Career Path Of A Sales Onboarding Training Manager At Salesforce
Ryan's career trajectory reveals a consistent progression from retail sales at Nordstrom's to sales leadership and training roles at Yelp, Google (working with "bigger name brands" like Coca-Cola), and currently Salesforce; this journey highlights a focus on sales, management, and training, showcasing their expertise in onboarding "15 to 30 people a month" and adapting to diverse sales environments, from advertising to software-as-a-service.
Sales, Onboarding, Training, Management, Technology
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Ryan Avolese
Sales Onboarding Trainer - Manager
Salesforce
University of Colorado
n/a
Business Management & Admin
Technology
Sales and Client Management
Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. From his early retail experience at Nordstrom, he learned fundamental sales skills.
2. His career progression from sales representative to sales management to sales training demonstrates a clear path for career growth.
3. His experience at different companies, such as Yelp and Google, showcases the transferability of sales and training skills across various industries (advertising and SaaS).
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in college? Please include any internships or jobs you've had before your current role.
During college, my first job was at Nordstrom's, working in retail sales in the shoe department. The following summer, I had an internship at Big Speak, a speakers bureau.
Big Speak manages public speakers and acts as an agency to help them book gigs. As a marketing assistant there, I handled email marketing, incoming leads, answered the phone, responded to clients, and helped match clients with the public speakers they represented. It was a great experience.
After college, I started my career at Yelp as an account executive, essentially an inside sales representative. I contacted businesses on Yelp, offering them advertising space to encourage upgrades and purchases. For example, I would call restaurants, like a Mexican restaurant, and offer them premier advertising space to be seen when people searched for Mexican food in their town.
I did that for a year before being promoted to a management role where I led a team of 10 to 15 account executives. It was my first time managing a team, and I did that for three years. Then, I moved into a sales training role, leading all of our AE onboarding and continued training at Yelp.
So, my progression was: sales rep, managing a team of sellers, and then into a sales training role. That was a great experience. I onboarded about 15 to 30 new hires a month. I loved my time at Yelp but eventually left to go to Google.
At Google, I handled onboarding and product training for Waze, the map app. We sold advertising space, primarily to brands like Chipotle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Starbucks. We sold them advertising space on the Waze app.
For instance, if someone was on a road trip from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, we would sell what were essentially digital billboards along the way. An ad might say, "Hey, Starbucks, at your next exit. Here's a coupon. Click here to reroute to Starbucks." That was a great experience, and I loved my time at Google.
Currently, I'm at Salesforce, doing the same thing: sales onboarding training and product training. It's a similar role but in a different space. This is SaaS, software as a service sales, versus advertising sales. We sell software subscriptions to different companies across all industries to help them optimize their internal processes.