How to land a remote sales job you aren't qualified for

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to a new video. This is a little bit of an interesting one. I'm hyped to bring back the Miro board visualization. I love taking complex topics that are somewhat hard to piece together in your mind and just like putting them out on a board and explaining why it makes sense. So before we get into things, you guys, my name is Dylan. If you don't know me, sales changed my life so much so that I built a sales media company to show people how sales can change their life. That is becauseofsales.com. For the last 3 years, I've been in the high-ticket niche specifically after I got out of roofing sales. I've helped countless people earn $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 per month and beyond. If you don't know me, that doesn't really mean anything. So I'm not going to expect that to hold much weight, but I've had employees personally working directly under me that I've paid $40,000 in a month. Same with the $30,000, the $20,000, the $10,000 and lower. But a little bit about me. I made my first 6 figures as a sales rep. I scaled a sales agency to $3 million in 8 months and then exited. I scaled a sales community over 7 figures in 2 years, which I still run today. And I've hosted in-person events, had 130 people fly from all over the world, a ticketed paid event to come to me in my event. I've worked pretty hard to maintain a decent reputation in the space. And today I wanna break down a really valuable topic, which is basically how you can land a job that you're not qualified for. I've done recruiting, I've worked with recruiters. I still work with sales reps who work with recruiters. Like I'm very in tune with what works and what gets people hired right now. One general rule of thumb that I'd like to set before we get into this, sales training does not get you hired. Doing things that get you hired gets you hired. A lot of people will tell you sales training gets you hired. Anyways, let's get into this. So let me preface this by saying every single person, not most people, every single person who is now in a high-paying sales job was at one point in time not in a sales job at all. So not having experience, not having any sales experience is not an excuse. And in order for any of this to make any sense, 3 things need to be understood as true. Here's the first thing. The first thing is this is how sales hires are made and kind of how they're graded. The odds are not even, and you can use this to your advantage. You're graded on paper, how you look, how you seem, or you're graded based on your personality. We'll get into this some more, but the odds are not even. The paper applicant is starting a little bit further behind than the person who is graded on their personality, let's say. So that's the first thing. Just assume that is true. From my knowledge, that is true. That is how we've made hiring decisions. That is how people get hired. Or here's a little example of what I mean. So if you are closer to being graded based on your personality or your person, you're being graded on things, many things, but things like energy, personality, referrals, word of mouth, work ethic, determination, things that aren't necessarily dependent on you having sales experience or being a salesperson. They're like character traits. If they don't know you and you are being graded more on that scale of like paper, no face to the name, literally words on a paper, just like everybody else. You're being graded on the resume, the LinkedIn application questionnaire, video submissions, an area where you can also get a leg up, but it's much more crowded. Thing number 3, as you get through the hiring process, the criteria on which you're graded on shifts closer to You being graded based on the person that you are and not who you are on paper. So this is why starting closer to being graded as a person is a huge leg up. You're closer to the finish line. Here's an example of how that moves over time. If you are an on-paper applicant and you are solely being judged by what is on a piece of paper, over time it will shift into like, who are you as a person? What is your character like? Are you someone that we want on the team? So you assume this to be true. So again, there's 2 ways to get hired here. You can be a solely paper applicant just like everybody else. You are graded by words on a paper and words on your LinkedIn profile, or you can be graded on the type of person that you are. We're gonna talk about being graded on the type of person that you are first and why this is easier, how you can manufacture this, and how it increases your odds at being successful. Then we're gonna talk about the hard one. So the easy way here is the person side of things, right? Being graded as a person through network referrals. You wanna optimize for this. And the way that you're gonna do this is by meeting as many relevant people as you possibly can over time. This gives you exposure to opportunities that you wouldn't have otherwise known about or had extended to you. Copy out here, this does not get you hired tomorrow, but by connecting with people at current or past jobs, going to events, meeting friends that do similar things, joining networks or communities, Doing outbound to people that you want to meet and scaling that and connecting with people over other interests like at the gym and who knows where, you can start to build this like network effect that really serves you. Now, this is what that's going to look like in practice, right? If we're looking at a job and there's applicants, there's going to be people that are solely being graded on what they've done on paper. There's going to be other people that are graded on who they know, how they were introed, How much they trust the person that introed and that kind of stuff. If we know that hiring decisions lean a little bit more towards personality and you are starting more towards the personality side of things, it is safe to say that you have a head start if you are approaching it from that angle. Now, what does that actually look like? Hiring manager, sales manager, let's call it. Here's the paper applicants. Notice how there's more of them. And then there's the person applicant. The person applicant is actually coming from someone that this manager already likes. Maybe it's someone they've worked with, someone they currently work with. This is someone that they hold in high regard. And naturally, you're going to get some of that downstream high regard, if you will, without even doing anything, because someone they like vouched for you, introduced you, recommended you. You're already starting ahead of anybody else that is just another applicant with no connection to the manager. So you can see how these numbers are kind of made up. If this person is liked by the hiring manager 90%, Some of that 90% will rub off onto you. However, if these applicants are not introduced by anyone and they're just one in a sea of many, like, there's really no consideration. I mean, there's consideration, but there's no, like, high regard, if you will. So not only are there less people in the already higher regarded category of being judged on the person you are, but you are simultaneously borrowing credibility from someone they have previously formed a positive opinion on. It is important that it is a positive opinion. And again, there's no way around the fact that you are starting with a If you see the illustration here, there could be however many applicants down here, they all have a farther distance to close than you who is coming off of a recommendation. Now let's make the distinction. These are for relatively entry role or easy to get sales roles. They could be appointment setting, closer, SDR, account executive, but those are the kinds of roles that we're talking about. If you are the referred person, but you have like literally no experience for a really advanced role, None of this matters. If you have some experience, maybe not the most, but you are referred, your odds skyrocket. So that's why being graded from the beginning on the person you are versus what you've done, trying to get there is super important, but not everyone can get there. Maybe you are in the middle of nowhere, maybe you're brand new to this. Again, it takes time to kind of build this up. So if we can't get there, how do we get ourselves the odds to be considered for something that there's a lot of competition for? We're gonna go head to head with other candidates. And in order to have success at this, you need to assume that the other candidates have more experience than you, because there's a saying out there: effort beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. So that's kind of the premise here. These people that are being graded solely on a paper application, they might have more experience, but if they put in lower effort, there's a chance they're perceived as not as experienced, and someone in the back of the pack or further back in the pack can jump over this person into consideration for this job. So You need to assume so that way you don't bullshit your way through this. Assume that you are not the best and most experienced applicant. Have belief that you could be, but be reasonable. So how do you win? So you win by maximizing every single component of the application funnel as it exists within your control. I'll show you some of these down here. I actually have a full YouTube video on this. I'll link it at the end, but you will incrementally increase the throughput of your application of your application funnel for higher odds of success. And, you know, with one job, it might not make a huge difference. With 20 jobs, it makes a big difference. With 50, way more, way more of a difference. This video actually got a good amount of views. It's a pretty good video. Here's the funnel though. There's really a few main parts and they're all weighted differently, but you have timing, the quality of your application, preparedness, interview, post-interview email follow-up, all that. Each one of these is a percentage you can like increase them by 10% each and the result at the end of the funnel will be insanely different, right? Because if the timing, if you just simply go from being the last person to apply to the first person, that's a big change. But like the throughput of the rest of the funnel is going to be so much more. While there is heavier weight to some of the things at the bottom of the funnel, the top of the funnel is so important because if you can get more in, you'll get more out. And also the only component of this funnel that you cannot reasonably beat other applicants on within 7 days of intentional effort is the experience. Okay. Experience is important, but if you are taking a skilled application approach, you can out-hustle others who are solely relying on their experience to move ahead in consideration. What I talked about earlier, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. Everything you need to know in that like application funnel, I'm going to link that not down below, but like in the next video at the end of this one. So check that out. The next best thing we can control, all the controllables in that application funnel. We cannot fake sales. I mean, maybe you could fake sales experience. I don't recommend it. I'm not a huge fan of lying. But how do we get attention on our experience, even if it is not super competitive with other applicants potentially? Right. And that's by showing results. It's by showing impact, quantifying this and doing it very detailed. Not a job description, numbers, rankings, percentages, increases, decreases, savings, profits. Detail that imply impact. So there's really like 4 types of roles here. I'll make myself bigger again. There's a non-customer-facing role, means you are not doing sales and you don't even talk to customers. That could be a construction job. We have some examples down below. That could be like, I'm a plumber that just goes under people's houses and fixes stuff. I don't ever see people. Then there's customer-facing. This could be like grocery store, retail. A lot of people will do this kind of stuff and think they don't have sales experience. Then there can be some sales experience, like you have a little bit, but not that much. Like, I did a summer of door-to-door solar, but I don't really know how that applies. And then there's like actual sales experience. You've been doing it for years. It's pretty much the same stuff, just more of it. Here's some examples. I'm not going to read all of these, but general rule of thumb, if it can't be spun as sales experience, it can be spun as you making an impact, assuming you weren't just absolute dogshit at your job. If you were, this might be harder. So like if you are literally just a construction laborer, Pause this and look at these questions. And if you can answer these and structure your resume to show and structure your introduction videos and how you discuss this on an interview and in messaging, you will have much, much, much higher odds. Same with cashier at the grocery store. One thing that you need to take note of is context. Numbers mean— numbers from another industry mean absolutely nothing without context. And I always tell people the best way to have— the best way to make sure that the experience that you have is perceived well is by providing Context as if you're trying to explain this to your 11-year-old nephew who knows nothing about what you do. Think about, okay, if I'm gonna talk to my nephew and I want my nephew to think I'm badass, how do I explain this to let him know that I'm badass? Example, this is an easy one, but let's say I'm in real estate, I'm selling houses and I wanna get into high-ticket sales. If I'm talking to the recruiter in high-ticket sales who has never sold houses before, me saying I sold $5 million in houses in my first year, Doesn't really mean anything. Like the number $5 million sounds good. Of course it does. But you pair that with sold $5 million in houses, landing me as the top rep out of 10 in a tier 1 city in my first year. That means something because like, while I may not understand exactly what $5 million means, I don't know if that's why you were the best or if that's why you got fired and that now you're looking for a job. I can understand what the top out of 10 reps means. Okay, that's universal language. Also, quota attainment is another one of those. So rankings on a team, quota attainment, comparing yourself to what is expected or what is normal. That's for sales experience. If it's not sales experience, we just need to show how we made an impact compared to other people who were doing the job or what was expected of us. This construction project manager, how increased production led to referrals and new business. Like, how many jobs did you as a project manager have referred to this company because you did your job so well? And how does that compare to other people? Because it's probably zero, right? So like just getting creative in the way that you compare what you did to other people or what was expected and how that benefited the company, whether it's, you know, sales is the low-hanging fruit because you can say numbers, rankings, quota percentages. But if it's not sales, like it can be savings, efficiency, training, team, like promotions. Like there's other ways to show that you are good at what you were doing. Above all, people want a good employee, not just a good sales rep. Moving on. So anyways, like all this resume stuff in the community that I run, we actually have a custom GPT you get access to. You would just put in your experience like new build construction project manager, copy and paste what you have in there, which is bad because there's no numbers, and it'll go through back and forth with you to like get quantified results and spit it back in a format that is good for high-ticket sales. It'll kind of make your resume go from something like this, which is not that good, into something like this, which is really dense, professional looking, and results driven. So if we again are just competing on paper and you're optimizing everything in that funnel and you're positioning your past experience in a way where it shows you're actually a good employee and potentially a good salesperson, you're moving from back of the pack to front of the pack without really changing much but giving a little bit of effort. But in doing that, you're getting closer to the goal, like the distance is shorter. I want you guys to see like these scenarios. There's 4 of them here. There's the one where you are just another paper applicant who didn't really take the time, doesn't really care too much, just tossed it out there. Good luck. There's the one where you put in that effort, but you're still just a paper applicant. You dress it up, you make it look good. You're still a paper applicant. There could be referrals. There could be people over here. We don't know. As far as we know on the other applicants, You're looking good. It's always a shot in the dark though. Then there is the straight referral applicant, assuming you have some relevant experience, like this person is going to start ahead of you. It doesn't matter who you are down here. And then there is the person who optimizes them all. That is the person who has the most direct path to being hired into the role that you want. If it's not you, it's somebody else. So this is the person that knows people, has exposure to these opportunities before most people, has an in with these opportunities and has everything optimized. They have the resume optimized. They are putting in full effort. Experience aside, they are putting their best foot forward in becoming the best applicant or in being the best applicant they possibly can. This is where you want to be. And so much of this is within your control. Some of it you can do quickly. Some of it you have to do over time. If you pair that with all this stuff, high volume of opportunity before others have a chance to apply, a thorough vetting process, on those opportunities. Powerful intro Loom video frameworks, examples and feedback, some resume writing tool, resume templates, resume review frameworks for applications, how to stand out, help researching companies and the decision makers before your interviews, referrals to current or former members of that team that might know about the opportunity or can tell you something that other people don't know to give you a leg up, interview prep through calls, positioning of your past experience, assistance crafting effective post-interview follow-up sequences, and Just knowing when to follow up with people, pretty much just like optimizing this job seeking funnel. If you can do that and you just have more high quality opportunities to apply to, it's hard to lose. I want to show you this right here. So we started sending trophies out to community members and this one just touched down to one of our boys in Canada, was in insurance sales, came into high ticket early 20s, been traveling the world, just got back to Canada, $30,000 a month. This time last year was not even in the space. This is what happens when you put all the things together and become this guy right here. When you have access to this many jobs, see dates here, 6-1, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3, with all these earnings, all different niches. I can link this sheet down below. You can see all the jobs that we post. You get results like this. Now, none of these are super, super crazy results, but these are just like Kind of everyday results. Franklin had his first $1,000 day. Paul landed his first job with a base pay, allows him to quit his day job. William's an Austin homie, just landed 2 offers within a week of joining, $5K to $8K on target earnings. Aaron had a $10K month, second time this year. Shout out Cereal Sales. These are pretty standard. If you want, like, honestly, I guess, bigger and better results from people that like already made $10K per month, already quit their job and doing well, they did $20K, they did $30K, however much, I have a playlist. It'll be linked at the end of the video as well. You can check that out right here. Just to recap, you guys, there's 2 main ways to go about being an applicant to a job. You can be someone who competes solely on who has a better on-paper application, which is something— it's a game you can win at. Or you can be connected to offers that nobody else knows about, or that they don't know about until like a week after you know about them. And you can play the game that way and get referred in. Franklin, the guy I just showed you, had his first $1K day I referred him into that role directly. I put— I made a group chat with him and the manager and not even 2 weeks in, $1,000 a day. Now, if you really want to win and you want to get into a role that you probably should not be in, do both. The shortcut to doing both of these things is joining our community. So I'm not going to talk about that too much. I showed you like a little bit of what is inside and how it can benefit you. Go down below to the first link in the description and watch the video there. There's a long video on that page. Answers all your questions. Landing a remote sales job is not— remote appointment setting or closing is not some fad business model. It doesn't rely on a million things to go right for you to have success. It is one of the oldest professions in the most popular medium of business today, which is online. All you got to do is learn how to sell, learn how to sell yourself, which is what we work on. Learn how to sell the product that you get onboarded to sell. Easy. That's it. I'm not going to sit here and make any kind of earnings claims. I'm not going to do anything crazy, promise you the moon and the stars. I don't know you. I don't know your situation. But I'm pretty confident that no matter where you are, we've worked with people to do it. We've worked with people to get that result. We're really big on managed expectations. Not here to sell a dream. While this might be a dream for you, I'm not here to sell you a dream that is not true. I'm here to help you get into a better vehicle than the one that you are currently in if you're not in a good one. Better is relative. Better does not just mean more money. Better means a lot of things. Going all the way to the top, I started because of sales, because sales changed my life for the better. It made me a better person, helped me afford everything that I have, made me the best version of myself. And I'm super passionate about helping other people do the same. So if you guys are watching this and you want to, I'm not gonna say guarantee, but you want a higher likelihood that you can become that person right in the middle that has the shortest path to being hired, go down below, first link in the description, watch the video and then talk to us. Thank you guys for watching. We got another video coming in like 3 days here. Go watch that one now if it's out. Otherwise, I'll see you then. Bye.