Why might we expect this to be a growth area? Well, we all watched the news or read the paper or follow on social media the cyber threats that are out there, things like ransomware, theft of personal information, like credit card data or social security numbers. Health information, the theft of intellectual property from companies, and then also cyber warfare. Really the frontier or the future of modern warfare is taking place in cyberspace, so we hear about other countries getting into government databases or company databases to steal information or military secrets, things of that nature. Then we've also seen what's called denial-of-service attacks, where one country will just try to take down the other country's Internet entirely. There's such a wide range of emerging threats and growth of cyberspace as an important element in our lives that's going to grow new companies, I work with a venture capital firm in the area, and they specifically fund startups in the cybersecurity field. They have hundreds of companies they look at, so the opportunities here are amerce and then there's many large established companies that continue to hire professional technical sales folks. Cloud technologies, this is really such a broad category. It's everything from Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon's ever expanding enterprise Cloud platform, Google Apps, which many of you are users of, but there are parts of Google Apps that are geared more towards business like Gmail or Google Docs, so there's a lot of capabilities there within Google Apps. Dropbox, many of us have used, that's Cloud storage. ICloud is Apple's Cloud technology that glues together all of your Apples devices, and really it's just beginning within Amazon Web Services. One of the things that Amazon and Google are doing is, they're enabling services within their Cloud for powerful technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, they have cybersecurity elements within their Cloud platforms. Image recognition is another area you can use in their Cloud, so they continue to expand their services. As they expand their services, they need individuals in their sales teams that can articulate the value of those solutions to businesses and government agencies. The need for Cloud sales talent is just enormous and growing every day. If I were starting my career today, I would be in one of these two fields, cyber or Cloud. There's still many other areas of information technology both mature and established and emerging that are interesting and there are many opportunities there. But for this course, since these really are the biggest areas, we're going to focus on these two, and then I said the next few modules, we'll cover those areas in a little more detail. Let's talk about whom you might work for in a technology sales career. Well, examples of large companies would be familiar names to you. These are some of the biggest tech companies. Microsoft, Google, I mentioned Amazon Web Services, Oracle, and Dell, Cisco, the long-established tech companies. Oracle is a database company. Dell is computers and network and storage equipment. Cisco is primarily known for building networking equipment around the Internet. PayPal is a big example of payment processing for business. Salesforce I mentioned, which is all customer management within a business. Verizon and all of the cellular mobile companies, especially if they're rolling out 5G right now, there's a huge demand for 5G, and we're just at the beginning. But aside from those big established brand names that are huge companies, there's just a great many small and medium-sized companies that are rapidly growing. Hundreds of thousands really across the US and I know the examples that we'll give in this course are primarily US, but we may have folks from other parts of the world. Pretty much everything I'm saying in this and other instructors will say in the course is applicable globally. There are many great companies to sell to. There are many great companies to work for in the tech field and a lot of opportunities across the globe. Let's say you have a job at one of these technology companies, and now the logical question would be, who am I going to be selling to? That is widely varied as well, and we'll get into this in Module 4, which I'll be covering that one in a little more detail. But sales organizations, if they're a decent size, usually put people in teams according to these categories, so there'll be a Fortune 500. Type of team, there'll be a federal government team, but these are some examples of who will be your clients. Again, the Fortune 500s, like the Walmarts, ExxonMobils. There's again, a hundreds of thousands of medium and small size companies that are out there that do all manner of services and work in all manner of industries. The federal government is a very important one. The federal government is perhaps the largest buyer of technology in the US, certainly. Most big tech sales or tech companies, their sales organizations will have a dedicated government team and you'll work with folks who develop expertise in how you sell to the federal government. There's also state and local governments as well. Government contractors are usually large technology companies that buy technology for the purpose of helping the government. They can be your client, educational institutions, colleges, K through 12, and colleges buy a lot of technology to empower their campus and then lastly, non-profit organizations, all charitable non-profits. There are some very large ones out there that operate heavily relying on their technologies. What is the career opportunity in technology sales? Well, as of today, there's over a million technology sales job openings and that stays the same and grows. So if one gets filled, doesn't mean it vanishes forever. There's always new job openings coming to replace that. This is just a growth industry, so that number is going to keep going up. There's tremendous opportunity and also lateral opportunity if you decide, hey, maybe this company over here would be a better opportunity for me, those opportunities will start happening once you're even a year into your career. In module 4, as I mentioned, I'll be coming back for that module and I'll get into the specific technology sales job roles, the typical organization structure of a technology sales company or organization. The other thing really compelling about this field is that sales professionals really advance to more senior positions more quickly and see their pay increase more quickly than almost any other field. The other great thing is, as you advance generally, there really is no limit. A lot of more traditional career fields have specific pay bands, salary bands commensurate with experience. If you are a top-flight salesperson, your company is not going to limit your income. You do typically have part of your pay based on commission on your sales and companies want you to sell, you want to sell, so you're both incentivized to pay the salesperson as much as possible, the more they sell. It really just represents a lot of opportunity and you certainly shouldn't be working just for pay. The enjoyment should be the foundation, but it is nice to be well compensated for doing a good job and having an impact on your clients. The other thing I'll say that I found in my 17 years and it continued to work with colleagues and former colleagues who still work in this field, it really is rewarding and fun to work. There are a lot of popular misconceptions of the term sales out there and maybe we all might have had a bad experience at the car showroom or at a retail outlet with [inaudible] you were pressured by a salesperson or they were using sales tactics on us to close us and some of that is out there, but in the world of technology sales, you just really don't see that. You really are a consultant helping to apply the technologies that your company offers to help your customers achieve their goals, so there is no gimmicks, you're not going to pressure your client into buying. They're going to appreciate your consulting services, getting them the information they need, helping them to understand why this is going to be the best solution for them and how it's going to achieve value for their business or their government agency, and they're going to want to see that's what's going to matter to them and once you have shown them that, they're going to buy from you, and you'll get run out of the industry if you try to rely on pressure or gimmicks, but that's out there. If you have a famous movie like Glengarry Glen Ross, portrays the worst side of sales when Alec Baldwin gives that speech. Be rating all of his sales team, that has nothing like the real world of technology sales. It really has a fun field. You're going to work with great people. I mean, some of them my lifelong friends, I met worker for the tech companies I worked with. I learned a ton from them and you're going to help them. They're going to help you learn. Each going to help each other meet your goals. That's really what I think the most important and fun thing about this field. Finally then the question is, how do I get started? Johnny, you've convinced me this is a great career path. You're honest, you're already in this course , which is a good start. One of the interesting things is, unlike a lot of fields, you don't need a technical degree. One important point to make is, and I get this question a lot, is do I have to be like a super tacky or an engineer to do technology sales and nothing could be further from the truth. You will have experts within your company that will help you if you really need to have articulate some of the technical details with technical people at your customer. It's definitely not to have a technical degree. Often depending on the company you are working for, you may not need to have any college degree. A lot of organizations have this generic requirement for some college degree, but that's evolving. In general, from what I've seen is if you have good sales skills, you'll get hired and you'll prove yourself and no one will even think about that moving forward. But you've always got to check with the company because they may have a requirement for a degree. What you really need to have is you need to have an interesting technology. You have to like technology, like what it can do, be interested in understanding the terminology. Learning all the time is very important in this field. You have the willingness to learn, again, not to become a coder or a hacker, but you have to understand how the moving parts come together and how does it provide value to a business or a problem in industry? Those two are our key. You need to have good problem-solving skills. Again, you're not going to be the sole engineer or consultant that's going to solve all the customers problems, but you have more business problems where you're just trying to help put the pieces together for your client and you need to know how to ask the right questions of your internal people and of your client. Then all comes down to good problem-solving skills, excellent customer service. Always getting back to your costumer, being professional whenever you communicate with them, turning around when they call you, getting back to them as soon as possible. Then finally, you have to be honest and you have to have good ethics. Back to my point about trying high pressure sales or telling your customers something just to close the sale. That might work once, but your client will figure that out down the road and they won't do business with you anymore. Colleagues will see that you do that kind of thing. It is very important to always be truthful, honest, and ethical in dealing with your colleagues and with your clients. If you do and you provide solutions and they know you're honest and ethical, they will be your client for your entire career. I've seen that, I and other colleagues have moved to different companies. They look for, hey, what company are you with now, loved to do business with you? Because they could trust me and they knew that I was always able to provide good solutions for them. If you have those fundamentally in your nature, in your character and who you are today, then you have the raw material to succeed in a very rewarding career in technology sales. Then really all you need is the training to get started. Really our full technology sales program, I think, is the best one that's out there and encourage you to take that and that provides the excellent foundation to start an entry level in a technology sales positions. Like I said in Module 4, we'll get it a little more detail what some of those types of positions are, what some of the job titles you should be looking for in your career search, and what some of the differences are in the roles that they fulfill. With that, we'll call an end of this module. I'll just say again, welcome to the field of technology sales. It's a great rewarding field. I want to thank you for your attention and good luck with the rest of the course.
