Does serving a guest at a great hotel have transferable skills to building a sales career in Israel?
Ask Erik Stillpass and the answer will be clear.
Erik has built a career that has taken him from hospitality and luxury retail to sales development, sales management, Customer Success, consulting and customer experience at international technology companies. On paper, these can look like very different jobs. Look more closely, however, and there is a consistent skill running through all of them: understanding people, figuring out what they need, showing them possibilities they might not have considered, solving problems and making sure they ultimately succeed.
These are not necessarily skills that come from a particular degree or course of study. They are interpersonal, communication and problem-solving abilities that can be developed through years of working with people. Erik's career is an interesting example of what can happen when those talents are harnessed within Israel's B2B high-tech ecosystem.
Learning to Delight the Customer
Erik began his career in hospitality, including working in guest services at The Ritz-Carlton. Great hospitality is about much more than fulfilling a request. The memorable experiences happen when someone understands what a guest is trying to accomplish and finds a way to make the experience better than expected.
Sometimes that means solving a problem. Sometimes it means anticipating a need. Sometimes it means introducing an option the guest did not even know was available. In each case, the objective is similar: understand the person in front of you and find a way to delight them.
Erik continued developing those skills when he became a Sales Executive at Louis Vuitton. There was now a clearer commercial component to the relationship, but successful selling still depended heavily on understanding the customer. Product knowledge mattered because it allowed him to connect what Louis Vuitton offered with what an individual customer actually wanted.
This combination of selling and service would become particularly valuable in the next stage of his career.
Taking Those Skills Into Israeli High-Tech
In 2021, Erik entered high-tech as a Sales Development Representative at Gravyty. The move required him to learn a new industry, new products, B2B sales processes and the language of technology. What he did not have to start from scratch was the ability to communicate with people, ask questions, establish trust and understand what mattered to them.
This is particularly relevant in Israel's high-tech environment. Many Israeli technology companies are built around identifying difficult problems and developing new ways to solve them for customers around the world. In B2B sales, that means the salesperson frequently has to do more than present a familiar product. They have to understand a customer's problem, explain a technology the customer may never have used before and help that person imagine a better way of working. Erik joined Salesclass to help build those skills - we are proud to be part of his journey!
That creates a natural opportunity for someone with Erik's strengths. The technology can be learned, as can the terminology, sales process and tools. The ability to listen, communicate, solve problems and make another person feel understood is harder to teach. Combining those abilities with Israel's international B2B technology environment allowed Erik to apply an existing talent to increasingly complex business problems and customers.
From Individual SDR to Team Manager
Within ten months of entering Gravyty as an SDR, Erik progressed to Team Manager, Business Development. His move demonstrates something important about the SDR position: it can be an entry point into high-tech rather than a destination.
As an individual SDR, Erik was responsible for his own conversations, prospects and opportunities. As a manager, he had to help other people become successful at those same things. His interpersonal skills were still central, but they were now being applied differently. Understanding people meant understanding his team as well as his prospects. Communication included coaching and motivation. Problem solving included helping other people work through their challenges and become better at their jobs.
Erik spent more than a year and a half managing Business Development. In less than three years after leaving luxury retail, he had gone from entering high-tech as an individual sales contributor to managing a technology sales team.
From Winning Customers to Making Them Successful
Erik's next move at Gravyty was into Customer Success. It may look like a change of direction from sales management, but it actually makes the continuity in his career even clearer.
Sales is ultimately about helping someone understand why a product or solution can make something better. Customer Success takes that promise further by making sure it actually happens. A strong Customer Success Manager needs to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish, help them discover capabilities they may not have realized were available, solve problems along the way and ensure that the technology delivers meaningful value.
There is a direct line back to hospitality. The guest at a great hotel does not need to understand everything happening behind the scenes. They want to feel that someone understands what they are trying to accomplish and knows how to make it happen. A B2B technology customer wants something surprisingly similar, even if the product and problems are considerably more complex.
In both cases, delight comes from going beyond simply delivering what was requested. It comes from understanding the person well enough to help them achieve something better.
Moving Into IT Technology and Greater Responsibility
In 2024, Erik joined Atera, an Israeli technology company providing an AI-powered IT management platform for MSPs and IT departments. He initially joined as a Consulting Manager and in April 2026 became a Customer Experience Manager.
The technology environment had changed again. Erik had moved into IT management technology and increasingly sophisticated B2B customer relationships. Yet the progression continued to build on the same foundation: understanding customers, solving problems, communicating value and helping people get more from the technology available to them.
His career had also become genuinely international. From Israel, Erik was able to apply these skills within technology companies serving customers across markets. That is another important characteristic of the Israeli high-tech opportunity. Someone can build a career in Israel while developing the ability to sell, consult and manage relationships with businesses and customers internationally.
The Skills That Don't Necessarily Come From School
Erik's story is particularly relevant for people who are interested in high-tech but assume they have the wrong background. When looking at a technology job description, it is easy to focus on all the things you have never done before: SaaS, CRM systems, sales methodologies, IT terminology or a particular type of technology.
Those things matter, but many can be learned. The underlying human abilities can be just as important. Can you listen carefully enough to understand what someone actually needs? Can you make another person comfortable speaking with you? Can you explain something unfamiliar clearly? Can you remain calm when a customer has a problem? Can you find a solution when the obvious answer is not working? Can you establish trust and take responsibility for someone else's success?
Those are valuable professional skills. Hospitality and customer-facing roles can be demanding training grounds for developing them, even if they do not initially look like preparation for a technology career.
One Skill Set, Growing Responsibilities
The progression of Erik's career illustrates how far those abilities can travel. He entered high-tech as an individual SDR, learned to sell technology and then moved into managing a Business Development team. From there, he moved into Customer Success, consulting and ultimately broader responsibility for customer experience.
What changed at every stage was the scope of the challenge. The products became more technical, the business problems more complex, the customer relationships more substantial and Erik's responsibilities larger. What remained consistent was his ability to understand people, communicate with them, solve problems and help them succeed.
That is why an SDR role can be such a powerful starting point for someone entering high-tech. It teaches you how customers think, how businesses buy, how technology creates value and how to communicate that value. Once those skills are combined with strong interpersonal instincts, they can create paths into sales leadership, account management, Customer Success, consulting and customer management.
Erik Stillpass started his career by learning how to delight guests. He learned how to combine that instinct with selling, then brought it into Israel's high-tech ecosystem and applied it to technology and B2B customers. As his knowledge grew, so did the scale of the customers, problems and teams entrusted to him.
The industries and job titles changed, but the underlying idea did not: understand people, show them what is possible, solve their problems and help them succeed.
