Stick or Twist series · Part one of three
Three Places You Could Be This Time Next Year
Choosing the right door to walk through.
“Look before you leap”. “He who hesitates is lost”. Pick one, because they cannot both be true.
“Haste makes waste”. “Strike while the iron is hot” are two parts of the same argument, wearing different coat, arriving at the opposite conclusion.
You know the shape of your own week by now, probably better than you'd like to. The 10pm emails that started as an exception four years ago have become just part of the job, somewhere along the way. It's the laptop that comes out straight after dinner that you and your partner have stopped even mentioning. Sunday evening, when something tightens in your chest before Monday has properly started, and you've stopped bringing it up because there's nothing new to say about it. None of this reads as a crisis, because it isn't one, it's the norm. Hours that used to belong to something else, something fulfilling, have added up over the years, and your body has started keeping score even if you haven't recognised it yet.
And somewhere within the tiredness, there's an itchiness. The sense that a different version of this life might be available to you. Nothing is sketched out, not even fully admitted to yet, just present in the way a draught is present in a room before you've worked out which window it's coming through.
Given all that, you'd think the next move should be obvious. It rarely is.
Some part of you was raised on “look before you leap”, and another part on “he who hesitates is lost”, and both are still arguing it out behind your ribs every time the subject comes up in your own head. We've all been handed aphorisms dressed up as ‘advice’ since primary school, all of it contradictory, so if a decision this size has left you stuck, it shouldn't be surprising and it certainly isn't a personal failing.
What follows isn't advice, then, or at least not the kind that tells you what to do. It's an honest account of the three real doors in front of you if you are thinking about leaving a sales director job right now, laid out plainly enough that whatever you choose, you'll at least have chosen it with your eyes open.
Door one: Stay
Start here, because it's the door most these sorts of articles skip past on the way to selling you something. Staying put is a genuinely good answer for plenty of senior salespeople, not a consolation prize for the ones who didn't have the nerve to leave. Maybe the business is about to get interesting again. Maybe you like your team more than you've let yourself admit under all the tiredness, or the pension is twelve years from paying out and this isn't the year to gamble with it. Or perhaps the truth is simply that you haven't finished what you started there yet. All of those are complete, adult reasons to stay exactly where you are, and none of them need defending to anyone.
The only dishonest version of staying is the one where you tell yourself it's temporary, for the third year running, without deciding anything.
If you stay, stay on purpose.
Door two: Move
Definitely, maybe.
The second door deserves the same fairness door one just had, rather than being waved through as the obvious, sensible choice. Maybe you simply want a change of scenery, and there's nothing wrong with wanting that on its own terms. Maybe someone came looking for you specifically, and being headhunted after a hard couple of years feels like exactly the validation you didn't know you needed. Maybe the number on the offer is genuinely head-turning, and at this point in your life, with a mortgage and school fees, that matters more than it once did. Maybe the company itself is doing something that sounds properly exciting, in a way yours currently doesn't. Maybe it even looks like the job you always pictured yourself doing.
Though it's worth asking whether it's the job you want now or the one you wanted at twenty-eight and never let go of.
And maybe, if you're honest with yourself, the real reason sits underneath all the others: a salary is a known quantity, and you're not in a position to bet your family's stability on your own venture. Again, every one of those is a real reason, and none of them needs defending to anyone.
But perhaps consider the probable realities of moving jobs. The new-desk smell wears off: most senior sales moves are a change of logo, not a change of life. Same targets dressed differently. Same board pressure, from a different board. Same Sunday evening, in a slightly nicer kitchen.
That isn't a reason never to move. Sometimes a new logo really is what's needed, and there's no shame in wanting one. It's simply worth naming clearly before you hand in your notice: if what's actually wearing you down is the shape of the job itself, rather than the specific company attached to it, a new job with the same shape will wear you down again, just on a slightly longer delay than you're hoping for.
Door three: Build
The third door is the one you might not have seriously looked behind yet. Behind this door there is a fork in the road, and before you open it, it's worth considering what those paths are and where they lead.
Path A: Alone
Going entirely alone has one real advantage, and it's a genuine one: the cost of starting is low. Beyond that, there's a lot to contend with.
From day one you're one more name in an already crowded field of independent consultants. Maybe that doesn't feel scary, but ask yourself how you felt, as an employee, on the occasions your own employer brought a consultant in. Slightly wary, probably. Not entirely convinced they were as invested in the outcome as the people who actually worked there. That reputation arrives with the title whether you've earned it or not, and shaking it takes a long time, if you manage it at all. Not carrying that reputation at all, simply by never being called a consultant in the first place, is one of the things a Sales Geek gets for free, and it tends to make the work itself more enjoyable too. Being properly embedded in a business is a far more engaging way to spend your week than circling one from the outside.
Going it entirely alone genuinely can be the right answer for a particular kind of ambition. If what you actually want is something low-key and low commitment, a way to keep a hand in as you ease toward retirement, then going it alone at low cost is a completely valid choice, and a common one. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play around the edges on your own terms for a few years. Why would there be?
Path B: Networked
Going with a network behind you follows the other path behind the same door. You will give up some of that low cost and total independence in exchange for a brand people already recognise and, in Sales Geek's case, more than 1,800 years of collective experience sitting across roughly 80 Geeks around the world, from Edinburgh to Exeter, Kuala Lumpur to Colorado.
You also walk in as a fractional sales leader rather than a consultant, which is a bigger difference than it sounds once you're the one sitting across the table from a small-business founder who has been burned by consultants before.
Even inside that choice, Sales Geek itself isn't one-size-fits-all. There's another fork in the road. Your Local Franchise suits someone who wants a respected, well-run business within their own bandwidth, serving their own community, without taking on a big team or chasing growth and scale. The Scale-Up Franchise suits someone who wants exactly that instead: a bigger operation, a team under them, something to eventually sell or hand on. Neither is the more ambitious choice, just built for a different life, and which one fits you is worth investigating. That's what the Franchise Fit Finder does, in about ninety seconds. Take the quiz:
Neither of these options are the brave choice with the other being the sensible one, whatever your inner voice, raised as it was on a lifetime of conflicting proverbs, might be telling you today.
They're just different routes to owning your own business, and worth knowing the difference before you pick.
Stick or Twist
Strip all three doors right back and there are really only two moves on the table: stick, or twist.
Door one is sticking. That's often the play when you feel like you have a good hand. Doors two and three are both versions of twisting, with very different stakes attached. Going entirely alone is twisting without fully knowing the hand you hold.
Choosing Sales Geek is twisting when you're already holding a five and a six.
Whether you twist at all, and what you make of it once you do, is still entirely up to you. But you are shifting your odds in your favour.
None of this is trying to talk you into anything. We hope we have presented your options, as we see them, honestly.
This is a map to what lies beyond the doors you may be facing and contemplating walking through at the moment, and gives an insight into what you might face, this time next year, if you finally scratch the itch. If you are thinking of door three and the forks in the road that lie in wait, whether the local or the scale-up version of our franchise offering fits best, then the Franchise Fit Finder takes ninety seconds and might crystallise your thinking a little more. Take the quiz:
Your Next Move
If you aren't sure about any of this, or you don't have a decision to make yet, our November webinar might be the best starting point. Read more about it and register by clicking the image below. Even if you can't attend live, still register, and we'll send you the recording as soon as it's done.
Click the image to register for our November webinar.
Fancy owning your own Geeky business?
If you love sales and want to use your experience to help businesses grow, a Sales Geek franchise could be your next chapter. Explore the model that best fits you and download a prospectus.
Or talk to the team at Sales Geek HQ (UK & rest of the world): +44 (0)1254 920 120 · [email protected]