OTL Newsletter - There is a promotion trap no one warns you about

 Hi! 👋 I'm Donna Lin, Founder of On Target Learnings. I am an award winning sales leader and former Area VP at Salesforce ☁️ and Director at American Express. I tackle topics related to sales, leadership and accelerating your career.  

Observation 🧐

When you are an individual seller there tends to be a clear promotion path.

You move up as you gain experience in stages of a deal cycle and with selling to a size of customer.

SDR: Inbound leads
↪️BDR: Outbound Prospecting
↪️SMB AE: Sell to Small Businesses
↪️Mid Market AE: Sell to Medium sized businesses
↪️Enterprise AE: Sell to the largest businesses in your segment.

In some ways, this is amazing because it’s a clear career path. It’s a straight line, you know what experience you need to gain to get to the next level.

Also, the opportunities seem constant. At Salesforce, we promoted AEs at the start of every fiscal year. This creates a constant flow of AEs moving up and promotions consistently happen as part of the domino effect.

For Sales leaders, it’s easy to help your AEs get promoted to the next level, it’s built into the system and there’s backfill to replace those who get promoted

But there’s a tradeoff.

A straight path doesn’t necessarily result in well rounded AEs.

And AEs without a breadth of experience to draw upon, struggle to become great leaders.

As you move up market, if the only thing that’s changing is size of deal and complexity, you are capping your own development.

You develop breadth of experience when you:

- Sell different products in different industries
- Experience multiple sales processes, each with its own purchasing dynamics
- Engage different buyer personas

There are pitfalls to building your career selling one product at one company, especially if you ever find yourself looking for work. If your expertise is narrowly focused, you might struggle to adapt to a different industry or role.

So, how can you seek breadth of experience without leaving your current company?

 ✨ Don’t blindly follow the straight line to promotion (the easy path). Be thoughtful and look for opportunities to try roles that expose you to new skill sets, buyer personas or industries.
 ✨ Seek mentors selling into different markets or using different processes. These mentors don’t have to be in sales, you can learn from marketing, product, or customer success teams.
 ✨ Don’t discount the value of making lateral—not just upward— moves to build a stronger foundation for your long-term career. It’s not a race to the top. If you’re building a house of cards, a wider foundation will allow you to build a much taller tower. Similarly, if you don’t take the time to gain a breadth of experience, it will catch up with you - eventually.
 ✨ Actively try to get out of your comfort zone. Seek new skill sets, not higher titles. Success finds the curious. And curiosity doesn't move in straight lines.

Broadening your experience doesn’t just make you more adaptable; it also positions you as a stronger leader. When you’ve seen different challenges and solutions, you’re better equipped to coach and develop a team that faces diverse scenarios.

Thought Starter 🤔

The best way to connect the dots is to have perspective, and a breadth of experience allows you to draw insights that are not visible to others.

Love 🥰

I’m a massive Adam Grant fan and in his latest book he talks about how we can all unlock our own Hidden Potential.

He shares:

“becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the-nerve-to-face-discomfort is a character skill. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek and amplify discomfort”.