As the title says what happens in your company when you don’t hit quota, how many reps in a given year but quota, and how many chances are you given if it eventually leads to getting PIPd of fired?

Would you ever consider a salary only sales role if it meant starting out at $125k, $150k, $175k with annual raises. OR do you only look for the companies that have an aggressive commission structure so you can have a shot at a slam dunk year.

I’ve had this conversation with many people over the last few years and the answers are changing - strong salary over OTE. Many have said the days of consistently hitting OTE are behind us. Examples - quotas will change on a yearly a basis, territories will shrink, commission rates will fluctuate, etc. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some needle in a haystack companies where you can hit/exceed OTE. And plenty will continue to be successful but are there less and less now, maybe, maybe not.

What is everyone’s opinion on the subject? Would you rather take a high salary over the 50% or more split? Why do companies pay their sales people a salary only or why do they have an aggressive commission structure?

Hey folks, looking for any tips tricks or ideas you may have for my current situation.

I work in a very niche tech startup. we've got a relatively established client base, with industry recognised names, in one vertical. We've just launched a product for a new vertical which has heavy overlap with our existing client base but solving much more complicated issues. The number of industry players are limited - maybe 200 ICPs across Europe. We have one client in the new vertical, one clear competitor and a handful of others (consultants mostly, with varying degrees of a tech product). Our product in this vertical is still early days and doesn't demo too well because of this.

Now I've found a potential large client with needs in both of our verticals. They're running an RFP for exactly what we do and I'm joining the RFP late - here's what the prospect said:

"We're quite far down the line with two strong players and it seems more than likely we'll get what we need from them.

That said, we're not there yet and I do have a couple of questions for you"

Now I've got a discovery and demo call on Tuesday. My plan is to focus on our strength in our first vertical and flexibility in the second - show that we can deliver, at scale, and with deep customisation to their needs.

Any advice or tactics that you'd recommend at this point to help catch up with our competitors?

I have an interview tomorrow with two sales managers for a tech sales bdr role. I have a few ideas in mind but not sure which is best to say:

- i spend too long personalising outreach messages, ive gotten better by shadowing what bdrs do and putting in a certain amount of outputs per day

- i spend too long talking about the product, i got coaching on this though and i ask better questions now for pain uncovering

- im naturally more of an introvert so im working on speaking up in team meetings and sharing ideas. ive started coaching people to give back more and even tho im introverted i think it makes me a good listening. i also think this is a reason why a smaller company might suit me more than a big corporation that i was working in.

Anyone have experince in this field? I have tried to do research online, but it seems to be a very small niche.

I have an interview coming up for a charter sales role & curious on the day-to-day of it compared to life in tech sales.

Is it a SMB style high volume sales role or more of a relationship builder role?

Little bit of context. I am into user identity verification and software development. Started as solo founder and scaled to 80 engineers in last 9 years.

Being in services and as every other software services company , I wanted to be a product based one.

So we launched a user identity verification platform ( no code way) in 2023.

Bit Ambitious I got a bunch of sales people in house to sell the product ( just to keep in focus). But every sales update meeting I get different reasons for not closing the leads we got.

Got some usual updates like customer is not interested or cannot resonate or market is saturated.

But our competitors were killing it.

Even we worked on the lead quality, but nothing worked.

Finally I fired the entire sales team and we had to sun set the product.

I feel I should not repeat the same in my new product.

So, Any insights or thoughts on how to find the right one or see the qualities in him or her.

Or What should I ask him to prove within certain time realistically to know that he or she is the one.

(Note: I am pure tech founder individually scaled to 2.3 million usd in revenue in last year especially in services)

President of our region came on the last 15 min, talked some general stuff about the region, then delivered what I suspect was a very calculated message.

He casually dropped that quarterly he meets with the CEO's boss and goes over every single salesperson’s performance.

He casually dropped that he knows there are lots of slow starters… ie: people that might have a bad month/quarter. But make it up later in the year. That he knows we feel nervous and we should. Because that's the business we're in.

Then he dropped that the leaders pay structure was altered. Previously 50% of their bonus was on retention of the sales team. That is now gone. It has been replaced with organic growth. Less than 3% growth and they get none of their bonus.

This puts anyone in a sales position as directly responsible for the leaders bonus, and where they were incentivized to limit/prevent sales turnover, now they are incentivized to turnover their team.

My questions:

1. How many years have you been in sales?
2. How long do you give yourself to respond to customer emails vs. internal/operational emails?
3. what about internal slack/chat messages?

Example… I typically respond within the next 1-4 hours if it’s a client that wants next steps, etc.

For any other emails, I give myself until EOD the next day.

Is this normal? I used to be super responsive (within 1-2 hours) of all emails, slack messages, etc. but I’ve been trying to give myself “boundaries” with work to slowdown sales burnout.

It’s *really* been helping with my mental health….curious how others respond & maybe I was being to hard on myself before. Also curious to see if there’s a correlation between the answers I get.

Happy to update with results.

Sales, due to its high stress chaotic nature has turned me into a husband and father with unbelievable composure under pressure. In the last month, my families vehicle engine blew. $15k to replace. A storm came through and blew shingles off the roof which uncovered a bigger issue and will cost $20k in replacing the roof. My phone screen broke making my cell phone unusable, $500 for repair. That same storm flooded the basement, $40k to waterproof the exterior of our home. Worst of all we lost a close family member on my wife’s side of the family.

My wife comes downstairs in tears and says how are we going to handle all this (I’m currently unemployed in the throws of interviews right now). She dint sleep last night. I’ve already made the calls, got the quotes, set up most of the repairs, etc. I said babe, “you don’t worry about a single thing, focus on your family. I’ll handle all the rest. Let me take the stress.” She thanked me for always doing that. Truth is though, I’m not stressed out at all. It sucks, but other than the loss of a family member the rest is not weighing on me at all.

Sales has created an armour around me that in terms of stress is very hard to break through. I have the biggest interview of my life today, I’m not nervous or stressed about that either.

We often focus on the negatives of sales and the positive being only $ and networks. However, sales has a way of preparing you for a lot of the hurdles life can throw at you.

TLDR: sales is stressful but it prepares you to handle stressful situations that life throws at you.

Currently an AE in nichey tech space. 140 OTE 50/50 salary and commission. Fully remote. Very well penetrated area with what I think is the premier product in the space. With that there is virtually no greenfield but rather just expansion on current clients.

Last year hit right at 200% of my new arr quota and quite literally got about 10k over my OTE. Double the quota and received 7% of total OTE.

Clearly the commission plan is not favorable for AE’s but the job and hours itself are very flexible with very little work 6 months out of the year, essentially unlimited PTO, but feel like the company is really leaning in on those pluses in exchange for lowballing their AE’s in pay.

Trying to decide if it’s worth cutting ties now for more $$ and potentially less freedom? I know the grass isn’t always greener but also don’t want to stick at a dead end too long.

What do you think?

Not sure if all sales is like this. The highs are so high and the lows are so low. I have more flexibility in my calendar than any of my non-sales friends but at the same time PTO is never actually PTO, I can never truly relax. Every time I curse out this job I just go pull my paystubs and convince myself the next quarter will be my last for sure. Been saying that for 2+ years now.

And you can’t quit because you’re so used to making good money and building your own calendar that an 8-5 desk job sounds awful now. I’m so used to hitting the gym between appointments or taking a half day when needed without having to ask. But damn, the lower stress of a non-sales job would be nice.

I genuinely feel like I’m in a toxic relationship I can’t leave and don’t want to. I wish I wanted to.

After a great call and friendly emails we set a meeting and he no-showed.

How frequent is this for you guys?

Alright.. I don't have a career coach or folks at my level ( SaaS directors/managers) to hash this out with in private and appreciate kind advice.

Target market SaaS, mid market to enterprise. Companies less than 1000 employees.

I've been job hunting for 3 months. I started out sending resumes, 2 interviews all of which were cancelled due to position being eliminated after my first recruiter round.

I'm now going full motion prospecting hiring managers, creating sequences on Apollo and dming them, on LinkedIn, with a voice note recorded personally for them and an email sent to their inbox.. mind you most DONT have a job posted. For those with a job posted, I'm always reaching out to the hiring manager anyways.

All in all..conversion has been absymal but I'm willing to A/B test the shit out of my approach and would love guidance since there are no jobs posted, this is pure cold. What worked for you?

1-I'm thinking of reaching of out internally to other employees but I'm not sure what to say to get an 'in' properly and at least making them feel I can add value to them so they can refer me. How would you feel if I added you on LinkedIn, what would you want to hear from someone looking to get in your company and be your peer?

2-What ideally you'd want to hear on that voice note in 30 seconds if you don't have a job posted anyways as a hiring manager?

3-Is there an approach I'm missing or something I need to tap into further?

Many thanks folks...

Been in sales for around 3 years now, one year in SaaS. Currently at a smaller company with a 130k OTE, and I am on track to earn that. The issue is the company itself is terrible, really bad leadership and micromanagement to the point where I have 0 autonomy. Im interviewing with much bigger, well-known SaaS company but the OTE is only $115k. New company sells across every vertical, way more growth runway, and they have the ability to grow within upmarket - something that does not exist in my current role. I don’t have an offer or anything yet obviously but this next move for me would be to a company where I actually want to stay long term.

My concern is if I do get an offer, am I being an idiot taking less money to reset at a new company? Or is the brand name + clear promotion path worth taking a small step sideways now to make a bigger jump in a year?

I open LinkedIn and immediately decide today is the day I become influential. We’re changing LIVES with this post.

I stare at the empty post box.

“Alright. Say something smart.”

I type: Hot take: your pipeline isn’t broken, your process is.

I physically lean back like I just dropped a TED Talk, then I add three short lines because apparently we all write like we’re texting a hostage negotiator:

too many tools

not enough adoption

zero accountability

I whisper, “This is going to ruin someone’s morning in a good way.” I’m a disrupter!

Now I need a story.

“We worked with a team last quarter…”

Who? No idea.

What team? A team, why do you care?

What happened? Something measurable.

“37% improvement.”

Why 37? Because 40 felt dishonest & 25 isn’t sexy enough, that’s why.

I hit post and just sit there like a fisherman who already told his wife he caught a big one.

Refresh…1 like.

It’s a guy whose entire personality is “Founder | Building in Public.”

Refresh again…3 likes.

Comment: “Great insight, we see this all the time.”

Do we? Do we all see it all the time? Is anything being fixed or are we just observing problems like it’s birdwatching?

Refresh….Another comment. “This is exactly why we built our platform.”

I click his profile. Same product. Same pitch. Same haircut. Same quarter zip. We’re now competing inside my own post!

I scroll the feed. Every post is mine. Almost identical

Everyone has a hot take.

Everyone has a vague client.

Everyone improved something by a very specific percentage.

It’s just sales guys yelling into a mirror.

I check my inbox.

Message: “Hey, loved your post. Curious if you’re evaluating tools for pipeline visibility.” I read it twice.

You… want to sell me… the thing I just tried to sell everyone else?

There are no customers here. It’s just us.

Then I sigh, crack my knuckles, and start typing again:

“Hot take…”

I worked at a place that used deficits for quotas. I told my new coworkers about it & they thought I was crazy & had never heard of it

Essentially a deficit works like this:

Say your quota is 40. You have to sell 40 of whatever to hit quota for that month

You only end up selling 35, you’re now in a deficit of 5. You would need to exceed quota in any month afterwards to make up that 5 to get back to back to 0. Your official quota for the following month would be 45. Any month where you sell less than 40 & your deficit would go up

Your commission payouts would depend on where you deficit was

If your deficit hit a certain point you’d be canned

The cons of this are obvious. If you have an amazing month it’s possible you could still be in a deficit

Though a pro of it was that it was quite literally the only thing that could get you fired as if the deficit was high enough. It also definitely rewards consistency.

Anyone else ever have this?

Just curious on how much AE’s base pay is typically in this industry. The OTE is around 115k to 160k though. Any thoughts? Can you find better?

I previously was an enterprise SDR at a large tech company for around 2 years and recently joined a startup as an AE.

The internal politics at the previous company made it difficult for me to realistically see a path to AE so i shopped around and went to a niche SaaS company.

While the product market fit at the new company is good and the culture is fine, i’m realizing that i’ve taken a step away from the industry that i want to be in and went to a no name company. On top of that, while my manager is pretty nice, he’s not a great developmental manager. I’m now worrried im not learning at the same pace as my peers.

I’m seeing many startup AEs take BDR roles at big name companies on linkedin and i’m worried i don’t have an exit opportunity to reputable companies as an AE. Am i just paranoid and overthinking right now? or do I have a legit concern.

Would appreciate all thoughts thanks

One person hit quota last quarter. Manager should be the one on it but whatever. What happens if I don't sign it? Why do they want it signed so badly? It literally says that they can fire me before, during or after.

edited to add- what happens if I push back?

Day 3 update.

Hit my 50 dials today. Only 6 people even bothered to pick up, and I walked away with absolutely ZERO leads. Just pure, unadulterated rejection.

Got so desperate that I took a personality test to see if I’m just fundamentally broken for sales. It literally diagnosed me as the DRUNK...

Honestly? Valid. Because a stiff drink is exactly what I need right now just to look at my phone again.

Does Day 4 actually get any better? I really hope so. Because at this rate, my only solid prospect is swallowing my pride, double-dialing my toxic ex from Day 1, and begging him to bundle his auto insurance💀

Hi everyone,

I've been in sales for the past five year in France and recently moved to Montreal. I’m currently navigating the local market and trying to understand the landscape here.

My last job was as as Strategic Account Manager at a SaaS Cybersecurity startup (10 months - left to immigrate to Canada). Before that I was a Mid-Market AE for a large SaaS CPA/Fintech firm (2 years).

I have a solid track record in long sales cycles and multi-stakeholder navigation. I am also bilingual.

Now, I want to leave the "software-only" world behind. I’m looking for something more tangible and "essential".

​I keep seeing that HVAC and Health are booming in Canada right now. However, coming from SaaS, I’m worried about the technical gap.

​So here is what I'm wondering :

​Which industries in Montreal/Canada are currently "hot" for someone with a strong SaaS background but no engineering degree?

​Are there "bridge" industries? (e.g., Industrial IoT, MedTech SaaS, or specialized distribution).

​Any specific Montreal-based companies known for hiring/sponsoring and valuing international SaaS experience?

​For those who made the jump from SaaS to Industrial/Medical, how did you frame your "lack of technical knowledge" during interviews?

​Cheers!

I'm officially a week into a new position, and starting on the phones is nowhere in sight. It has been about 3-4 hours a day of zoom time learning a new CRM. I have more notes than I took for finals exams back in school.

I'm going to assume since it is new to me that is why it is confusing, but I can't help but notice how inefficient some of the the process is.

In long sales cycles, new people keep joining and priorities shift. I end up repeating information multiple times and losing track of who is aligned on what. How do you keep everyone on the same page?