad at the stuff that is required to do the new job. And so, what I always tell people is in your first 6 months, focus on nothing but like destroying the current job. And like don't even come close to asking for a promotion. (07:50) And then from there, from months 6 to 9, that's when you can start planning for the next job. The way you do this is you usually want to go to senior reps who are on that team. Like get the good reps on the next team up and get them running mock discoveries with you. Get them riding along for deals with you. Because I'll cover this in step three. (08:14) Those are the people who are going to be pushing on the sales manager. So, if I have like the number one mid-market rep is mentoring me, the number one mid-market rep has a lot of leverage with the sales manager of midmarket and if I'm trying to get onto that team, that sales manager is going to go to the number one rep and be like, "Hey, do do you think Arman's ready? Do you think Jaime's ready?" And if I've done my job right over the last 3 months, they're like, "That kid has gone through my meat grinder. (08:39) " And they're going to like be like, "No, no, that's my guy. Like, you you got to promote that." like they're going to take responsibility for your career pathing and like that's what you want is like don't get me wrong like you need to do your own pushing but the best promotion cycles are when like everyone else is doing that pushing for you and it's like you can just like focus on like look at me I'm doing such a great job and they can be the ones who are like yo you got to get this guy in the seat and then step number three is you need to run (09:04) your promotion sales cycle so to be clear this is when it gets a little bit into like managing the internal politics you only get the right to manage the internal politics if you're better than everyone else at your current job and you're better than the midline at the next job. But if those two things are true, remember month 0 to six are you're just focused on like doing the job. (09:22) At month six, that's when I like to call my shot with my manager. And what I mean by calling your shot is you kind of need to apply pressure upwards on management and let them know that you like know you're crushing it and you're grateful for the opportunity, but you are cognizant of your market value and you want to start thinking about what that next role is. (09:45) And so I'll usually broach a conversation with my manager that sounds something like this. Like, hey, how do you feel like I've been doing over the last year? They'll say, you've been doing really, really good. Awesome. I wanted to do a little bit of a retro. I feel like I've been really really good here. (09:59) I think this is what it takes for me to get to the next level. I know I still have tons to learn, but I'm curious like in your eyes like you know what my career goals are. I want to be an SMBA. I want to be a mid-market AE. And based on how I'm doing in this role, I'm curious. Could you help me build out a plan to close any gaps that I have to get to the next role? Notice you're not asking for a promotion. (10:22) You're asking for advice. ask for advice and then they'll usually be like, "I want to help this kid." If you ask for a promotion, sometimes people out of spite will be like, "Ah, they're getting too impatient." Like, "Hold on, slow down. You're not aware of the fact that you're not actually ready for this job." So, that's how you basically set up your plan. (10:40) And if you've done this correct, the next 3 months, months 6 to 9 should look like this. You've come up with a list of things that you need to get good at. Maybe it's discovery, maybe it's multi- threading and mid-market, maybe it's advanced business cases or executive presence once you start to get to enterprise. (10:57) And you've come up with a plan with your manager of these are the skills and these are the tests that I would like you to help me run to get good at that. So, for example, if I had a really good STR, I'd be like, awesome. Now, what we're going to do is I want you to go watch these discovery tapes and then every two weeks, you and I are going to run a mock discovery together. (11:14) And that's going to be your test for you to show me how far you've come in discovery. And so, the magic of this is you've basically like set the exit criteria for what it takes to get to the next job. You've set a plan to get there and now for the next 3 months, you're just going to call back to it. You're just going to keep calling back to it. (11:31) So, every 2 weeks, 3 weeks in your one-on-one, you're going to give them an update, and you're going to own your own professional development plan. A lot of reps are like, "Why won't my team promote me? Why won't my team develop me?" Well, guess what? How about you take your own career path into your own plans? And you pull what's needed from your manager and you make their job easy. That's called managing up, folks. (11:53) From there, you have months 6 to 9 where you're like learning the next job. And then months 9 to 12 are planning the transition. So at the end of 9 months, usually that's when you can start to pick up the heat and you can be like, "Hey, so like have I hit everything in this plan?" And again, if you are good at your job, you're like pretty much better than most people in the midline of the next one. (12:14) And the mid-market AES who are on the team that you want to get on to, they're already telling your manager too like, "Yeah, I think we all know like you know this gal over here, she would smoke the entire like bottom half of this team." And honestly, like I'd probably give him like 6 months before they're giving me a run for my money. (12:31) you know, that's how you know how this is going well. And so now you actually have the opportunity to make your ask. And so, usually I'll ask to do like our normal like quarterly performance review or like can we do our quarterly retro just cuz I know we've been working on these skills for the last 3 months. And I'll start and I'll be like, I have a self-reflection, but I'm curious from your perspective like how am I doing both in this role and then in terms of my readiness for the next one. (12:51) And they'll usually, if you've done a good job, they will usually say like, you're doing pretty good. And at this point, I do like to make an explicit ask where I'll say something like, "Look, I know that you've got internal precedent and all these other things going on when it comes to promotions, but like I think you know where my career goals are, and I've like worked really, really, really hard. (13:09) And I hope you can see I'm like putting in the hours outside of the job to get ready for that." And I'm like showing it in my numbers, too. What would it look like for me to make that jump into the next role? Like, is there an interview process? Is there an internal promotion cycle going on? Do you have a sense of like when the next slot is opening up? Do we get on the same side of the table just because like I really really really care about this for like pushing my career goals forward? And usually you can try to get them on the same side of (13:35) the table and you'll get reality from your manager. So at this point, look, you're not going to get an instant promotion on the spot. But here's why it is really important to make the ask. I have been part of these promotion boardrooms before where every three six months they look at all the people on the team and they're like here's who should or shouldn't be promoted and there are times where they'll look at a rep and they'll be like this rep is really really good but I think they're comfortable for now or I don't think (14:05) they're getting too antsy and it sucks folks but if you are not the squeaky wheel sometimes people will be like I think that person can sit seat for like another 6 months because you haven't done anything to show the world that you know your market value and that you know you're ready for the next role. (14:26) In a dream world, ideally everyone's like great, I'm going to do the right thing for Mr. or Mrs. rep and the moment they start performing well, I'm going to promote them. But the reality is like that's not how life works. So figure out how to work the game. All right? So, you make your ask and the next time they go into their promotion reviews, usually they'll be like, "Hey, like this person's like starting to make some noise about like getting moving. (14:50) " And I've talked to other people on the team. They're putting in all the work. They're not being annoying about it. They haven't asked me a million times, but like we should probably like start to put some sort of process in place. So, folks, here's a secret. At step three, you have everything you need to be at the front of the promotion line. (15:08) problem is that doesn't guarantee that you actually get into the club. That only gets you to the front of the line. But if the club is at full capacity, they're not going to let anyone in. So step four is you have to actually pick the right company. There are two things that need to happen for you to get promoted quickly. (15:27) Number one, there needs to be a slot. And in order for there to be a slot, the only way that there is a slot is either the company is growing so that people are like actually moving up and more roles are being opened up or people are being let go because they're not performing. But the reality is if people aren't performing often times they won't reopen a slot when they let someone go cuz they're like gez like maybe we actually need to like decrease the number of reps in this segment. (15:55) So there's a completely separate video that we did on like picking a good company, but the TLDDR is you need to find a company that is growing. That is usually why I recommend people join companies in the growth stages. So usually between like series B and like just preo because number one, those companies are growing pretty quickly. (16:17) But then number two, the second criteria of a good company is they believe in acceleration. Usually companies that are preipo or companies that like haven't gone public yet are willing to bend on traditional promotion timelines. And the reason for that is they're growing so quickly that they have to fill the seats. And so they'd rather fill those seats with internal talent and then like hire junior talent from the bottom up. (16:36) But then they're just a little bit less rigid in their corporate structure. Like if you go to Oracle or Salesforce, love those companies, but like they have like a pretty regimented timeline where it's like 2 years per role. But if you go to like a series C startup that's like gone from 200 million in revenue to 50 million in revenue in a single year, they're going to be like, I got to bring the people up with this ship. (17:02) Like it's a rising ship that like everyone gets to benefit from. So like try to find those companies. So again, I'm not going to go through like the entire criteria you use. We did another video on that like right over here down in the show notes on like how to not pick a crappy company in sales. (17:17) like go watch that video and hopefully it'll help you out folks. So folks, that's a wrap. If this was helpful, my guess is you are trying to get ready for one of two roles. Either one, it's a closing role or a more sophisticated closing role at which case you probably need to master discovery or number two, you're trying to become a sales leader. (17:37) And that's actually the harder role to prepare for. So I've got two things for you. Both are discount codes. Number one is we have our entire discovery course. If you are an SDR trying to go into SMB, you will be like a billion light years ahead of everyone else. It will give you everything you need in 101 on discovery. (17:52) But frankly, it will also give you most of the 2011 stuff, if not some of the 301 stuff in terms of like advanced question tactics, how to find six figure problems instead of 5 figure problems. So whether you're an SDR going to SMB or an SMB rep going to mid-market or frankly a mid-market rep trying to like get six and seven figure problems in enterprise, that course is like the gold standard on all things discovery. (18:16) And then number two, Mark is the single sales leader who's taught me more than anything else. Mark Costlo led outreach from zero to 250 million in ARR as their first employee all the way up until VP of sales and beyond. like he broke down his entire sales management operating system from forecasting to deal reviews to hiring to everything else in what is probably the best sales leadership course I've ever seen. (18:41) So, there are discount codes to both of those courses down below because you're watching on YouTube. Go check them out and we will see you on the next one.