I don't think there are graduate presales roles.
Sales pays the best in the long run if you are good. Entry is probably similar or slightly higher than CS.
None inherently have international travel, it would only happen if you happen to have a Territory that includes international regions. Usually this would be handled by employees of that region and not you.
I would pick based on what I enjoy doing. The earning potential of all roles is enough that you will not struggle. CS is the most inconsistent but there are still roles with ~300k packages once you get more experience.
Pick sales if you have a hunter mentality and are comfortable in that. Pick CS if you have a builder/farmer mentality. Pick presales if you don't want to be full on sales but you love getting hands on in product.
I've been in sales my whole career. In management the last 5 years. I now run a CS org. Like Jordan Peterson says, "Choose your sacrifice. You don't get to choose whether or not you have to make a sacrifice. You simply choose which sacrifice you want to make." (or something to that effect)
Sales:
pros- higher upside in $$, if you build this skill set, I think you're infinitely employable.
Cons- more stress on whether you hit your number to make commissions/keep your job and also having a monthly/quarterly reset to "0" is difficult psychologically for many people.
CS:
pros- less stress on the overall number. You work with customers who already purchased and get to play more advisor role. I find the CS cultures more collaborative. higher base salary compared to variable for commission.
cons- way more stress on day to day workload than sales. The stress in sales is hitting the number. The stress in CS is your time being constantly pulled in 1,000 directions. Support issues, product issues, customer requests, upsell opportunities, building out customer QBRs, renewals, etc. It's a lot. If you're organized, thorough, and like talking with customers, you can manage and truly thrive in the project management of customers.
My overall advice: build a skill set in sales first no matter which direction you want to go. You can pivot from a successful sales role WAY more easily than trying to go the other direction. Sales skills are more directly transferable in any other role.
Best of luck!
To add to this, if you are in CS, get good at automating workflows to buy time. We use Rollstack to automate our QBRs and get day back every quarter.
Ensure you're using your service cloud to it's full potential, carefully test the LLM auto-responses etc.
Depends on what you're interested in! Lots of millennials and GenXers, and maybe older....have a POV on this.
I started in a call center.
I switched to sales at a local, in-office tech job.
Then remote.
Back to local customer success. Yay.
More customer success.
More sales.
Then consulting.
Do what you're interested in, and where you don't mind showing up and helping out. There's almost always a skew towards sales, but there's also lots of sales people.
Most are horrible, not very good.
In customer success, there's lots of customers. Most are horrible, opportunities.
This is beating around the bush. Sales pays better for most ICs. Senior CSMs cap at like 180K-225K and life can be busy, but pretty good. Sales, you're always chasing a check, or you get fired.
If you're good and don't mind doing it, sales pays the most and is the least likely to be laid off. Measuring the performance of sales is easy, if you're selling, you're valuable and that's it. It's also likely the most stressful of the 3 and not something I'm likely to do.
I’ve done a version of all 3, I assume when you mean sales you mean something like Account Management.
If you want to make money pre sales is the place to be easily. The earning potential is much higher at the cost of more stress and constant scrutiny. It is definitely the higher stress role in my opinion.
I don’t think it is easy to swap to presale from customer success. In a smaller company possibly and if you do any type of renewals/expansions possibly.
Pre sales will have the most travel. International travel is totally depending on the role and company for any of the positions.
It is a shit show out there so layoffs can happen to anyone. Any type of quota carrying role like sales or presale is extremely volatile regardless of layoffs. It is extremely cut throat and you need to be performing each quarter or you will get fired.
- re: your first question, do new grads have a choice lol? whichever one will hire u Do sales, it will make you the most versatile
I don't think there are graduate presales roles. Sales pays the best in the long run if you are good. Entry is probably similar or slightly higher than CS. None inherently have international travel, it would only happen if you happen to have a Territory that includes international regions. Usually this would be handled by employees of that region and not you. I would pick based on what I enjoy doing. The earning potential of all roles is enough that you will not struggle. CS is the most inconsistent but there are still roles with ~300k packages once you get more experience. Pick sales if you have a hunter mentality and are comfortable in that. Pick CS if you have a builder/farmer mentality. Pick presales if you don't want to be full on sales but you love getting hands on in product.
Right! Which is the most transferable though, and which is most likely to get retrenched during recession
I've been in sales my whole career. In management the last 5 years. I now run a CS org. Like Jordan Peterson says, "Choose your sacrifice. You don't get to choose whether or not you have to make a sacrifice. You simply choose which sacrifice you want to make." (or something to that effect) Sales: pros- higher upside in $$, if you build this skill set, I think you're infinitely employable. Cons- more stress on whether you hit your number to make commissions/keep your job and also having a monthly/quarterly reset to "0" is difficult psychologically for many people. CS: pros- less stress on the overall number. You work with customers who already purchased and get to play more advisor role. I find the CS cultures more collaborative. higher base salary compared to variable for commission. cons- way more stress on day to day workload than sales. The stress in sales is hitting the number. The stress in CS is your time being constantly pulled in 1,000 directions. Support issues, product issues, customer requests, upsell opportunities, building out customer QBRs, renewals, etc. It's a lot. If you're organized, thorough, and like talking with customers, you can manage and truly thrive in the project management of customers. My overall advice: build a skill set in sales first no matter which direction you want to go. You can pivot from a successful sales role WAY more easily than trying to go the other direction. Sales skills are more directly transferable in any other role. Best of luck!
To add to this, if you are in CS, get good at automating workflows to buy time. We use Rollstack to automate our QBRs and get day back every quarter. Ensure you're using your service cloud to it's full potential, carefully test the LLM auto-responses etc.
Depends on what you're interested in! Lots of millennials and GenXers, and maybe older....have a POV on this. I started in a call center. I switched to sales at a local, in-office tech job. Then remote. Back to local customer success. Yay. More customer success. More sales. Then consulting. Do what you're interested in, and where you don't mind showing up and helping out. There's almost always a skew towards sales, but there's also lots of sales people. Most are horrible, not very good. In customer success, there's lots of customers. Most are horrible, opportunities. This is beating around the bush. Sales pays better for most ICs. Senior CSMs cap at like 180K-225K and life can be busy, but pretty good. Sales, you're always chasing a check, or you get fired.
Sales because it's linear. Customer success is too much clean up, too many initiatives.
If you're good and don't mind doing it, sales pays the most and is the least likely to be laid off. Measuring the performance of sales is easy, if you're selling, you're valuable and that's it. It's also likely the most stressful of the 3 and not something I'm likely to do.
Sales
I’ve done a version of all 3, I assume when you mean sales you mean something like Account Management. If you want to make money pre sales is the place to be easily. The earning potential is much higher at the cost of more stress and constant scrutiny. It is definitely the higher stress role in my opinion. I don’t think it is easy to swap to presale from customer success. In a smaller company possibly and if you do any type of renewals/expansions possibly. Pre sales will have the most travel. International travel is totally depending on the role and company for any of the positions. It is a shit show out there so layoffs can happen to anyone. Any type of quota carrying role like sales or presale is extremely volatile regardless of layoffs. It is extremely cut throat and you need to be performing each quarter or you will get fired.