If you're trying to break into remote sales with little to no track record, you've probably already noticed the obvious problem: every good offer wants experience, and you can't get experience without someone giving you a shot first. This post breaks down exactly how to get that shot from building a portfolio from scratch, to reaching out to recruiters the right way, to playing a longer game that most applicants never even think about. These are the actual tactics that get people hired fast, even when they're starting from zero.
Here's the honest reality of landing your first remote sales role: the best offers the ones with warm inbound leads, solid processes, and strong commission structures already have experienced reps lining up to apply. When a business owner is spending anywhere from $200 to $800 per call to fill a closer's calendar, they're not taking that risk lightly. If they're running five calls a day for a rep, that's potentially $10,000 a week in ad spend. Why would they hand that to someone with no track record when they have applicants with millions in proven cash collected?
That doesn't mean you can't land a great role. It means you have to approach the job search differently than everyone else. Most people submit an application and wait. They compete on credentials they don't have yet. The reps who land roles quickly sometimes within a week or two do something completely different. They skip the line. And the good news is that skipping the line is easier than it sounds, because almost nobody does it. If you're serious about breaking into commission sales jobs, the strategy matters more than your resume right now.
Before you even think about outreach, your application materials need to do some heavy lifting. The single most important asset you can build right now is a one minute video. Not a two minute video. Not a written cover letter. A tight, well produced, one minute video that demonstrates your communication skills, your energy, and your ability to sell yourself. Recruiters and hiring managers consistently say these videos are almost universally bad which means a genuinely good one immediately puts you in a small, memorable category.
Beyond the video, you need a portfolio. If you haven't been on any offers yet, that means recorded role plays. Do a full mock sales call. Record yourself handling common objections. Put together a short clip of you pitching in the niche you're targeting. These aren't perfect substitutes for real commission checks and tracking sheets, but they serve the same purpose: they give a hiring manager something concrete to evaluate. Words on a resume that say "I'm coachable" and "I'm a hard worker" mean nothing without evidence. A portfolio gives them evidence. And if you want to understand how the broader sales hiring process works from the employer's side, that context will help you position yourself more strategically.
Most people reach out to recruiters the wrong way. They DM them saying "Hey, I'm looking for a job, what do you have?" and then wait. What they've just done is dump all the work onto the recruiter who now has to review their profile, match their background to available offers, and play matchmaker. Recruiters are busy. They're getting dozens of these messages every day. They're going to skim for whoever has the highest cash collected and move on.
The move that actually works is doing the work for them. Go find their job board or list of active opportunities. Go through those offers. Identify one or two where your background even if it's limited genuinely maps to what they're looking for. Then reach out and tell them specifically why you'd be a strong fit for that particular role. Give them bullet points. Drop your portfolio link. Tell them you've already submitted the application and you'd love to get on an interview to showcase your skills. Now you've made their job easy. They either agree with your reasoning and book you in, or they don't but either way, you've stood out from every other person in their inbox. This approach works with individual recruiters, and it works even better when a recruiting company has multiple recruiters on their team connect with each one who's responsible for relevant offers.
The same logic applies when you go directly to the source. When you see a job posting whether it's on a job board, LinkedIn, or anywhere else don't just submit the application and call it done. Find the person responsible for hiring. That might be the CEO, the sales manager, or an HR lead. Use LinkedIn's people filter on the company page. Use Google or an AI tool to search for who holds that role. It takes five minutes and it separates you from every other applicant immediately.
Once you find them, send a direct message. Tell them you submitted an application, briefly explain why you'd be a strong fit for that specific offer, and drop your one minute video and portfolio. Keep it tight and specific not a generic pitch, but something that shows you actually read the offer and thought about it. This is exactly how to approach sales closer jobs at competitive companies. When a hiring manager sees someone who took the initiative to reach out, followed up, and made a clear case for themselves, they're seeing a preview of how that person will treat leads on their team. That's the whole point.
When a hiring manager or business owner gets your message, the first thing many of them do is look you up. They check your LinkedIn. They check your Facebook. They check whatever platform you're reaching out from. And if what they find doesn't match what you said in your one minute video, you've already lost credibility before the interview even happens.
You don't need to become a content creator. But your profile needs to show evidence that you are who you say you are. If you're targeting the marketing niche, post about marketing insights. Share what you're learning. Comment on other people's content with genuine, substantive responses not fire emojis, but actual expanded thoughts that show you understand the space. When the business owner you've been engaging with sees your DM, they already recognize your face. They feel a sense of reciprocity because you've been showing up consistently on their content. That feeling alone gets you interviews that a cold application never would.
One of the most underused tactics for building a long term sales career is what you might call an engagement list. Identify the top offers the companies where reps are making the kind of income you're working toward and start engaging with their content now, even if you're not ready to apply yet. Leave meaningful comments. Expand on their ideas. Show up consistently, two or three times a week, without sliding into their DMs prematurely.
Over weeks and months, you build genuine goodwill with the people who run those businesses. When they post a hiring opportunity six months from now, or when you reach out after building that relationship, you're not a stranger. You're someone they recognize and already associate with positive engagement in their space. This is how you play the long game in remote sales and it's how reps who started with nothing end up landing the highest paying roles. The short game and the long game aren't mutually exclusive. You can be actively applying and interviewing while simultaneously building brand equity with the companies you want to work with in the future.
Here's the part most people don't want to hear. A lot of reps with no experience look down on offers that don't have everything warm leads, great processes, high ticket products but then get frustrated when those same offers don't pick them. That's a contradiction worth sitting with. If you were the business owner, would you hire you? If you had applicants with proven track records and you had someone with two months of cold outreach experience who hasn't closed anything on record, what would you do?
The mistake isn't lacking experience. Everyone lacks experience at some point. The mistake is expecting premium opportunities without doing the premium work to earn them. The reps who break through fast are the ones who treat their job search like a sales process they follow up, they personalize their outreach, they build their portfolio proactively, and they show up consistently. The ones who don't get hired are the ones who apply and wait, who send generic DMs, and who think a decent resume is enough. It's not, especially when there's real competition. Do the extra work. It's genuinely not that hard because almost no one else does it.
RepSelect lists vetted remote sales opportunities with direct contact info so you can reach hiring managers before the competition does. Instead of submitting applications into a black hole, you get access to the decision makers directly which is exactly the strategy this entire post is about. Create your free RepSelect account and start reaching out to the right people today.
Start by building a portfolio of role play recordings, objection handling clips, and a strong one minute intro video. Then reach out directly to hiring managers and recruiters not just through applications, but through personalized DMs that explain why you're a fit for a specific offer. Follow up consistently and treat the job search like a sales process. Most people don't do this, which means you'll stand out immediately if you do.
Record yourself doing a full mock sales call, handling common objections, and delivering a pitch in your target niche. These role play recordings show hiring managers how you think and communicate, which is more useful than an empty resume. Pair them with a clean professional profile and a tight one minute video, and you have something concrete to share with every recruiter and business owner you reach out to.
Find their list of active opportunities, go through the offers yourself, and identify which one you're genuinely suited for. Then DM them explaining why you'd be a strong fit for that specific role with bullet points and your portfolio link. Don't ask them to do the matching work for you. When you make it easy for them to say yes, they're far more likely to book you in for an interview quickly.
Yes, and it's consistently underestimated. Hiring managers and recruiters report that most one minute videos they receive are poor quality low energy, vague, or poorly structured. A genuinely good video immediately sets you apart from the majority of applicants. It demonstrates communication skills, confidence, and the ability to sell yourself, which is exactly what any sales role requires.
It varies, but reps who use direct outreach, follow up consistently, and have a solid portfolio in place often land interviews within one to two weeks. Those who only submit applications and wait can take months or never hear back at all. The timeline is almost entirely determined by how proactive and strategic your outreach is, not just how good your resume looks.
Yes, and here's why: offers with cold outreach and less infrastructure are more likely to take a chance on someone without a proven track record. Building experience and a track record on those offers is what eventually gets you into the premium roles with inbound leads and strong infrastructure. Turning down those opportunities because they're not ideal is one of the most common mistakes new reps make it keeps them stuck instead of building the proof they need to move up.
Use LinkedIn's company search and filter by job title CEO, sales manager, head of sales, or HR. You can also search the company name in Google along with the role title to surface the right person. AI tools can help you identify names quickly too. Once you have a name, find them on LinkedIn or Facebook and send a personalized DM alongside your application. This combination of applying through the official channel and reaching out directly is what gets responses.
If you're ready to stop waiting in the application pile and start reaching out to the right people directly, sign up for RepSelect and get access to vetted remote sales opportunities with the contact info you need to move fast.
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