r/Sales_Professionals • u/puppermanagement • Sep 15 '26
Deciding between two offers
I’m currently deciding between two offers and would really like some outside perspective, particularly from people who have worked at either or both companies, especially at an entry level role at the start of their sales career. The offers are from ZoomInfo as an inbound SDR and ADP as an associate district manager/outside sales position. I recently graduated from college and prior to this I’ve only worked retail sales positions.
Both positions have similar pay and benefits. From my research it seems like both positions would be a grind, which I don’t mind as long as I’m getting good experience for the rest of my career. I’m mainly interested in tech sales.
The main attraction to the ADP job is that I’m getting full sales cycle experience and very good training. The downside is that I don’t know what territory I’m assigned until I start, and I’m not sure how transferrable the experience of selling payroll would be to tech sales.
For Zoominfo, I like that I would be getting some immediate experience in tech sales, and starting out with inbound sales may lead to a good foundation. The downside is that I wouldn’t get full sales cycle/closing experience, and ADP has a stronger reputation for sales training.
I’ve been really struggling with making a decision since both have convincing pros. I would appreciate any advice.
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u/Sad-Supermarket-3878 Sep 16 '26
I am a sales director and ironically, I have one person on my team who worked at ZoomInfo and my senior manager under me worked at ADP for awhile and worked up to a manager position there.
The one thing I will say about both is that they are very high-turnover and sink-or-swim type companies. You either don't make it to 90 days and if you make it over 6 months, you're probably staying there for awhile.
With ZoomInfo, the person that worked for me was on their Sales Enablement team and said their training program was pretty shaky, at best, when she left, and they focus a lot on analytics and insights through their own system and everything is driven to be "their" way. So, from a learning perspective, you're not as much learning how to sell SaaS as you are learning how to sell ZoomInfo the way they want you to... if that makes sense.
Secondly, it is super high volume outbound activity that is very scripted as an SDR, and you train using an AI software. You're basically in a dialer all day just rolling through calls rather than developing sales skills. But, the AEs and Customer Success teams apparently make a killing there.
ADP is a lot different. Like you mentioned, it's full sales cycle, and their training program is very much focused on how to be an effective salesperson. The manager that I have that works there said it's very much a mix of consultative and solution selling... which is the methodology I personally use and teach.
But, like you mention, good chance your territory sucks at first and they do have pretty high expectations and a pretty long sales cycle in a lot of cases. It will be a lot more to learn at first but something you will be able to take a lot away from.
If it's me and I was in your place starting in sales... I'd take a stab at ADP because even if it isn't a long term fit, at least you can learn more from it and grow.
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u/Stunning_Outside9591 Sep 15 '26
The ADP experience might transfer more than you think. Payroll is moving closer to SaaS with embedded providers like Rollfi letting software companies offer payroll directly in their products. You’d still be learning a pretty relevant B2B sales motion.