For the last few months, I've been running a little experiment.

A pool of Inside Sales Rep volunteers & I have been sending sales job posts to one another. Each person would rate the posts with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down against this question, "Do you find this position and company interesting?"

The team reviewed posts for sales positions at 97 different companies.

And the results weren't pretty.

Less than 22% were deemed 'interesting' by at least one rep. Only 9% received two or more thumbs up.

Said another way, 91% of the job descriptions were so buzzword, boilerplate, and boring as not to warrant a second look. I've pulled together some of the highlights with comments from the reps themselves. Take a look below:

Every so often, someone I don't know will message me on LinkedIn asking for advice on interviewing for a sales position.

The questions are generally ‘What should I expect?’ ‘What might they ask?’ ‘What are they looking to hear?’ Much less frequently, they’ll ask ‘What can I do to stand out?’

Over the past year or so I've been working and reworking a response to that last one. I thought I'd share it here and get the community's feedback. Here goes:

A Sales Interview is a Sales Call

We are neck deep writing the 2014 edition of our BDR / SDR metrics and compensation report. This year we had 200+ valid responses and roughly 160 of those shared compensation data. A huge thank you to all who participated! 

Since 2007, we've reported SDR compensation as a national average. Every year, you've asked for more specifics (how about our region, our price point, our hiring profile, etc.).

Well, I finally have something to share.

This year, we isolated 6 variables that impact compensation. The result is our new BDR Compensation Calculator. See a sample 'output' below.

 
My friend and sales trainer extraordinaire, John Barrows, has a great line:

Wow. There’s an obvious problem here.

Companies need a pipeline of sales candidates; while many Universities are producing graduates who’ve never seen the word ‘sales’ on the curriculum. Full disclosure: my degree in 19^th century Russian literature left me unprepared for Day 1 at my first sales job.

Moving towards a solution

I recently met David McFarlane with the Entrepreneurship Center at UMass Boston. David has 25+ years in B2B with time as VP, Alliances, COO and most recently co-founder and CEO. He now serves as Director and Entrepreneur in Residence for the EC.

We had a good chat about ‘the state of sales education’ and David shared two ways that UMass Boston is addressing the problem.