Drive, Mindset and Building a Career in Tech Sales with Nicholas Desilas

“You can’t teach drive, you can’t teach attitude, you can’t teach mindset, but you can learn the product, you can learn the tech.”

Nicholas Desilas did not follow the conventional route into technology sales.

After ten years in the military, where he worked in electronics engineering, he set his sights on the technology industry. The problem was that employers did not immediately see how his experience translated.

There were rejections, companies that did not have the time to train him and plenty of questions about what someone from the military could know about sales or cybersecurity.

Today, Nicholas is a Sales Manager at Palo Alto Networks, leading a team focused on some of the organisation’s largest enterprise customers while mentoring others hoping to build careers of their own.

Joining Till Heinimann on The Route to Networking podcast, Nicholas discussed how he broke through that initial barrier, why attitude can matter more than background and what separates those who simply sell technology from those who become trusted advisers to their customers.

Finding a way into tech

Technology had always interested Nicholas. He grew up tinkering with computers and later worked with electronics during his military career, but breaking into technology sales presented a different challenge.

When he first started applying, the response was often similar.

“Who is this guy? He’s from the military, he hasn’t sold before. What would he know about cybersecurity?”

Rather than continuing to send applications and hoping somebody would eventually say yes, Nicholas started looking at what he could do differently.

He attended technology meetups and cybersecurity webinars, found a senior sales leader willing to mentor him and enrolled on a cybersecurity fundamentals course.

“I asked if I could get some coaching from him. What would people want to hear in an interview? What should I study? What should I learn?”

That willingness to invest in himself ultimately helped him secure his opportunity.

It is something Nicholas now looks for when hiring others.

“If you’ve just applied for these jobs and haven’t done anything, that doesn’t really set you apart from someone who’s sought mentorship, who’s done a course, who’s really invested themselves and their time to break in.”

Attitude over background

Nicholas describes himself as a “left field” hire and believes the industry needs more people willing to take unconventional routes.

His own manager took a chance on him because of his attitude, ideas and vision, despite acknowledging that Nicholas was not somebody they would ordinarily have hired.

That experience continues to influence how he approaches recruitment today.

“No one’s born an astronaut, no one’s born to be in sales or cybersecurity.”

For Nicholas, technical knowledge can be developed. The qualities that are much harder to teach are drive, attitude and mindset.

Different backgrounds can also bring different ways of approaching problems. The challenge is learning how to translate previous experience into something a hiring manager understands.

For somebody leaving the military, for example, talking about deployments may mean little in isolation. Explaining how those experiences developed teamwork, resilience, integrity and the ability to operate under pressure tells a much more relevant story.

From military structure to corporate life

After ten years in the military, Nicholas admits the transition was a culture shock.

“I remember one of my first days when I first started, I looked around the room and said, ‘What have I done?’”

The military had offered structure, a clear career path and a close-knit environment. Corporate life felt very different.

Nicholas believes accepting that difference was an important part of moving forward.

He could leave military life behind without leaving behind everything it had taught him.

“You have to ultimately say that you have left that life behind and take the principles that you learned. I think about stuff around teamwork, integrity, collaboration, all those sorts of things.”

Gradually, he found communities within the organisation, became involved in different groups and projects and discovered the opportunities available to move between teams and roles.

It confirmed that he had made the right decision.

People still buy from people

Seven years into his technology career, one phrase makes considerably more sense to Nicholas than it did when he started.

“People buy off people.”

Technology companies may compete through products, platforms and innovation, but Nicholas believes relationships can still make the difference.

Can a customer trust you? Do you understand their problems? Will you communicate clearly? Can they depend on you when something goes wrong?

“If you’re available when everything’s going well, but when things are going bad, you’re nowhere to be seen, that tells a lot about the person.”

Consistency is what turns a salesperson into a trusted adviser.

If somebody promises to follow up after a meeting, Nicholas expects them to do it. Better still, they should return having thought about the problem and perhaps offer an alternative the customer had not considered.

“You start to become that trusted advisor, and it’s how do you do that consistently and not up and down on a curve when it suits.”

Be prepared, but be yourself

Mentoring people trying to enter the industry has shown Nicholas another common problem: candidates can become so focused on giving the perfect answer that they stop sounding like themselves.

His advice is simple.

“Please be authentic. People can read through stuff when you’re not yourself.”

Not knowing an answer is fine if someone is prepared to admit it and then find it. Mistakes are part of learning too.

“It’s okay to make mistakes. If you don’t fail, you’ll never succeed.”

Nicholas also warns against allowing rejection to become a verdict on whether somebody belongs in the industry.

Hundreds of people may apply for a role. One rejection simply means that particular opportunity was not the right fit. 

Instead, he recommends being clear about the three things you want an interviewer to remember about you and learning how to tell your own story naturally.

Even an interview unlikely to result in an offer can become valuable practice for the one that eventually does.

An industry that does not stand still

Looking towards the future, Nicholas sees enormous opportunity across technology.

AI, robotics and agents are already changing how people work, and he expects entirely new roles to emerge that do not exist today.

“I think there’s jobs that are going to be created that we don’t even know about yet.”

He also encourages people already working in technology not to become trapped by the sector in which they started.

Experience in cybersecurity, cloud or storage can potentially transfer into data, AI and other adjacent markets. Moving into something unfamiliar can introduce new ways of thinking and new ways of solving customer problems.

The same applies inside technology companies themselves.

Sales is only one part of the ecosystem. Pre-sales, post-sales, engineering, marketing and numerous other functions can all provide different career paths.

Using AI to become more valuable

Asked which skills will matter most over the next three to five years, Nicholas was clear that professionals need to embrace AI in their everyday work.

For him, that goes beyond simply knowing how to use an AI tool.

It is about becoming more efficient, finding information faster and using technology to create value beyond the boundaries of your own role.

“You’re not in your siloed little space trying to do your own thing, but you’re able to think of ideas and you might even vibe code an app, as an example, that creates more efficiency for a department that you work alongside.”

That mindset can make somebody more valuable to customers, colleagues and the wider organisation.

As technology evolves, cybersecurity itself will continue evolving with it. Nicholas has already watched the conversation move from network security to cloud security and now into the AI era.

What comes next is impossible to predict.

That, for him, is part of the attraction.

Put your hand up

Till asked Nicholas to leave listeners with one lesson from his journey.

His answer brought together much of their conversation.

“Always put your hand up to do something above and beyond, even if it is a stretch.”

Nicholas believes some of the greatest development happens when people deliberately put themselves into situations where they do not already know what to do.

“The way you’re going to learn is by being put in a position that’s uncomfortable, that’s challenging, that you’re not sure of what to do.”

That could mean taking on a project outside your normal responsibilities, learning another part of the business or simply approaching someone more senior and asking a question.

Nicholas wishes he had understood that final point earlier.

“Don’t be scared to talk to people. Even as senior as they may be, they’re just people.”

The titles can be intimidating. The experience sitting behind those titles can also be invaluable if someone is prepared to introduce themselves and ask.

Quick Fire with Nicholas Desilas

Before wrapping up, Till put Nicholas through the podcast’s Quick Fire Round, covering:

• The best career advice he has ever received
• The one thing people think they need to get into tech sales but actually do not
• His proudest career moment
• The advice he would give himself after leaving the military

You will have to listen to the episode to hear all his answers, including the qualification Nicholas believes people definitely do not need to build a successful career in tech sales.

Keep pushing beyond what is comfortable

Nicholas’s journey from the military into cybersecurity sales was not straightforward.

He faced rejection, had to learn how to translate his experience and entered an environment that initially felt completely unfamiliar.

But the principles that helped him break into the industry are the same ones he now uses as a leader: invest in yourself, stay authentic, show up consistently, ask questions and do not wait until you feel completely ready before taking on something new.

Technology will keep changing. New products, companies and even entirely new careers will emerge alongside it.

For Nicholas, the opportunity belongs to the people prepared to keep learning, keep adapting and keep putting their hands up for the challenges that stretch them.

Listen to the full episode of The Route to Networking to hear Nicholas Desilas’s complete story, his Quick Fire answers and more from his conversation with Till Heinimann.