#267 Finishing What You Started Is Not Always the Right Move

Notes:

Should you always finish what you started?

For example, after landing a sales engineering role, are you going to stick to it no matter what even if it no longer works for you?

If these questions are bothering you, then this episode is for you.

Our guest for today is Meri Martinez, a Project Manager and Regulatory Specialist at Innolitics. Before her current role, she was a sales engineer who realized, after just a few months, that it wasn’t for her.

What did she do after realizing this? Also, how was her sales engineering role in the biomedical field different from typical sales engineering roles in tech? We answer these questions and more in our conversation.

Key Takeaways:

Meri’s career history
How Meri chose her degree
Challenging the advice of finishing what we have started
What convinced Meri to try sales engineering
How Meri saw her sales engineering role in the biomedical field
The definition of account manager in sales
What Meri liked about her sales engineering role
What made Meri decide to leave sales engineering
The skills that Meri learned from her sales role that she is able to use in her current job
Meri’s thoughts on whether she regret getting into sales engineering for less than a year
Why a coach is essential for those new to sales engineering
The training necessary for new sales engineers
Why Meri enjoys her current role
Balancing wanting more and being content and happy now

Quotes:

When you’re in sales and sales engineering, there you have the potential to earn if you work hard to earn more. But it’s a potential not a guarantee. — Ramzi Marjaba

When you’re in a consulting role, you kind of get that sense of “I can help this person: this person is looking up to me to try to help them.” — Meri Martinez

The upside is great but the downside is also like you’re gonna have to answer to people. And a lot of times, management treat us like their job is to make us sell more. I think their job is to enable us to sell. That’s the difference between old school mentality… I’m going to push you until you sell. That doesn’t really work. If someone wants to sell, they’re going to sell. If someone doesn’t want to sell, they’re not going to sell. … And that’s where I see a lot of sales managers or sales directors fail, in my humble opinion. — Ramzi Marjaba

There’s a lot of things you can’t control in sales. Ultimately, it’s up to the person on the other end… they make the final decision. — Meri Martinez

A lot of salespeople are not set up for success. They come in and they’re just left to their own devices to figure stuff out. — Ramzi Marjaba

I’ve been in this place of always wanting more… And I’ve come to a realization that I need to be more content with what I have right now. That doesn’t mean not being ambitious, but coming to a place of peace with what you have right now. — Meri Martinez

If you can’t enjoy life today, don’t put it off. Happiness is reality minus expectation. If expectations are lower than reality, you’re happy. If expectations are higher, you’re not. So try to find a way to be happy. — Ramzi Marjaba