Business
I Got Promoted to VP of Sales at 29. Here’s how.
In this episode, Armon Ferroque shares his journey to becoming a VP of Sales at just 29, despite not starting his career in sales. He outlines key strategies for rapid career advancement in the sales ...
I Got Promoted to VP of Sales at 29. Here’s how.
Business •
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Interactive Transcript
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I'm not talking be like 10% better than everyone else.
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If you want to jump people in your career,
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you have to be so far ahead of them
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that it would literally be insulting to not promote you.
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I became a VP of sales at age 29,
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and guess what?
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I didn't even start my career in sales.
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And so I was already behind,
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but I learned how to get promoted way faster
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than most people do in sales.
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And today, my goal is to break that down for you.
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If we haven't met before, my name is Armon Ferroque.
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And here's what my sales trajectory looked like.
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At age 20, I got my first sales internship,
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selling insurance, where I became a top 2% sales rep in the country.
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But then I realized I hated insurance sales.
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And so I actually left.
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I worked in finance for three years from ages 21 to 24.
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And then my best friend and co-founder, Nick,
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got into sales and was making more money than me.
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And so I decided that would be a good idea.
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I got back into sales.
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I became a mid-market AE at a company called CARDA.
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And I was there from ages 24 to 27.
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And in those three years, I climbed from mid-market AE
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to director of sales.
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I was a mid-market AE for one year.
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Then I became a senior manager of sales development,
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where I was running the whole sales development
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or managing managers for a year.
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And then I did so well there that I ultimately became
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a director of sales running all of SMB sales
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and sales development.
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An org of about 40 or 50 at the age of 27.
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At which point, I was poached to join a company called Pave,
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where I was there at ninth employee.
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And there was one other sales rep.
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And I hired out a team of 40 between sales and marketing
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over two years, which eventually led me to become their VP
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of sales before I left to go full-time on this business.
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So there are four steps that I will walk through
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that will make this path seem semi-repeatable.
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They are one, be so good that you cannot be ignored.
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Two, be better than the next reps at the next job.
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Three, run your promotion sales cycle,
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and then four, pick the right company,
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which might be the most important one.
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I'm going to give a huge disclaimer on the front end of this.
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If you are the rep who's doing like 89% of your quota,
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or you're number three on the team,
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or in a really good month, your number two,
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but then some months, your number four or five,
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like this advice is a force multiplier for your performance.
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If you're getting average performance,
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this might give you slightly above average career trajectory.
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You might be able to get promoted two months faster
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or something like that.
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But the reality is, if you want to jump quick,
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or even skip levels, or get promoted in nine months or six months,
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you've got to be so stupidly better than everyone else.
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And I think there are way too many people who spend too much time
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on the mechanics of, oh, this company won't promote me.
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Instead of thinking, how can I be so good
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that it would literally be an insult to promote someone over me?
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So I'll give that disclaimer, old man angry up front.
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Let's go in a step number one, which is be so good.
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You can't be ignored.
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There are three ways that I think about this.
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Number one is you work harder than everyone else.
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Number two is you learn faster than anyone else.
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And then number three is you figure out
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how to become a sales floor legend.
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So when I was at Carta, when I joined as a mid market AE,
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they were in the middle of a transition
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from inbound to outbound.
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And so all of the sales reps on the floor hated cold calling.
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And I was part of the new reps that were brought
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onto double the team size.
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So inbound was drying up, but like no one was changing the behavior.
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They were also nice, fat and happy,
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and working nine to five,
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and refused to go and pick up the phone.
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And so I worked eight to seven every single day
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for the first nine months that I was at Carta.
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And I showed up, and at 8.30 or nine,
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I would start picking up the phone.
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And before the VP of sales even got situated at his desk,
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I was the guy who was dialing down folks.
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And I was booking three, four, five meetings alone on the phone.
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Usually eight outbound meetings total per week as a rep.
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That was more than most reps were booking in a month.
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I was frankly just willing to work 10 times harder
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than anyone else at the thing that no one wanted to do.
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From there outside of my job,
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today's show is brought to you by Outreach,
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which helps you increase seller productivity,
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coach calls more precisely, and forecast more accurately,
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using a platform powered by AI agents.
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If you're running a tape review,
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you're going to stop at three different points.
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Number one, when the prospect monologues ask your reps,
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what did we pull out that was important?
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From there, ask your reps, what should we say or ask next,
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and then click play and recap what did the rep do
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versus what we thought they should do.
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Our friends at Outreach built a 30-MPC resource hub
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where you can grab this play and an unreasonable
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about more links on the show notes.
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Today's show is brought to you by Text Us,
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which helps you move your deals forward faster when timing matters.
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The fastest way to move a feel forward
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is to avoid getting stuck in the inbox.
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And so my favorite way to get on a text basis
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is literally when your prospect requests a demo,
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I would literally be like practicing my opener on the way to work.
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I would be listening to podcasts on the way to work.
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I would listen to podcasts like this one on the way home.
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And like sales is one of these weird careers folks
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where like the skills literally pay the bills.
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Like if you acquire a new skill in sales,
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like a cold call opener,
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you can use that to book another meeting
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that you wouldn't have booked tomorrow.
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And that meeting will make you money
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because you listen to a podcast for 30 minutes.
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Like it's amazing.
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Like if you learn a negotiation trick,
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you could use it in a negotiation tomorrow
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and like save $5,000 on your next deal.
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And it was amazing.
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Like how many people would complain about like my manager isn't developing me
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or the enablement trainings are good.
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I'm like, I actually would rather have it be that way.
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You know why?
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Because I want everyone else to get like the really bad training
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if I'm competing on a sales floor.
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And like I'm going to go find the good training.
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If everyone's getting like really, really, really good training at the job,
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I'm like shoot like, how am I going to get better training elsewhere?
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This is actually like an opportunity to differentiate yourself
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if your company doesn't train you well.
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Sometimes like it pays to be a shark and a swimming pool
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when all the other people in the swimming pool are kind of lazy.
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So that's number two, which is learn.
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And then number three is a lot of people really,
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really, really underestimate the power of having a super power on a sales floor.
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And the reality is not every sales person is good at everything.
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And that is myself included, especially early on in my career.
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I honestly kind of sucked at discovery.
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I went from insurance straight to mid market AE,
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which is another story.
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I never really ran a consultative deal cycle.
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I had to learn that stuff later on.
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Like multi-threading, no idea how it worked or anything like that.
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But when the new VP of sales came in and they saw my numbers,
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I had literally done 300% of my ramp quota in my first quarter.
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And then the next two quarters, I was the number one rep way earlier
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than anyone else had become before.
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He was like, the reason that that person is successful is because,
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like, Arma knows how to prospect.
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The director of SDR quit.
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And he was like, I only know one person at this company
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that can prospect that well, and it's that guy.
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And that's how I actually got promoted to senior manager of sales development,
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where I was managing the existing SDR managers.
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The current SDR managers were not ready to go to that next step.
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But I had proven that I had a certain name and notoriety
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across the sales floor that got me known as the prospecting guy.
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I'm not talking be like 10% better than everyone else.
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If you want to jump people in your career,
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you have to be so far ahead of them that it would literally be insulting
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to not promote you.
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The second step is you can't just be good at your current job.
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You have to be better than the next reps at the next job.
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So if you're going from SDR to SMB, or if you're going from SMB AE
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to mid market AE, you need to be better than the midline
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of the reps who are in that next level.
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In other words, my litmus test was if I add this person to this team in six months,
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does quota attainment go up or down?
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If it goes down, then I do not want this person on my team.
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I don't care how good of an SDR you are.
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If you can only prospect, but you can't do anything related to closing whatsoever,
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like you can't be unapologetically bad at the stuff that is required to do the new job.
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And so what I always tell people is in your first six months,
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focus on nothing but like destroying the current job.
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And like don't even come close to asking for a promotion.
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And then from there, from month six to nine, that's when you can start
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planning for the next job.
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The way you do this is you usually want to go to senior reps who are on that team,
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like get the good reps on the next team up and get them running mock discoveries with you.
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Get them riding along for deals with you.
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Because I'll cover this in step three, those are the people who are going to be pushing on
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the sales manager. So if I have like the number one mid market rep is mentoring me.
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The number one mid market rep has a lot of leverage with the sales manager of mid market.
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And if I'm trying to get onto that team, that sales manager is going to go to the number one rep
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and be like, Hey, do you think Armand's ready? Do you think Jamie's ready?
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And if I've done my job right over the last three months, I like,
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that kid has gone through my meat grinder. And they're going to like be like,
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no, that's my guy. Like you got to promote back like they're going to take responsibility
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for your career path thing. And like that's what you want is like, don't get me wrong.
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Like you need to do your own pushing. But the best promotion cycles are when like everyone else
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is doing that pushing for you. And it's like you can just like focus on like, look at me.
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I'm doing such a great job. And they can be the ones who are like, yo, you got to get this guy
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in the seat. And then step number three is you need to run your promotion sales cycle.
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So to be clear, this is when it gets a little bit into like managing the internal politics,
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you only get the right to manage the internal politics. If you're better than everyone
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else at your current job, and you're better than the midline at the next job. But if those two
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things are true, remember months 0 to 6 are you're just focused on like doing the job at month 6.
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That's when I like to call my shot with my manager. And what I mean by calling your shot is you
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kind of need to apply pressure upwards on management and let them know that you like know you're
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crushing it. And you're grateful for the opportunity. But you are cognizant of your market value.
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And you want to start thinking about what that next role is. Sales managers, no one ever teaches you
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how to do your job. If you've ever wondered, ah, why are my pipeline reviews useless?
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Should I actually hire this person? Or am I going to have to fire them in three months?
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Or maybe my forecast is like a finger in the air exercise where I'm totally guessing.
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Guess what? You're probably a little bit like me and you had to figure out this stuff from scratch.
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Fortunately, I partnered up with the best sales leader in the game today. His name is Mark
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Cossacklow. He led outreach from 0 to 250 million plus in ARR. And he has graduated eight sales managers
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who just became VPs. And that is through his three step sales management operating system. There's
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a special discount code in the comments. I guarantee it will be the best sales management resource
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you've ever used in your life. Today's show is brought to you by seismic the global leader in AI
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powered enablement before every call paste these things into a document. The last call notes from
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the CRM to company news headlines from Google News. The last LinkedIn post through your champion
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and one competitor positioning from BattleCard put that side by side on your zoom so you can
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reference it in the first minute of your sales call. That is how you set the tone. Folks, we put
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together a full guide with our friends at seismic on how to prep run and follow up on meetings like a
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pro. Check it out on the show notes. And so I'll usually broach a conversation with my manager.
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That sounds something like this. Like, Hey, how do you feel like I've been doing over the last year?
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They'll say you've been doing really, really good. Awesome. I wanted to do a little bit of a retro.
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I feel like I've been really, really good here. I think this is what it takes for me to get to the
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next level. I know I still have tons to learn, but I'm curious like in your eyes, like you know
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what my career goals are. I want to be an S NBA. I want to be a mid market A and based on how I'm
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doing in this role, I'm curious, could you help me build out a plan to close any gaps that I have
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to get to the next role? Notice, you're not asking for a promotion. You're asking for advice. Ask for
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advice and then they'll usually be like, I want to help this kid. If you ask for a promotion,
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sometimes people out of spite will be like, they're getting too impatient. Like, hold on, slow down.
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You're not aware of the fact that you're not actually ready for this job. That's how you basically
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set up your plan. If you've done this correct, the next three months, months six to nine, should look
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like this. You've come up with a list of things that you need to get good at. Maybe it's discovery,
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maybe it's multi-threading and mid market, maybe it's advanced business cases or executive
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presence when you start to get to enterprise. You've come up with a plan with your manager of these
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are the skills and these are the tests that I would like you to help me run to get good at that.
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So for example, if I had a really good SDR, I'd be like, awesome. Now what we're going to do is I want
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you to go watch these discovery tapes and then every two weeks you and I are going to run a mock
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discovery together and that's going to be your test for you to show me how far you've come in
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discovery. And so the magic of this is you've basically like set the exit criteria for what it takes
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to get to the next job. You've set a plan to get there and now for the next three months, you're
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just going to call back to it. You're just going to keep calling back to it. So every two weeks,
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three weeks in your one-on-one, you're going to give them an update and you're going to own your
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own professional development plan. A lot of reps are like, why won't my team promote me? Why won't
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my team develop me? Well, guess what? How about you take your own career path into your own plans
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and you pull what's needed from your manager and you make their job easy? That's called managing
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up folks. From there, you have months six to nine where you're like learning the next job and then
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months nine to 12 are planning the transition. So at the end of nine months, usually that's when
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you can start to pick up the heat and you can be like, hey, so like, am I at everything in this plan
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and again, if you are good at your job, you're like pretty much better than most people in the
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midline of the next one and the mid-market AEs who are on the team that you want to get onto.
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They're already telling your manager to like, yeah, I think we all know like, you know, this gal over
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here, she would smoke the entire like bottom half of this team and honestly, like, I've probably
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given like six months before they're giving me a run for my money, you know? That's how you know
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how this is going. Well, and so now you actually have the opportunity to make your ask. And so
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usually I'll ask to do like our normal like quarterly performance review or like, can we do our
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quarterly retro just because I know we've been working on these skills for the last three months.
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And I'll start and I'll be like, I have a self reflection, but I'm curious from your perspective,
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like, how am I doing both in this role and then in terms of my readiness for the next one?
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And they'll usually, if you've done a good job, they will usually say like, you're doing pretty good.
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And at this point, I do like to make an explicit ask where I'll say something like, look, I know
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that you've got internal precedent and all these other things going on when it comes to promotions.
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But like, I think you know where my career goals are and I've like worked really, really, really hard.
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And I hope you can see I'm like putting in the hours outside of the job to get ready for that.
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And I'm like, shown into my numbers too. What would it look like for me to make that jump
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into the next role? Like, is there an interview process? Is there an internal promotion cycle going
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on? Do you have a sense of like, when the next slot is opening up, do we get on the same side of the
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table just because like, I really, really, really care about this for like pushing my career
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to a sword? And usually you can try to get them on the same side of the table and you'll get
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reality from your manager. So at this point, look, you're not going to get an instant promotional
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spot. But here's why it is really important to make the ask. I have been part of these
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promotion boardrooms before where every three, six months, they look at all the people on the team
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and they're like, here's who should or shouldn't be promoted. And there are times where they'll
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look at a rep and they'll be like, this rep is really, really good. But I think they're comfortable
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for now. Or I don't think they're getting too antsy. And it sucks folks. But if you are not the
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squeaky wheel sometimes, people will be like, I think that person can sit and seat for like another
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six months because you haven't done anything to show the world that you know your market value
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and that you know you're ready for the next role. In a dream world, ideally everyone's like, great,
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I'm going to do the right thing for Mr and Mrs. Rap and the moment they start performing well,
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I'm going to promote them. But the reality is like, that's not how life works. So figure out how
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to work the game. All right. Today's show is brought to you by Weiser, which makes sure the
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right habits show up in every sales call so your reps can focus on winning more deals. Now before
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any first discovery call, I look up the specific name of the eventual decision maker. That way,
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I can casually name drop them when talking about multi threading by saying something like,
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you know, my guess is Emma's going to want to eventually see how this impacts her team. Huh.
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Now this move and our full 30 NBC discovery framework is built directly into Weiser's platform,
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which you can try for free at the link in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Win AI,
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the vibe selling platform that gives you live guidance on your calls, live answers to customer
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questions and fills your CRM out for you to kick off every first discovery call. The first
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question I ask is, Armand, I have to imagine there's a lot of sales people to reach out to you.
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And I hope you don't take calls with every single one of them. What prompted you to agree to meet
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with me today? Now we put together a four step playbook to president's club sales calls with
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Win AI that you can get for free at the link in the show notes. So you make your ask and the next time
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they go into their promotion reviews, usually they'll be like, Hey, like this person's like starting
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to make some noise about like getting moving and I've talked to other people on the team. They're
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putting in all the work. They're not being annoying about it. They haven't asked me a million times,
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but like we should probably like start to put some sort of process in place. So folks, here's a
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secret. At step three, you have everything you need to be at the front of the promotion line.
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Problem is that doesn't guarantee that you actually get into the club that only gets you to the
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front of the line. But if the club is at full capacity, they're not going to let anyone in. So step
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four is you have to actually pick the right company. There are two things that need to happen
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for you to get promoted quickly. Number one, there needs to be a slot. And in order for there to be
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a slot, the only way that there is a slot is either the company is growing so that people are like
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actually moving up and more roles are being opened up or people are being let go because they're
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not performing. But the reality is if people are performing, oftentimes they won't reopen a slot
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when they let someone go because they're like, geez, like maybe we actually need to like decrease
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the number of reps in the segment. So there's a completely separate video that we did on like
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picking a good company. But the TLDR is you need to find a company that is growing. That is usually
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why I recommend people join companies in the growth stages. So usually between like series B and
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like just pre IPO because number one, those companies are growing pretty quickly. But the number two,
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the second criteria of a good company is they believe in acceleration. Usually companies that are
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pre IPO or companies that like haven't gotten public yet are willing to bend on traditional
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promotion timelines. And the reason for that is they're growing so quickly that they have to
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fill the seats. And so they'd rather fill those seats with internal talent and then like higher
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junior talent from the bottom up. But then they're just a little bit less rigid in their corporate
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structure. Like if you go to Oracle or Salesforce, love those companies. But like they have like a
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pretty regimented timeline where it's like two years per roll. But if you go to like a series C
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startup that's like gone from 200 million in revenue to 50 million in revenue in a single year,
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they're going to be like, I got to bring the people up with this ship. Like it's a rising ship
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that like everyone gets to benefit from. So like try to find those companies. So again, I'm not going
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to go through like the entire criteria you use. We did another video on that like right over here
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down in the show notes on like how to not pick a crappy company in sales. Like go watch that video
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and hopefully it'll help you out folks. So folks, that's a wrap. If this was helpful, my guess is
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you are trying to get ready for one of two roles. Either one, it's a closing role or a more sophisticated
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closing role, at which case you probably need to master discovery or number two, you're trying to
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become a sales leader. And that's actually the harder role to prepare for. So I've got two things
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for you both are discount codes. Number one is we have our entire discovery course. If you are an
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SDR trying to go into SMB, you will be like a billion light years ahead of everyone else. It will
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give you everything you need in one-on-one on discovery. But frankly, it will also give you
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most of the 201 stuff, if not some of the 301 stuff, in terms of like advanced question tactics,
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how to find six figure problems instead of five figure problems. So whether you're an SDR going
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SMB or an SMB rep going to mid market or frankly a mid market rep trying to like get six and seven
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figure problems in enterprise, that course is like the gold standard on all things discovery.
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And the number two mark is the single sales leader who's taught me more than anything else.
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Mark Cosglo led outreach from zero to 250 million in ARR as their first employee all the way up
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until VP of sales and beyond. Like he broke down his entire sales management operating system
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from forecasting to dealer reviews to hiring to everything else in what is probably the best sales
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leadership course I've ever seen. So there are discount codes to both of those courses down below,
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go check them out and we will see you on the next one. Today's show is brought to you by a line
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which helps you stop losing deals in rooms you're not even in. So before an internal exact
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presentation, I don't just like, oh my champion nails the pitch, I co-write the script with them.
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In other words, I give them bullet points that are tied to their priorities, ROI callouts for finance
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and talk tracks for potential objections because most champions will just talk about their problems
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which are usually not business problems. So I put together a guide with our friends at aligned
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on how to win complex deals including things like building champions. The link to get it is for free
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in the show notes. Today's tactic is brought to you by seamless which is built to help you connect
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with more prospects and close more deals faster. So when someone raises around they get 3000 emails
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saying congrats on the round. So instead try to attach yourself to a priority that came out of the
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announcement like a push to grow revenue or a launch of new products or expanding to a new geo.
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Seamless build a guide with the top five strategies to engage prospects and boost revenue using
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tactics just like this one. Grab it in the show notes.
Topics Covered
sales career advancement
promote faster in sales
sales performance tips
climbing the sales ladder
become a top sales rep
sales development strategies
effective sales techniques
sales promotion cycle
achieving sales goals
sales skills improvement
career growth in sales
top sales rep qualities
sales floor success
effective prospecting methods
sales leadership development