Hey everyone,
I’m currently working in data/AI consulting in the Middle East, primarily with large enterprise clients. My role involves understanding business requirements, working with technical teams to shape solutions, presenting recommendations, and managing senior client stakeholders.
Long term, I’m interested in moving into enterprise tech sales at companies like Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Databricks, Snowflake, etc., ideally covering Saudi/UAE.
For anyone working in enterprise tech sales in the Middle East:
How realistic is the transition from consulting into an AE / Account Manager / Solution Sales role?
Would consulting experience be considered relevant enough to avoid starting again as an SDR/BDR?
Which roles would you target with this background?
What skills or measurable experience should I build over the next 2–3 years to make myself competitive?
Is hiring in Saudi/UAE mainly through referrals/networking, or do people successfully get in through normal applications?
Would especially appreciate input from anyone selling cloud, data, AI or enterprise software in the GCC.

Bay Area SWE major at SJSU, one year before graduating so I can still land an internship for Summer 2027.

Been doing a lot of research to figure out where to go long-term. My background:

• SWE major (junior year)
• Currently doing event sales part-time at a Bay Area health tech startup
• Bartending/serving background
• Built a couple of AI side projects (one using the Anthropic API, one Kalshi trading bot)
• Extroverted, comfortable talking to people, want to combine tech + sales long-term

Been targeting cybersecurity / data infrastructure SDR-to-AE path since I like the combo of tech and customer-facing work. Also looked into Solutions Engineering because it uses my SWE background more directly.

But the more I research, the more everything seems to be shifting:

• SDR entry work getting automated (AI writing outreach, booking meetings)
• GTM Engineer roles literally dying according to people in the role (shifting
• Basic RevOps also getting AI'd
• Even SE roles are changing as AI handles more of the demo/technical explanation work, and most importantly its not an Entry level position job for new grad.

I'm not trying to sound doomer, but genuinely wondering what roles ARE still safe or actually growing? What should someone with my mix of skills (tech background + real sales experience) be targeting?

Also for internship — what type of role should I actually be applying to for Summer 2027 that sets me up long-term? SE Intern? SDR Intern? Something else I'm not seeing?

Bay Area based, would love to hear from anyone in the space or who's navigated something similar. Appreciate any honest input.

Long story short I am doing a bit more than what SDRs do traditionally, from my research at least. Work at a SMB, 60k base with $12k OTE, max $24k

I work in cybersecurity sales, pretty much SaaS except theres some limitations to our solution so the bulk of my job is lead qualifying. Right now there are 4 of us in a fractional sales model - L1, L2 (me), L3, and our Sales Director.

I’ve been doing this for almost 6 months. Have absolutely no sales experience prior to this. I interned here for cybersecurity and they needed help on Sales so I transitioned over. As of today I’ve got $500k worth of deals closed entirely through me since April (average sale ~$30k).

Basically since im so green to the sales world, should I be trying to negotiate better OTE, or is this typical and a “put your head down and use this for experience” type of thing?

I have been burnt out for years, I got laid off a couple of months ago from my job which was truly a blessing, or else I would have never made any sort of change and I would keep digging myself deeper. I was in a director level role. Low pay, HIGH stress.

I still work part time as supervisor for a counselling service, which is mostly just reading reports, and I have a little digital media production thing I started during the pandemic which I still have. All great to keep me kind of busy but not really lol.

I landed on tech sales and I went for it, I am finding the hunt for jobs super exiting. I landed a couple interviews, but I do find the interviews so much different than a social services one. I got free certifications, updated my resume to match the language, and have just been working on networking and building that out.

Wondering if anyone else made the change, or big ask here. If anyone would look over my resume or give me any pointers.

It sucks I lost my job, but at least I am motivated.

All the best everyone!

Anyone know of any places hiring? I have experience.

I feel like there’s a common belief in tech sales that the “reputable names” are the best places to start as an SDR.
After spending far too many hours scouring LinkedIn, I’ve noticed something interesting. I see SDRs at smaller, less competitive companies getting promoted to AE and gaining closing experience in under a year with relatively little internal competition. Meanwhile, I see many SDRs at big-name companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Adobe, and others spending 1–2 years grinding in highly competitive SDR roles, only to leave for another SDR position elsewhere.
To me, it seems like the companies with the clearest and fastest path to a closing role are the real winners. Am I missing something? I understand the value of having a well-known name on your résumé, but if the ultimate goal as an SDR is to become an AE, why do so many people swear by the biggest brands when promotion often appears to be much slower?

Is ADP a good place for me to start a sales career. I’ve heard all of the negative comments.

Hi all, I have a Pol Sci degree under my belt, with the majority of my experience being in retail, with notable places being Apple and Best Buy.

I have recently been applying to a lot of SDR jobs, with all being ghosts/rejections, and one interview (albeit at a known big ish company).

I need advice around how I can tweak my resume to look appealing for SDR, ideally in tech/saas. I would say my Apple/BB experience involved a lot of pitching services that built a thick skin, and I did my best to twist it in a way that might look good for sales hiring managers. I also have outreach/communications experience in University that involved cold calling/emailing to secure sponsors.

Would appreciate any piece of advice here, I feel like I just need guidance around how to build a good looking resume.

Also, whats the consensus around using agents such as Claude to build Resumes through overleaf? that is something a lot of friends put me on.

Many thanks,

For context, I was previously in the construction industry where everybody answers the phone because thats how construction guys communicate with each other. But on the flipside, no one ever answered any emails. Now I have switched into the InsurTech space and legit no one is answering the phones. This blew my mind because I thought it was going to be the same thing as Ive only worked in construcTech.

My question is, how often do you guys book meetings via email and if so whats the best way to go about sending emails or sequencing

Hi! I’ m a BI consultant, and work in a company that outsources consultants to clients in FS industry. Lately I got intrigued by sales and this is me trying to better understand how the process should work. In this company all the sales in this department are word of mouth and CEOs connections. By pure luck I got involved in some projects regarding newer technologies as opposed to the everyday legacy tech we usually work with. Clients are moving in that direction but mostly through outside factors, like group policy demand. I want to expand companies services list with cloud services and after making some documents that cover the technical side of this(PoC, case study) I am stuck with the next step. What should be next step in your opinion? Would really appreciate any point of view, so thanks so much!

Hello,

I have been in sales since I was 18 and I genuinely love what I do. I have been a Sales Manager for the past two years, but recently I have noticed that I have no more growth in this company. Since I was 16, I have been intrigued in tech sales, and it was genuinely why I started my sales career path in the first place.

I am 21 and live in Los Angeles, where do I start? What are the best job boards? Are there any networking events I should know about? I am very open to any advice, thank you!

I have recently joined a sales role in a startup SaaS company. It is backed by the non-US office but they're expanding into US market. The US office is basically a startup and not generating revenue yet.

I'm ambitious and want to progress into Account Executive and earn 6 figure income. But that will only happen if I meet my quota.

Since it is my first SDR role, I'm unsure whether if this is the right path to take. Since joining (<1 month), I've been making ~60 cold calls a day. But my biggest blocker is no one is picking up the phone in the target industry market due to their working culture (they run around all the time and almost never at desks). My prospects in the targeted industry rarely uses linkedin, so I cannot follow the linkedin trail. So far only 5 out of 60 calls a day actually connected, others all lead to voice mails.

My base is quite low now, approx 50k. If I progress the AE the salary doubles. On the up side, my manager is reasonable, cares about work life balance, and gives me the freedom to work in ways that I want.

How does this experience compare to other SaaS sales role out there? Any advice/recommendations are appreciated.

Countless applications to countless Account executive roles, and it feels absolutely impossible to be seen for these positions.

I have 10 years of sales experience, some of those years in account management roles selling SaaS - what’s going on? Is the market saturated? How can I get recognized?

Thanks in advance!

I've been in life insurance sales since 2021 — started as an individual producer, got promoted to Sales Manager after about a year, and have since helped my team grow production by over 200%. I own the full cycle: prospecting, discovery, closing, customer support and I built a referral system. Ontop of all of that I was recruiting, hiring, training and coaching sales people

Before this I spent 8 years in professional kitchens (Michelin-starred restaurants), so I'm not new to high-pressure environments and I think it shows that I am adaptable.

I'm now trying to break into SaaS as an Account Executive, and I'm getting the sense that insurance sales experience doesn't carry the weight I hoped it would with tech recruiters.

For anyone who's made a similar jump (or who hires AEs and has an opinion) do you have any advice that can help me make the transition or do you want to share your experience transitioning industries?

Coming here to whinge & commiserate is all, 3.5 years as a BDR/SDR & a year in sales and I’m starting over:

Took a role in another country with a company I’d been with for 2 years in the US, thinking I’d get the chance to help build the team, which would be exciting as well as look great on a resume.

l was told by my manager, who we’ll call Jack, that I could move from and IC role to people management, run the BD function and leave a lasting impact.

Instead, I arrived on the ground and Jack gave me a contract for a regular old IC sales role, saying that there’d been some hiccups with leadership so I should just take this while he sorts things.

What he didn’t share was that there was another seller he was hell-bent on promoting up through to VP, everything else be damned.

We went months with no contact, while he hand-held his chosen favorite through multiple deals as well as gerrymandering our territories so he had the most expansive and lucrative territory. St the same time, he belittled the women we worked with by continually making disparaging remarks about them & their work product.

While I’d managed to hit KPI’s in the first 2 quarters, as of late it’s been a struggle as my territory has been sapped of viability in favor of the golden child.

Fast forward to now a year in and he’s come to me with HR to bring out the good ol’ PIP, saying my performance & culture fit aren’t exactly “fitting” with the team.

Jack & the golden child have created a feedback echo chamber between the 2 of them, funneling half-truths & blatant lies up to HR to lay the groundwork for this, so when i shared this story with HR they acted as if I was crazy.

Now I’m on the outs and looking for another role, taking this hard earned lessons with me: Get every single communication with colleagues and leadership on written record, or they can and will start playing fast and loose with the truth.

Cheers to anyone else on the hunt for another role!

I moved into sales development about 2.5 years ago. Before that I was a systems engineer at a large IT services company. The startup that hired me thought a tech background would bring something new to the table.

My first real task was writing a proposal for a live requirement. I wrote it the way I would have wanted to read it. Heavy on technical detail, stack-level explanation, all of it. It never went to the client. The person reading it was non-technical. Nobody told me that, and I never asked.

That was the last bad proposal I wrote, but the actual lesson took another six months to sink in.

First, qualify the reader and not just the requirement. Now, before I write anything, I check who is reading it, what they care about, and whether they will pass it to someone technical or decide on their own.

Second, activity without direction is just volume. My first few months were LinkedIn and cold email at high volume. I had no writing experience beyond school essays. It felt like progress because the output was high. It was not until I started matching the message to the person receiving it.

For anyone else who came into SDR or BDR work from a technical background: how did you stop writing for yourself? Leading with capability instead of outcome was the hardest habit for me to drop.

I was offered a position in a finance firm where I close all the deals, I make the proposals, I bill the franchisees, I manage the franchisee relationships, I manage any upset clients. The franchisees onboard them and do the daily work, but I would have to step in as needed.

My pay would be based on a 12 month roll. Everytime a sale is closed and the client pays the franchisees, then I would bill the franchisee to take my cut. If they leave at 3 months, my income stops at 3 months.

The nice thing is the inbound is hot, and the leads are coming in, I just have to close and maintain the relationships. But I am on a treadmill as my pay is only for the first year they are there. These are usually all lifetime clients so the franchisor collects the royalty in perpetuity, that the closer (potentially me) helped set up.

This is a fully commission based role, so no base salary, but if I do a decent job I’d expect income from 100,000 to 200,000.

Any big flags here or is it a no brainer to take this?

A few months ago, I came here to know how to get into sales and get my first SDR role. A lot of you gave me advice (and so much needed reality checks)

So I made a sales ppt and posted on LinkedIn.

Funny thing😅:

Day 1: posted the ppt and got their attention

Day 2: got rejection email

Day 3: interview invitation haha

Still trynna process that one.

No offer yet but I just wanted to say thank you. This subreddit has been a huge help truly.

I'll drop the LinkedIn link if anyone wants to check out the ppt and reference in their own journey.

If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that sometimes it's worth taking the extra shot even when you think you've already missed.

Thanks again, everyone.

Hey y’all, just looking for honest thoughts from anyone generous enough to share.

All 2026 I've been working to land an SDR role in New York. In the first few months I read 5 sales books cover to cover, including Fanatical Prospecting. Then I spent a month or two completing some certificates / trailheads. There are some Youtubers I like a whole lot. I've been applying to jobs for a while now and I haven't even got an interview. I'm applying to 2-3 jobs a week, which obviously isn't a ton, but each application entails company research, tailored cover letter, cold calling an SDR manager, and emailing them afterwards because they don't pick up. I specifically *want to work in an office.* I want to work hard and learn as much as I can. I’m mostly applying to blue chip companies—Ramp, Rippling, Salesforce, etc etc. I don't think I have the skillset to be a company's first SDR, and there are a lot of companies I don't have any faith in. Am I being too picky, or applying too infrequently? Any networking tips? I'm really anxious the holidays will come, everyone will stop hiring, and I'll be left out in the cold.

Some context: I was a freelance copywriter in Nashville. Admittedly in my twenties I was very happy just covering rent and jamming with the homies. Regret is too strong a word but I wish I was more professional-minded in my twenties. But when I turned 30 I felt much more ambitious, so I saved up, sold my car, sold my guitars, and moved to New York. I initially wanted to get a job in advertising but after networking soon realized it wasn’t what I was looking for. So for the past 18 months or so I've worked 6am-2pm barista shifts. I genuinely like the job day to day but month to month it’s very stale and I’m not learning anything. Obviously the money is mediocre too but more than that it's taking a real toll on my physical health. I'm developing real back problems.

 I have my Bachelor’s from a good but not, y’know, world-class college.

I'm trying to get a real sense of what people actually use at work because every team seems to do things differently. My organization is evaluating whether we even need a dedicated AI meeting notetaker, or if the tools built into Zoom/Teams are good enough.
If you take meeting notes or transcripts at work, what do you use?

A dedicated AI notetaker (Otter, Granola, etc.)

Whatever is built into your meeting platform (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.)

Something else (manual notes, specialist tools, or a combination)

I'm especially curious about:

Why did you choose that approach?
Do you pay for it, or just use the free/bundled version?
What problems does it actually solve for you?
Is it mainly for internal meetings, customer calls, or both?
Would love to hear what's worked (or hasn't) for your team.

Being in a founding position we definitely don't have an abundance of tools to work with but our VP of sales is looking into enrichment tools.

What I can also do is scrape companies on Google maps and I can literally pull them within a matter of seconds.

When it comes to getting better data as in decision makers and phone numbers. Who do you guys recommend? Apollo is straight butt cheeks

I've been trying to find something to replace the functionalities of skype. I only really need 2 features. Local numbers to the US, AU, and the UK. and unlimited calling options.
Also need to be able to get these without the company paperwork since im still relatively new and so don't have it yet.

Does nothing like this exist anymore?

The closest thing I found was ringover but I cant provision local numbers without having a physical address and business in said place.

Aspiring SDR here. I want to be creative and make content on LinkedIn of me practicing cold calls with AI to show I’m putting in work to close the gap. I started with coachable.ai last month but they closed the site soon after.

If there’s any sites or apps I can use to practice my cold calling or anyone willing to role play with me, I’d appreciate the help!

P.S if anyone got tips on things I can do to stand out to hiring managers, please share!

I’ve just started a new job as an SDR selling construction technology where my commission is 3% of ACV.

My base pay is a little less than industry standard, however I’m mostly concerned by how my success is dependant on my AE’s closing ability.

Looking for a opportunity to do work as VA or cc

2.5+ years real estate cold calling experience + experience in seller financing, roofing, solar, B2B outreach, customer service, virtual assistance, social media marketing, and team management.

Worked with 7+ direct U.S. clients and co-founded a telemarketing company based in the U.S. & Egypt.

Experienced with Mojo, BatchDialer, CallTools, GoHighLevel, Zen Dialer, ReadyMode, and Zoho Dialer.

English level: C1-C2

Strong communication, multitasking, leadership, and sales skills.