From Hospitals to Tech Sales: A Salesforce Singapore Career Story

Sales Development Manager Angel Cheng is the perfect example that there is no such thing as a typical employee at Salesforce.

A registered nurse turned financial planner turned recruiter in a legal firm turned Salesforce Sales Development Manager, her breadth of professional experiences across a number of industries all come into play in her day to day work in our Singapore sales team.

Native to Hong Kong, Angel moved to Singapore with her family in February 2018 and hit the ground running in her new role, establishing herself as an outstanding performer within just 10 months at Salesforce as an SDR. Now as a Sales Development Manager, she’s responsible for ASEAN lead management and leading a team of young talent to success while bringing customers the best solutions with Agentforce.

Angel shares her perspective on…

…The benefits of a diverse career:

Coming from a background in nursing and recruitment, I’ve found many transferrable skills that have helped me succeed in sales. As a nurse, I developed strong empathy, active listening, and problem-solving abilities — skills that are vital in understanding customers’ needs and building trusted relationships. The ability to stay calm under pressure and adapt quickly has also been essential when dealing with fast-changing sales environments or client challenges.

From recruitment, I brought in skills like stakeholder management, resilience, and the importance of structured follow-ups. Recruitment taught me how to balance the needs of candidates and hiring managers, which is very similar to balancing the expectations of customers and internal sales teams. It also strengthened my ability to ask the right questions, qualify leads, and drive toward clear outcomes — skills that are foundational in any successful sales engagement.

These experiences gave me a people-first mindset, strong communication habits, and a solutions-oriented approach — all of which I continue to carry into my work in sales today. Looking back, each role has been a key brick in building a strong foundation for the work I do at Salesforce today.

…Opportunities for professional progression:

The acceleration has been extraordinary, unlike anything I could have imagined. It can be a tough job that definitely favours a highly driven spirit, but you get out of it what you put in tenfold.

Outstanding SDRs have the chance to be promoted to BDRs (Business Development Representatives) and choose what to work on. Then most of the BDRs progress into an Account Executive role, where the renewals, solutions and customer success teams are all on offer.

After that you can become a Sales Development Manager (like me!), and lead a team focused on pipeline generation by qualifying leads, identifying new business, and setting meetings sales team meetings.

…The importance of a team-oriented workplace culture:

Salesforce also makes a huge effort to bond their employees through all sorts of events, which has made it very easy to meet others, especially in a new city and country.

The workforce comes from all over the world too. We hire people who are fluent in the local languages of the markets we are servicing, so all around my desk are people speaking Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and more. This tapestry of expats made settling in a lot less difficult than I thought.

…Her typical working day:

As a Sales Development Manager, no two days are exactly the same — and that’s what I love about it! But at the heart of my role, it’s all about enabling my team and driving impact. Here’s what a typical day might include:

• Growing and coaching talent – I spend time supporting my team members through 1:1s, feedback sessions, and career conversations to help them perform and develop.
• Pipeline and performance management – I review dashboards and key metrics to ensure we’re on track with lead follow-up, conversion, and pipeline coverage.
• Market understanding – I stay close to market and business updates, so we can adjust our outreach and positioning based on what matters most to our customers.
• Cross-functional collaboration – I work closely with Marketing, Sales, and Operations to improve lead quality, process efficiency, and campaign performance.
• Strategic projects – I’ve been fortunate to take on high-impact initiatives like ASEAN lead prioritization, launching automation projects, and partnering on process improvements to support scalable growth.

Every day is a mix of tactical execution and strategic thinking — and the energy from working with such passionate, smart people keeps me inspired.

…The most rewarding aspects of her job:

I’m delighted by how much I can learn and grow with the support of my manager and director. Early on in my role I identified a couple of areas that could be tweaked and voiced them. They both took the suggestions seriously, I got approval to implement them and the team’s performance has improved ever since. My contribution felt valuable very quickly.

Helping customers see new possibilities is also hugely rewarding. I really enjoy the process of explaining and educating of how the Salesforce platform can help their business achieve their goals. When Agentforce was introduced, I was fortunate to be supported by a strong ecosystem — especially our Solution Engineers, who played a key role in helping us understand the value and capabilities of the solution through demos and deep dives.

We also had enablement sessions, internal content, and use case sharing from other teams, which helped bring the product to life. Most importantly, we had the space to ask questions and learn by doing, which really helped me and my team gain confidence in positioning Agentforce to prospects.

Curious about a career at Salesforce? Apply today.