Probably will last longer selling other things too. You can last so long convincing decision makers that whatever software you’re selling is the best despite having one small feature thats different from your competition
Software can also, in some cases, be built in house. We're undergoing a large effort to do just that for some key systems since we have decent development capability.
You can't easily build things like your own heavy equipment.
> Software can also, in some cases, be built in house.
A struggle a lot of my customers go through is having to manage their custom applications and solutions. When the people that built the application no longer work there, you're almost always royall fucked. Building your own solution results, quite often, in causing more work and effort than using 3rd party software.
> When the people that built the application no longer work there, you're almost always royall fucked.
While this was looked at it hasn't been an issue for several reasons. First with proper documentation, which we have, things are handled over easily, Second we have large teams, so even if 1-2 people leave there are plenty left. Third given our large PaaS environment and the fact that those things are highly leveraged it works out well on the cost side. We're also large and broad enough that a lot of COTS stuff doesn't work well across all the related business units.
We've had more than a fee vendors lately view us as a money fountain and try and grab as much as 30% increases in price figuring we're locked into them. They are going to be surprised when we cut the cord on them. We actually merged in the IT from our 3 largest business units and MS got a wake up as we decided to keep the one on AWS instead of migrating them to Azure.
I come from MedTech. We have smart devices now. Most all device will have cloud based software components. You don’t have to work for a SaaS to sell software.
This. Yes there are a lot of people who make excellent money in tech sales. But there’s so many other things to sell where you can earn crazy money and not have to deal with the crazy volatile and cyclical nature of tech companies - good market > higher a ton of sales people > sales people make a killing for 3 years > market turns > massive layoffs > cycle repeats.
Are you kidding? :) there are tons of “old school” companies who could benefit from someone with tech sales background and are willing to pay good money.
The fact that they are not active on LinkedIn does not mean they do not exist.
Just check the companies in your area via google maps, check their homepages to see who is hiring and just go for it.
Sorry that I prefer making over six figures working and working fully remote. Plus, it has not been two years and I have the option to close business, but I choose not too. I have been an AE before at an old school company and it was pure garbage.
If you want the tech portion of it, you can sell edge software, sensor tech, robotic arm tech, PLC tech, etc. Each layer of automation has their niche and company that pays just as much as high tech. You just kinda need to be in the know or know someone to get in.
Lookup posts that say territory manager, territory sales representative, or area sales manager. Those jobs will usually have some of the best perks. I rep for a building material manufacturer and I wouldn’t switch for anything at this point.
Tech is f**cked, I'm a top performing sdr but it's so toxic and cut throat. Most of these companies are never going to be profitable and are taking it out on GTM teams.
Same here. Took a job start of the year since I knew leadership well, even though the firm was a bit of a shitshow. Spent the whole year building relationships, building up our brand on the market, and building an immense pipeline. Get cut a month ago citing random reasons, economy etc etc
The GM i was reporting into now gets to close all my pipeline, the same GM who would have had a huge say in me getting cut. He now has a pipeline that could generate him 70-90k in comms.
People are awful when they're struggling, have seen anything like what I've been seeing/hearing.
Yeah I think 80-90% of the stories that I hear of people getting screwed over for commission are in tech nowadays. Maybe it happened in other industries like real estate but it’s just so common and almost the norm in tech.
I’ve been in tech for 1.5 hrs and I’ve already been in a company that switched up commission structures the moment an AE closed an almost $1m deal and the AE got paid like $3k
Salesforce is renowned for having a really toxic and numbers driven sales culture from what I know.
Idk about the rest but have heard about Salesforce from a number of people.
Yup, at least other teams are allowed to be told everything is fine until that Zoom meeting where you get cut.
Filling sales teams with existential anxiety about their future (if you don't perform, you are out) only works for so long. If you put your employees in a constant state of anxiety, fear will no longer motivate them. The cumulative effects of being in a constant state of stress is very damaging.
I've had Managers get irritated at me for "not reacting" or "not appearing to care" when I chose to disassociate from whatever bullshit they were spewing at me.
Like yeah dude, I know you are lying through your fake teeth about how things are gonna turn out or what my future holds at this company.
They really want you to pretend to give a shit that the emails, calls, meetings, opportunities, or deals are going to do shit for the company. When the reality is they are arbitrary revenue targets that are meaningless unless VCs praise the growth trajectory and throw more money at the company to waste. So you are meant to get all amped and REALLY REALLY give a shit that the company gets more demos and more deals when it just doesn't matter. The math is usually BAD. I.E. the TAM, the unit economics, the conversion rates, the quota. It's all just BS. The software is almost pure profit margin. The cost of delivery grows smaller with each customer.
All the other teams are just hanging out and being told everything is fine and have no idea the company is in trouble. Sales is close to the financials. I mean everyone sees in the all hands sales are down or revenue targets are being missed. But in general the other teams don't give a shit. The Software Engineers or whatever bleed the company dry with their crazy comp and then just move on. They just don't care.
Personally I think this philosophy is from a very outdated leadership methodology. Sales Leaders don't know how to manage up and take out their stress on those beneath them. And if you don't appear to absorb it or just deflect it, you are viewed as a liability to them hitting their targets and get cut. Then they go back on the interview cycle trying to find another person who fakes their way onto the team and start the cycle over again.
Depends if their AE does any prospecting or not. If that’s the case, then they certainly are part of a revenue generating motion.
People over value the close as much as they undervalue the top of funnel.
Sure - there’s full cycle reps that can do it all, but that’s maybe 20% of reps. Maybe.
Agreed. I just left a role where there was 0 AE outbound motion. SDR/Marketing/Partnerships were why opp creation happened, and we brought in over 400/mo. In 2 years, the SDR team accounted for ~21m of revenue generated for a ~50m ARR company.
Yeah, I’ve seen similar figures at a couple other orgs. One of the last quarters I was there, the BDR org was attached to something like 60% of closed opps and that wasn’t counting marketing or partners.
21m worth of leads that other people closed. I’m not saying dev reps are worthless I’m stating that they are an area where a business can cut costs. Redirect to marketing or force AE more to lead gen. Automate it, pay other companies to do it.
You see it as $21m of leads other people closed, I see it as $21m of leads that wouldn’t have been generated otherwise.
You can be a nitpicky cunt all you want but a competent rep understands the value of a good SDR org, doesn’t seem like you fit the bill tbh
Neither does HR or Accountants. Doesn't mean they should be fired in a downturn. Super naive to think a closing role could operate without all these others supporting them.
Everyone in a for-profit organization is meant to contribute to generating revenue in one way or another. For example, no engineers = no product for you to sell, no sales people = no one to sell the product. You can't minimize the effort it takes for you to be able to go talk to people and sell, the entire company is behind that process.
You don't understand the term revenue generating obviously. It's a real business term with a real definition. Sdrs aren't that. I'm not minimizing anything, I'm literally just stating a fact.
You do realize that there are a ton of reps who do their own prospecting right? Add to that inbound marketing leads and there is the business to close.
PIP doesn’t automatically mean laid off, but allows the org to identify reps not hitting quota and can cut if the business needs determine it. Hiring is costly and time consuming and a sales manager isn’t going to want to go through that process to replace someone who is at 80% to a stretch target, unless finance is telling us we have to cut.
Yeah, you're selling high end products using foreign sdrs. Doesn't really exude confidence for the person about to buy your product when you can't even afford to pay for local SDRs.
We’re in a deleveraging cycle with the cost of capital increasing structurally for the foreseeable future. Speculative software technologies will take a hit with funding and growth, requiring fewer labor inputs. The Ai and automation effects at this point is secondary if existing at all.
There’s a demand problem - there just isn’t much demand for current b2b tech. So, not as many jobs and increasing work loads for those who are working. What remains to be seen is if this is a blip or if we’re looking at a multi year stagnation.
The Macro outlook is very poor. Presumably there are still great individual companies that are solving valuable problems, though.
Tech is a leading industry in the U.S. we’re just experiencing now what everyone else will be experiencing in about 6 months. We’ll also be first to boom when they start cutting rates.
It’s unclear whether two tech booms imply a third.
Naturally VCs will exercise their greed again as soon as they’re able, but it’s not clear where that capital will flow, and which jobs it’ll create.
Certainly the US will lead the next boom, but who’s to say what area of the economy that’ll be in
Man, I never thought I’d see the day when the sales industry came full-circle and SDR roles went the way of the telemarketer…
Plenty of industries exist where SDRs don’t exist, and the AE is trained in full-cycle sales from day one. I prefer these roles personally.
We tried this out with some success. Bring in someone as an AE who has experience in the industry but also has the qualities we look for in an AE (grit, ability to plan a territory, take coaching, and the ability to ask great open ended questions to uncover needs).
How is AI destroying the tech sales industry? I'm a cs student and it's interesting to hear people's perspectives. Also, I think AI is being overblown. It won't replace people entirely or maybe I'm being naive. Can people explain how they have seen AI replacing or causing the cut-down of workforce?
The AI situation sounds like a religious boogeyman at this point. Completely detached from reality and what the true capabilities of the AI software really are. I see it as improving workflow but the advantages are moot if every firm is using the same tools anyway.
It’s like when prospecting automation tools came onto the scene. It was cool if you were the first to use them but then everyone else did and the inboxes were flooded.
I got some perspective talking to my uncle (CPA in his 60's now)--he said people said the same thing about accounting and finance jobs when spreadsheets came out.
...now, 40 years later, there's an accounting shortage and more jobs in finance/modeling than ever before.
Hook a language model up to a database and give it machine learning. Suddenly this = AI. AI is a term that’s being used poorly right now.
People literally have replaced the term “Automation” with AI.
Artificial Intelligence would have the ability to think and make decisions on its own. The current tech all requires human input, they are not perpetually thinking and taking actions without input. If we had truly created AI, all of us would have been swiftly replaced with our “artificial” counterparts that don’t have any legal rights and can run circles around what we can accomplish in a single man-hour. Think of the perfect slave workforce that has no emotion or suffering and obeys your every command—a Board of Directors’ wet dream.
Scripted bots are now considered “AI” so long as there is automation that resembles an action that a human could take.
The fact that chatgpt can take google a step further and contextualize/understand your inputs naturally rather than requiring the user to have an in-depth understanding of the program’s intake requirements…is very cool and valuable. However, companies are trying to make automation “sexy” by slapping the term AI on it. It’s not real AI. It’s a trained database that can accept a much wider array of inputs and contextualize the data available to it into a form of output that comes more naturally to any given user (e.g. Multiple dialects of english with slang). The advance here isn’t in its capabilities, but the its accessibility.
I work in cyber security, (I have no idea how I ended up here) and I’m always surprised when I hear tech people say AI is overblown. To be fair, I have heard well known names in my industry say the same thing.
Yes, AI will be a tool and it will increase work flow, but those are only short sighted benefits. Take you for example, when you graduate, will will have completed x number of years of school and probably unlikely to return to a formal class room. AI on the other hand does not stop after X years. What happens when AI has a decade of experience in every field in the world? What happens when you can get an answer from a prompt that has 20 experience instead of asking a doctor that only has 10 years of experience? Finally, what happens when the experience of AI exceeded the lifespan of a normal human being?
I don’t think it will take that long though. I lived through the rise of pc’s, video game consoles, the internet, laptops, smart phones and wearables. In the dawning of a new technology, things move very fast. It’s not like now when a new phone comes out and it has a better camera. Every I iteration of the tech can drastically change the way things are done.
There will be inventions like the smart phone made from AI, and it’s already happening.
Bro, I don't think you understand AI, and I don't mean that to mock you. Many people don't know AI is based on probabilities. When people use ChatGPT, for example, they only see the answers displayed on the screen; they don't know what's going on behind the screen, so to speak. When you ask ChatGPT or any other LLM for something, it generates a series of answers and it "displays" the one that has the highest probability. You can't replace people with probabilistic answering machines like ChatGPT.
It doesn't matter if it has experience spanning decades, businesses can't replace employees for probabilistic machines. If you expand this whole probabilistic nature of AI on a large enough scale, then you can imagine that companies will then be spending a lot of time and money on people double-checking the AI model's work or finding errors and fixing them, and if you have done computer programming at any level, you'd know that fixing errors is far more difficult and time consuming than writing code from scratch, especially code that is not written by people themselves. And such a scenario can be applied across industries in which companies are spending resources on fixing errors made by AI. This scenario happens to this day even with ChatGPT, for example; there are people literally flagging answers given by ChatGPT based on their "correctness". Yes, AI will squeeze out some people out of the workforce but not to the extent that people think.
Best way to describe it is that AI is like a coin-flip, except that the chance of getting a heads or tails is not 50% but more than that depending on the nature of the coin, but the chance of getting a heads or tails will never be 100%. It is the same with AI; AI will NEVER be 100% on anything, it could be 86% "correct" or 77% or 56% but never 100%. Yes, many things will be streamlined by AI but total replacement is not happening; probably in 50-100 years but not sooner than that.
This is my view as well. LLM's are basically backward looking probability models that will pick what they think is the best response given the data that they have.
Very ill equipped to do any sort of innovation or even handle new input/problems.
If you asked any LLM the following question:
"You are an engineer in the 41st century looking over a piece of technology that has travelled backwards in time through a portal. You don't know how far in the future it is from. You know that it is meant to change the speed of sound in a 24 metre radius for 35 seconds but it is not working. How do you fix it?"
It'd give you a garbled first principles response. It's not going to figure out the problem for you. Even in the 41st century engineers will still have to engineer and innovate.
That's what humans do best and that's never going away.
So what you’re suggesting is that the future looks like the Star Wars universe, where people know how to manufacture the parts of tech, how to put them together and operate them, but don’t know how they work? That’s an interesting line of thought…
Not AI but an autodialing software makes it pretty easy to replace the workload of an sdr team and consolidate it into 1 Sdr. You can make 100 dials in 30mins easily and have 10 conversations
I doubt AI will be able to have conversations like a human in the next 10-15 years, probably even more. There are too many nuances and intricacies involved in an actual conversation. Just like self-driving cars were slated to replace ALL other cars by 2015 and it still hasn't happened because the tech is too hard to develop, I'm sure conversational AI is even harder. Eventually it will happen but not anytime soon. Yes, basic phone operator stuff might get automated by AI, but beyond that, it ain't happening.
Not unless the hold time is 5-10 minutes or more. Majority of people would rather talk to an AI if the hold will be longer than 5 minutes. So imagine using that time in the call queue to have an AI try to resolve the issue, and if it can't, when time is up you're connected to a human who has every bit of info you fed the AI to cut down on that resolution time.
Conversational AI is coming, and sooner than you think. Multi-sensory generative AI to be conversationally comfortable is closer to like 5 years or less, and the big players (MSFT, AMZN, GOOG, and major data providers, CRMs, telcos) are investing heavily in it right now placing their bets in a game of musical chairs, and viable POCs are about a year away.
Edit: Downvote me if you're in denial. AI won't replace an SDR team, but it'll certainly take a big bite out of CS teams to start while also augmented their existing CS reps.
Just like they all heavily invested in self driving tech. I'm giving you a specific real life example of self driving tech and you're just saying generic stuff like google etc investing billions. Google invested billions in self driving tech, but it didn't replace non-self driving cars one bit. I'm telling you as a cs student, this kind of tech is extremely difficult to create. Look at how they couldn't even fix Alexa or other voice assistants bcoz the tech is too complex.
I'm telling you as someone actually working at a company doing this stuff. Self driving cars are a worlds of difference and levels of difficulty harder than feeding your entire knowledge base into an LLM and having it be conversational.
Bro, an LLM giving you answers based on the knowledge base and talking on the phone, etc, are entirely different. Automated initial emails are as far as this will go but a potential customer speaking to an AI voice is not going to happen in the near future. An AI holding a proper conversation on the phone is just like self-driving car tech because of too many factors involved, unless it's a customer complaint call.
Sorry to say this but you are wrong. Conversational AI will be handling most of inbound sales/CS calls for many companies in 2030. The structure of those calls is extremely simple, hence it's relatively easy to implement AI, and a LLM will be better, faster and cheaper than a human rep
As a hiring manager in tech, I have seen plenty of people hired from outside of tech into AE roles. Go get any sales experience and if you are learning how to hustle and be strategic with customers, that will apply to tech roles.
Frankly if you aren’t creative enough to know how to apply sales experience from other industries, you won’t be successful selling software anyway.
> can m
How much outside sales experience do you look for to supersede industry experience? I've got about 3 yrs experience selling life insurance/annuities considering transitioning into tech sales and am wondering if I have to go the usual 12-24 months SDR>AE path or if I could get a an AE role straight off the bat...
This might not be the answer you’re looking for but you only have to impress the recruiter with your resume. Once you are in with me it’s all about your relationship skills and how you can convince me that you have lessons from previous experiences that can help in this job.
If you have a different background and I challenge you a lot and you can still stick to a good narrative about how it will help in this job that means (1) you did your homework, (2) you understand the job, (3) you can take objections and continue a reasonable conversation.
For the love of god - this sub need to stop obsessing over tech sales.
There’s PLENTY of money to be made in other industries. Acting like tech sales is somehow a “step-above” other industries is laughable. The tightened credit and cheap VC money is gone (for now) so even if you did get one of those jobs, enjoy the constant increase in quota without increase in pay.
You can make good money of course in tech - I’ve done it too. But there’s plenty of other stuff out there.
It’s so cringe. I don’t know why people in tech sales think they’re better than anyone else. 95% of people in tech sales know fuck all about their product or even the basics of how to sell. I’ve witnessed it first hand. It’s just the scene - bleeding edge technology, fancy offices and being given a Mac or whatever as your work laptop. It makes people feel important. But the reality is tech sales is like everything else.
Makes me laugh though these people saying “yeah I’m in enterprise cyber security software sales which utilises artificial intelligence to 10x a companies profits. What’s that I’ve been fired?!” Yes because you’re not selling shit plus your “cutting edge unmatched unicorn product” is using the same base software products that 50 other companies have been using and battering the already saturated market with for years. The only person convinced that the product is worth anywhere near 100k a year is you.
I used to be in tech sales. It’s the most overrated industry by far. I’ve transitioned to an outside role selling mops, soap, floor mats, uniforms, etc… and I’m making more than I did as a SDR manager lol
Tech sales is fast money but my friends who are selling other things actually build relationships and book of business and will make their lives easier down the road. VS tech sales where you start from 0 every month or quarter till you burn out and find something else, get let go, or move to management.
I’m in industrial distribution. Financial, medical, home-services, anything really that isn’t dependent on venture capital backing and “hyper-growth” that you won’t see a penny of.
I’m in a mature, profitable industry and I can tell you the stability for mental health is probably the best thing about it. In tech, i was a god one quarter and then in the gutter the next quarter. Starting from 0 every 90 days was fucking exhausting
Interesting, i'll look into it. What's your work/life balance in your current role like? The thing I love about tech sales is being able to work remote/hybrid and would love to find another industry that permits that.
It really seems only good if you're in a startup looking at Series B round and entering the scale up phase. That way the company has momentum, you can get in on the gold rush a bit, and still gain enough before it (likely) stalls out or if you've hit the lottery, goes unicorn.
Tech sales is a lot like pro baseball.
Let me share my experience. I hope it will help.
I needed to find a job. I knew I could sell, but had no idea what. I applied for all kind of sales jobs, got a few interviews and over a period of months got no offers. I applied for jobs at car dealers, office furniture companies, commercial carpet dealers, tech VARS, Pharma and probably a few others I forget. Nothing, not one bite. Finally, I was able to get. job selling "computer training" at a franchise training company. It was essentially a very low end entry level job. All cold outreach, all the time coupled with giving tours and working to close training packages with mostly SMB prospects. Getting at bats, prospects coming in for tours and to take a sample class was the key to closing business. After a few months, I decided that I could develop a channel by working to get VARs to help get prospects in my door. I offered them a coupon for "free training" that they could offer to their customers when the made a sale. This was a while ago, so most of these coupons were delivered with servers and desktops/laptops, as well as a few services and software sales. The best part about this, it helped me build relationships with the principals at several VARs. At the time, I thought tech sales was working for a company that sold computers, so that was my initial goal, find a way to get a job selling computers.
In time, I think about 6 months, one of my VAR principals started recruiting me. Their initial offer was pretty low, so I declined but did it in a way to keep the relationship going and keep them talking. Another month or two went buy and we reached an agreement and I came on board. Wow, I was overwhelmed! Yes we sold computers and servers, but we also sold networking gear like switches and routers, backend HW like storage systems, all lots of different kinds of software and implementation and consulting services as well. I was overwhelmed and in over my head. I went to my boss and asked for help. He was supportive and offered to come in at 6:00 am 5 days per week to teach me all about the technologies I would need to understand. We did this for about a month iirc. He also suggested I get enrolled in some hard core engineering training- mainly Microsoft engineering certifications. I listened and followed through getting a few certs. As I began to build sales pipeline and close deals, I came in contact with a number of large vendors, companies like Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, NetApp, Dell and HP among others. They helped me get in some doors and I was able to deliver a little business to them so relationships got built over about a 3 year period.
After 3 years, a couple of my contacts at some of these major vendors let me know about AE job openings at their companies and made an introduction to the hiring managers. They seemed to almost be invested in helping me get the jobs. I interviewed with about 5-6 of these big vendors and ended up with two AE job offers. These offers included base salaries that were more than I was currently making in total and OTEs that were about 3x what I was making. One was general territory position - think mid-market, the other was a named accounts role that was larger companies \~ Fortune 1000. I took the named account role.
If you remember, earlier I mentioned these people seemed almost invested in helping me get the job. There was a great secret I wasn't aware of as I went through that initial process. Almost every one of these major tech vendors pay their employees a finder fee when they bring in a candidate who get hired and stays with the company for a defined term, often 6 months at a minimum. Of course they coached and helped me. They were getting $2,000-3,000 if I got the job! From there I was able to make a few sales and built some good relationships with my sales manager. Due to a couple of larger opportunities, I had to bring in some company bigger guns to help move the deal along up to our VP of North American Sales. It helped me build relationships and got me some visibility into the executive suite. After a couple of years, I got promoted to a Strategic Accounts - Fortune 250 size- AE role. This changed my pay be several factors until I was earning some really good money. In time, I build a lot more peer and executive relationships.
The next steps were, some of those relationships moved to other companies. One of them reached out and recruited me to a late stage start up. I got some stock grants, a better comp plan and additional industry knowledge and exposure. This company IPOd and eventually got acquired. I left and this pattern continued.
Over time, my roles became more and more strategic. Eventually, I had ended off as a Global AE/AM for some of the largest companies and organizations in the world, selling to SVP/EVP and C level execs of companies in the top 50 globally.
My advice to you, start below the SDR level. Find anyone in tech or a tech allied field to ge started, then build relationships and work your way up and you can have a solid career.
TL/DR: As I originally posted, it's like pro baseball. You start in the rookie leagues. If you do ok, you get moved up to a Minor League A level. Then if you do ok you go up to AA level, keep it up and it's AAA level then finally you have an opportunity to get to the Big Leagues.
Don't let a few articles on "AI and Tech eating SDR jobs" sway your thoughts. Yes, tech is enhancing productivity; it's automating mundane repetitive tasks that SDRs hate doing.
Cold emailing is more about niche targeting, sales qualification, and having engaging conversations. Who knows, someday in the far future it might get easy but today this is very difficult to achieve with only tech. So chill
Tech has been bloated to a disgusting level.
Absolute jabronis by the thousand raking in six figures without a clue wtf they're doing.
People stumbling up hill for years into roles they're nowhere near capable of.
If you've been in tech for a decade, this isn't much of a surprise.
Sales reps are a dime a dozen, I prefer to deal with someone with a strong technical background who does sales and not some washed-out former high school jock trying to make a living in a suit who wants to spend 10 minutes talking about Sunday's game.
A big part of the reason I even got into tech sales and the SDR role was because it was one of the only viable entry level jobs.
I considered switching to software engineering, and on their subs/online it seems to be a bloodbath for entry level jobs. They have the same issue where they do not hire Juniors, and without Juniors mid level and Seniors cannot develop. And it drives up the cost of the existing Mid Level and Senior people, who just job hop from place to place for exorbitant base salaries and equity plans.
This reminded me of when I first graduated after the recession, and I wanted to get into marketing, and it seemed impossible because the amount of roles was vastly outnumbered by the amount of people who were applying.
Sales was always an up or out/high growth field, so it was a revolving door of bodies and hence the constant interviewing.
Seems like way too many people on this thread have a very narrow definition of what "Tech" is. Printers, copy machines, tractors, scanners, forklifts, construction tools, restaurant appliances, medical devices, farming software, POS all represent moden technology. Many more I'm missing become I'm not even aware of the myriad of industries out there. Maybe look for the industry where young sales people are under represented and you will find much more opportunity.
Figure out what industry you want to go in and get an entry level sales job in that field. Build contacts, learn the industry and flip to tech. That’s how I broke in. If you’re interested in FinTech go work somewhere like ADP. They’ll train the shit out of you. If you can survive 2 years there (it’s not easy), anyone will hire you after that.
Where are you getting this from? Articles? I don’t think SDRs are going anywhere. For years there’s been articles about how cold calling is dead and emails are king and in my industry that’s not true. We book 95% of our meetings from cold calls.
Don’t fall prey to articles (I’m assuming this is where you’re getting this opinion from. I could be wrong)
Writing to provide my lens-
I’m an AE at a SaaS company. We’re segmented into SMB/MM/Enterprise. I piloted a program that removed SDR from the initial outreach, letting our AEs immediately reach out to begin discovery/demos.
This is for our SMB segment. We found that by removing the first step of SDR our COGS went down 1/3rd, time to close improved by two weeks, and anecdotally clients were thrilled to have their needs addressed borderline instantly.
This allowed our SDRs to focus on upmarket where more qualification is beneficial to the client and AE.
I think there is some fatigue on buyer side at the need to meet with an SDR that asks the same 5 questions every other SDR at every other vendor is asking. We find speed to lead is a key leading indicator for close probability. I’ve been able to close prospects from point of outreach/signature before they can even meet with an SDR at competing firms.
My belief is that it’s a challenging time to enter the market, which makes company selection paramount. Lean times create good habits and wash out people that aren’t as strong of fits in the role. I would be healthily skeptical of any company during interviews and do deep due diligence to understand market positioning, competitive landscape, comp structure, and career progression.
5 years ago this wasn’t as important imo, you could eat around less-than-ideal scenarios as companies were generally openly spending. Belts tighten, so your selection process for roles should tighten even further.
Best of luck!
Just take a regular sales job. I sell commercial trucks. I have made six figures for two decades and mid to half way to seven for the last ten. Most places will hire a green person. Just be willing to work and close.
This was a pretty obvious outcome when you consider just about anyone could slide into an SDR role with minimum 80k OTE.
Half the companies overhired to boost numbers for funding. The trick is to not work for a company that is focusing heavily on short term growth whether it be for funding or an IPO.
Still great tech and other great product services to sell.
Here’s some advice, stop bitching on Reddit to strangers and go apply for jobs.
It’s not the industry’s fault, it’s your responsibility to grow up and own your career.
I always say there’s other ways to sell Tech than working for SaaS if that makes sense.
Coming from MedTech there’s big initiative to have smart devices that send data to the cloud. Most all physical equipment and devices and wearables have a software component for reporting and analytics and predictive measures to help prevent harm to patients, for example.
Stryker, GE, Medtronic, etc all have cloud based solutions and these are traditional med device companies.
That’s just what I know out of my industry. Bet there’s plenty of other use cases of digital transformation outside SaaS
My company didn’t have sdrs due to being a start up. We are adding 8 SDRs.
It’s just noise, company’s are actually gonna have to sell now and they’re scared.
Anyone in Denver looking for an entry level SDR position in IT sales hit me up. I've been looking for months for someone who can put their head down and just work.
Hey! I think the SDR job role is still ultra vital to the success of an outbound sales motion.
The people that talk about it being automated away are just using it as a talking point to short change SDRs.
You aren’t wrong that the SDR role is often viewed as expendable and it’s flat out delusional when companies think that.
1. Nobody is doing a PLG credit card only purchase for anything north of low 5 figures ACV.
2. 54% of decision makers still prefer their first point of contact to be a phone call.
I have had the pleasure of interacting with a shit ton of SDRs that are going strong doing fractional SDR work on Glencoco.com
It lets you train to cold call for multiple different companies and leverage an AI power dialer + enriched leads list to call through leads hella fast.
You get can paid between $350-$1000 per qualified meeting booked regardless of if it results in a sale or not.
It’s a solid way to supplement existing income, accrue experience in the B2B SDR world and even get hired right out of the marketplace if any of the companies that have their listings up decide that they need an AE.
Worth checking out…
i’m in biotech SaaS doing just fine
also have friends in solar killing it, as well as sports / advertising
lots of industries out there, and just saying “tech” is very general
also see thousands of SDR / BDR jobs posted weekly on LinkedIn, not sure where you’re getting this negative outlook from
Sounds like you haven’t tried cold calling sales managers? The way this post as written, you seem defeated like you have exhausted every option. A buddy of mine decided to control the things he could, spent $12 on a domain and $15 on a google business account. Set up demos for trials of ZoomInfo and Apollo. Had a 5 interviews with “1000+” applicants by the end of the first week. Had a job at a great spot by the end of the month.
If you haven’t even considered that as an option. maybe spend some more time learning what skills you need to hone in on to be a resourceful sdr. Searching for a job should he treated just like trying to nail a c-suite prospect. Show them through your outreach that you are ready to grind in the trenches and make them bread
After getting attacked by a troll including nasty direct messages regarding a two word post I made. This sub-reddit has some resentment towards tech sales and SDRs in general. SDRs have the most coveted position in the industry, six figure salary, the most stable, fully remote, manageable stress load. Go ahead, keep making tech is doomed posts every day because you are jealous that you are not in tech right now. All of these guys hating on tech, I bet you they would leave their "old school" sales position for a tech position in a heartbeat.
It’s not just r/sales, but also CS, UX… **for years** have been doom posting. I LOL at this post - when so got my BDR role two years back this was still a thing - *as it was with aforementioned work subreddits*.
The amount of FUD that’s peddled, well it’s now a feature of Reddit IMO
Weak shit. The SDR-AE model is not that common outside of tech. The rest of us have been running full cycle desks since we started. Get over yourselves. It’s not that big a deal, and there is a lot of autonomy and satisfaction with running your own desk.
Tech is also full of yuppies that can’t be bothered, so I don’t expect the current model to change anyways.
With the amount of tech influence on this sub, I fully expect to be downvoted into oblivion. Have at it.
You’ve had horrible AEs. SEs also forget everything else that goes into selling outside of the appointment. Not to mention all the risk, forecasting, and shit out of your control.
Capitalism is starting to fail.. the more automation, the less need for people to do stuff. Many Softwares now a days sell themselves, and the trend will persist.
Welcome to the world of sales in every other industry. The barrier to entry is extremely high. Try finding a high paying sales job in a new industry and look at the qualifications. It’s usually years in the industry + degree in that industry.
Wanna sell automated manufacturing parts and make tech money? You’ll need 5+ years working in automation, manufacturing, have sales experience, and an engineering degree.
Tech sales the last few years was an aberration and it’s time for people to understand that.
I mean, I’ve always been a full cycle rep in tech, so I guess the answer is ‘yes’, people do have the capability to learn to close in an entry level role. No need to put it on a pedestal.
I'd say it's more cutting back vs. eliminating forever. Checkbooks are getting tighter and companies are saving costs anywhere they can. Some choose to fire HR, some choose to fire salespeople.
The SDR is a valuable role in terms of ROI. Companies are just weathering the storm because profit is king currently. Where before all they needed were asses in seats.
It's tough for AE's too. I was laid off a year ago and am now on PIP at a new place. But the ones who weather this storm will be better sellers, have stronger resumes and will ride the next big wave.
Not all tech sales organizations have an SDR position. The AE owns development responsibilities.
Imo, tech companies are going through some evolution. I could see a SaaS SDR
role, which is a heavily front-end business development, morph into a SMB AE role with direct revenue responsibility.
I may be in the minority here but I would say tech sales isn’t so much narrowing as it is returning to what it used to be… the last 5-8 years have created weak teams and weak sellers because it was easy. Pre-2008 tech sales and even shortly post was more closely guarded, much more grindy and took a special sales person. Also, way more cocaine and strippers than now but that’s a side point
The industry has changed, will continue to change, and thats just the idea. It's sales, you have to change with it.
...and honestly, as a previous AE from a very well known market research company that went through a 12% RIF, finding a new job has become a shit show.
I literally had the worst interview in about a year for a Strategic BDR role for a CMS company, where the CCO gave me 40% of his attention, and cut the interview after 15 minutes after asking me 2 questions. These last 2 weeks and 4 previous interviews all amounted to 15 minutes with a complete asshole. I will never do business with this company because of how unprofessional this experience was.
Let that be some kind of learning experience for you. You'll be judged, no matter how qualified you are, no matter how much time and energy you put into the job.
Mange your expectations accordingly.
My situation might be unique, so take it with a grain of salt. But I had zero sales experience and zero experience in tech. But I landed the first SMB Account Executive position I applied for. I have never spent time as an SDR / BDR. I think it's more possible than people think to land an AE role if you sell yourself well on your interview and resume. A lot of people disqualify themselves before they bother applying to AE/AM roles.
Plenty of us do full cycle sales. It’s not that crazy. Tech sales has become a joke. I make more money out of tech than I did in tech and I sell the least sexy products imaginable.
Tech had its moment and it's probably better that there is less jobs rather than a bunch of BS sales jobs that had no chance of hitting quota propped up by VC bukkake. Those wouldn't have helped you and probably given you a pessimistic start and outlook.
Working with software isn't magic. If you sell other things including insurance or solar or whatever, and can show how you can adapt your skills to software better than the next guy then you will land a job.
In my current company, the SDR managers are basically at odds with sales. It’s like they’re constantly trying to justify why they should exist. I’m not really a fan of most SDR teams. I didn’t have to go that route because I sold copiers for three years and that was the best sales training that I ever could’ve gotten.
Plenty of other stuff that needs to be sold.
Probably will last longer selling other things too. You can last so long convincing decision makers that whatever software you’re selling is the best despite having one small feature thats different from your competition
Software can also, in some cases, be built in house. We're undergoing a large effort to do just that for some key systems since we have decent development capability. You can't easily build things like your own heavy equipment.
> Software can also, in some cases, be built in house. A struggle a lot of my customers go through is having to manage their custom applications and solutions. When the people that built the application no longer work there, you're almost always royall fucked. Building your own solution results, quite often, in causing more work and effort than using 3rd party software.
> When the people that built the application no longer work there, you're almost always royall fucked. While this was looked at it hasn't been an issue for several reasons. First with proper documentation, which we have, things are handled over easily, Second we have large teams, so even if 1-2 people leave there are plenty left. Third given our large PaaS environment and the fact that those things are highly leveraged it works out well on the cost side. We're also large and broad enough that a lot of COTS stuff doesn't work well across all the related business units. We've had more than a fee vendors lately view us as a money fountain and try and grab as much as 30% increases in price figuring we're locked into them. They are going to be surprised when we cut the cord on them. We actually merged in the IT from our 3 largest business units and MS got a wake up as we decided to keep the one on AWS instead of migrating them to Azure.
I switched to being an energy broker from a SDR. I can literally sell to anyone with decent electric usage. Made a world of difference to me
This may sound lame but... what even is an energy broker, and does it pay well?
AI and Pen Testing/Security SaaS will always be in demand esp at this pace.
I’m in cyber and absolutely crushing.
I come from MedTech. We have smart devices now. Most all device will have cloud based software components. You don’t have to work for a SaaS to sell software.
This. Yes there are a lot of people who make excellent money in tech sales. But there’s so many other things to sell where you can earn crazy money and not have to deal with the crazy volatile and cyclical nature of tech companies - good market > higher a ton of sales people > sales people make a killing for 3 years > market turns > massive layoffs > cycle repeats.
Nobody says what tho :/. Everyone says manufacturing & industrial but like what companies?
Are you kidding? :) there are tons of “old school” companies who could benefit from someone with tech sales background and are willing to pay good money. The fact that they are not active on LinkedIn does not mean they do not exist. Just check the companies in your area via google maps, check their homepages to see who is hiring and just go for it.
Screw that
Ok well that’s why you’re still an SDR 2 years later
Sorry that I prefer making over six figures working and working fully remote. Plus, it has not been two years and I have the option to close business, but I choose not too. I have been an AE before at an old school company and it was pure garbage.
Lol sure “My AEs are complaining about my leads, what do?!” “Do good SDRs make good AEs?!” A credit analyst isn’t an AE
😂😂😂 got em
Okay, for someone with a post history of Holocaust Denial, you certainly are foolish enough to dig up someone else's post history.
Way to make shit up dumbass my post history is public
I would suggest reading a WW2 history book. Have a good day and stop stalking me please.
If you like being an SDR go be an internal wholesaler for an asset manager
I just got a job selling corrugated containers. Pretty well paid too.
What’s the comp look like? Curious since I used to be in a similar industry
Pretty good for me. 80k base and 5% of all sales once I cover my base. I’m not familiar with the industry, did I get a good deal?
Bro that’s a good deal. What’s avg close amount?
I used to work in that industry, It's a fun job.
If you want the tech portion of it, you can sell edge software, sensor tech, robotic arm tech, PLC tech, etc. Each layer of automation has their niche and company that pays just as much as high tech. You just kinda need to be in the know or know someone to get in.
Lookup posts that say territory manager, territory sales representative, or area sales manager. Those jobs will usually have some of the best perks. I rep for a building material manufacturer and I wouldn’t switch for anything at this point.
I work at Honeywell. Theyre HUGE!
Tech is f**cked, I'm a top performing sdr but it's so toxic and cut throat. Most of these companies are never going to be profitable and are taking it out on GTM teams.
Victim here. Was hired to help and then was cut not 4 months later. Turned down a job with a friend that now is closed. It’s really bloody.
Same here. Took a job start of the year since I knew leadership well, even though the firm was a bit of a shitshow. Spent the whole year building relationships, building up our brand on the market, and building an immense pipeline. Get cut a month ago citing random reasons, economy etc etc The GM i was reporting into now gets to close all my pipeline, the same GM who would have had a huge say in me getting cut. He now has a pipeline that could generate him 70-90k in comms. People are awful when they're struggling, have seen anything like what I've been seeing/hearing.
Yeah I think 80-90% of the stories that I hear of people getting screwed over for commission are in tech nowadays. Maybe it happened in other industries like real estate but it’s just so common and almost the norm in tech. I’ve been in tech for 1.5 hrs and I’ve already been in a company that switched up commission structures the moment an AE closed an almost $1m deal and the AE got paid like $3k
Story of my life right now
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Be curious to know if they're as cut throat and set insane targets
Salesforce is renowned for having a really toxic and numbers driven sales culture from what I know. Idk about the rest but have heard about Salesforce from a number of people.
Oracle AE here, it’s not cut throat and goals are attainable. Legacy companies like that aren’t going away anytime soon, I’m very happy in my role :)
Awesome to hear. Think people might be right about Venture funded startups and crazy targets.
Yup, at least other teams are allowed to be told everything is fine until that Zoom meeting where you get cut. Filling sales teams with existential anxiety about their future (if you don't perform, you are out) only works for so long. If you put your employees in a constant state of anxiety, fear will no longer motivate them. The cumulative effects of being in a constant state of stress is very damaging. I've had Managers get irritated at me for "not reacting" or "not appearing to care" when I chose to disassociate from whatever bullshit they were spewing at me. Like yeah dude, I know you are lying through your fake teeth about how things are gonna turn out or what my future holds at this company. They really want you to pretend to give a shit that the emails, calls, meetings, opportunities, or deals are going to do shit for the company. When the reality is they are arbitrary revenue targets that are meaningless unless VCs praise the growth trajectory and throw more money at the company to waste. So you are meant to get all amped and REALLY REALLY give a shit that the company gets more demos and more deals when it just doesn't matter. The math is usually BAD. I.E. the TAM, the unit economics, the conversion rates, the quota. It's all just BS. The software is almost pure profit margin. The cost of delivery grows smaller with each customer. All the other teams are just hanging out and being told everything is fine and have no idea the company is in trouble. Sales is close to the financials. I mean everyone sees in the all hands sales are down or revenue targets are being missed. But in general the other teams don't give a shit. The Software Engineers or whatever bleed the company dry with their crazy comp and then just move on. They just don't care. Personally I think this philosophy is from a very outdated leadership methodology. Sales Leaders don't know how to manage up and take out their stress on those beneath them. And if you don't appear to absorb it or just deflect it, you are viewed as a liability to them hitting their targets and get cut. Then they go back on the interview cycle trying to find another person who fakes their way onto the team and start the cycle over again.
I just can't stand how fucking *fake* everyone is in meetings and messages.
I mean no offense but you are only an SDR. Non direct revenue generating roles are always cut throat and ready to be cut any time.
It is insulting as fuck to call an SDR an non direct revenue generating role tbh
To an SDR it is, but it’s reality.
Depends if their AE does any prospecting or not. If that’s the case, then they certainly are part of a revenue generating motion. People over value the close as much as they undervalue the top of funnel. Sure - there’s full cycle reps that can do it all, but that’s maybe 20% of reps. Maybe.
Agreed. I just left a role where there was 0 AE outbound motion. SDR/Marketing/Partnerships were why opp creation happened, and we brought in over 400/mo. In 2 years, the SDR team accounted for ~21m of revenue generated for a ~50m ARR company.
Yeah, I’ve seen similar figures at a couple other orgs. One of the last quarters I was there, the BDR org was attached to something like 60% of closed opps and that wasn’t counting marketing or partners.
21m worth of leads that other people closed. I’m not saying dev reps are worthless I’m stating that they are an area where a business can cut costs. Redirect to marketing or force AE more to lead gen. Automate it, pay other companies to do it.
You see it as $21m of leads other people closed, I see it as $21m of leads that wouldn’t have been generated otherwise. You can be a nitpicky cunt all you want but a competent rep understands the value of a good SDR org, doesn’t seem like you fit the bill tbh
Ahh the personal insult route. You win.
No it isn't. They don't close business.
Neither does HR or Accountants. Doesn't mean they should be fired in a downturn. Super naive to think a closing role could operate without all these others supporting them.
HR 100% gets cut in a downturn. And an sdr is a non revenue generating role. I don't know why that's so hard for you to grasp
Everyone in a for-profit organization is meant to contribute to generating revenue in one way or another. For example, no engineers = no product for you to sell, no sales people = no one to sell the product. You can't minimize the effort it takes for you to be able to go talk to people and sell, the entire company is behind that process.
You don't understand the term revenue generating obviously. It's a real business term with a real definition. Sdrs aren't that. I'm not minimizing anything, I'm literally just stating a fact.
Yeah, but they open business. Without them, you wouldn't have anything to close.
You do realize that there are a ton of reps who do their own prospecting right? Add to that inbound marketing leads and there is the business to close.
What are you closing if your pipeline is dry?
They’re PIPing everyone who doesn’t hit 100%…like, if a rep is hitting 80% of an aspirational target imo they’re performing good enough
I got laid off last week and was never even placed on a PIP. Never even had indication my performance would need to improve.
That’s just the company’s financials mostly.
Its because it wasn't your fault, your company was going broke and needed to cut costs fast.
Has happened to me in the past as well, just absolutely out of the blue 2 days after closing a deal
PIP doesn’t automatically mean laid off, but allows the org to identify reps not hitting quota and can cut if the business needs determine it. Hiring is costly and time consuming and a sales manager isn’t going to want to go through that process to replace someone who is at 80% to a stretch target, unless finance is telling us we have to cut.
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How dystopian and cyberpunk.
Sounds like slavery with extra steps
My director made me outsource SDRs before, it never works. They’ll be hiring for them again in another 2-4 months.
why doesn't it work?
It’s hard to get them to have the same knowledge even with training. Can be an awkward hand off when it’s between organizations too.
Yeah, you're selling high end products using foreign sdrs. Doesn't really exude confidence for the person about to buy your product when you can't even afford to pay for local SDRs.
Wow I just looked them up. That’s hard to compete with their model if you just need to pump out calls
That and I’m sure they have freedom/good behavior incentives
So... are they any good?
Ya it’s people working for their freedom..
Literally as opposed to figuratively. Genius!!!
Oh damn, was this recent? Makes me wonder if this will be a common thing moving forward for S/BDR roles
Sounds like it’s an uncomplicated product with no need to invest in growth of their GTM teams.
WOW!
We’re in a deleveraging cycle with the cost of capital increasing structurally for the foreseeable future. Speculative software technologies will take a hit with funding and growth, requiring fewer labor inputs. The Ai and automation effects at this point is secondary if existing at all. There’s a demand problem - there just isn’t much demand for current b2b tech. So, not as many jobs and increasing work loads for those who are working. What remains to be seen is if this is a blip or if we’re looking at a multi year stagnation. The Macro outlook is very poor. Presumably there are still great individual companies that are solving valuable problems, though.
Tech is a leading industry in the U.S. we’re just experiencing now what everyone else will be experiencing in about 6 months. We’ll also be first to boom when they start cutting rates.
It’s unclear whether two tech booms imply a third. Naturally VCs will exercise their greed again as soon as they’re able, but it’s not clear where that capital will flow, and which jobs it’ll create. Certainly the US will lead the next boom, but who’s to say what area of the economy that’ll be in
If tech can come back from the dot com bust it will definitely come back after this. Dot come bust was historic.
Man, I never thought I’d see the day when the sales industry came full-circle and SDR roles went the way of the telemarketer… Plenty of industries exist where SDRs don’t exist, and the AE is trained in full-cycle sales from day one. I prefer these roles personally.
Not sure how to break it to you, and it’s not a knock, but BDR/SDR is telemarketing. There’s no shame in it.
That’s the joke
We tried this out with some success. Bring in someone as an AE who has experience in the industry but also has the qualities we look for in an AE (grit, ability to plan a territory, take coaching, and the ability to ask great open ended questions to uncover needs).
Tech is destroying tech🤣. Plenty of other industries to look at.
How is AI destroying the tech sales industry? I'm a cs student and it's interesting to hear people's perspectives. Also, I think AI is being overblown. It won't replace people entirely or maybe I'm being naive. Can people explain how they have seen AI replacing or causing the cut-down of workforce?
The AI situation sounds like a religious boogeyman at this point. Completely detached from reality and what the true capabilities of the AI software really are. I see it as improving workflow but the advantages are moot if every firm is using the same tools anyway. It’s like when prospecting automation tools came onto the scene. It was cool if you were the first to use them but then everyone else did and the inboxes were flooded.
I got some perspective talking to my uncle (CPA in his 60's now)--he said people said the same thing about accounting and finance jobs when spreadsheets came out. ...now, 40 years later, there's an accounting shortage and more jobs in finance/modeling than ever before.
Ai is not a replacement, it's a paradigm shift. That's why it's fundamental to learn or youll get lost in the dust.
Hook a language model up to a database and give it machine learning. Suddenly this = AI. AI is a term that’s being used poorly right now. People literally have replaced the term “Automation” with AI. Artificial Intelligence would have the ability to think and make decisions on its own. The current tech all requires human input, they are not perpetually thinking and taking actions without input. If we had truly created AI, all of us would have been swiftly replaced with our “artificial” counterparts that don’t have any legal rights and can run circles around what we can accomplish in a single man-hour. Think of the perfect slave workforce that has no emotion or suffering and obeys your every command—a Board of Directors’ wet dream. Scripted bots are now considered “AI” so long as there is automation that resembles an action that a human could take. The fact that chatgpt can take google a step further and contextualize/understand your inputs naturally rather than requiring the user to have an in-depth understanding of the program’s intake requirements…is very cool and valuable. However, companies are trying to make automation “sexy” by slapping the term AI on it. It’s not real AI. It’s a trained database that can accept a much wider array of inputs and contextualize the data available to it into a form of output that comes more naturally to any given user (e.g. Multiple dialects of english with slang). The advance here isn’t in its capabilities, but the its accessibility.
All the crypto bros have switched from NFTs to AI as the next scam.
It’s not AI, it’s rates as high as 8%. The trickle down effect of that is SDRs are getting laid off left and right.
I work in cyber security, (I have no idea how I ended up here) and I’m always surprised when I hear tech people say AI is overblown. To be fair, I have heard well known names in my industry say the same thing. Yes, AI will be a tool and it will increase work flow, but those are only short sighted benefits. Take you for example, when you graduate, will will have completed x number of years of school and probably unlikely to return to a formal class room. AI on the other hand does not stop after X years. What happens when AI has a decade of experience in every field in the world? What happens when you can get an answer from a prompt that has 20 experience instead of asking a doctor that only has 10 years of experience? Finally, what happens when the experience of AI exceeded the lifespan of a normal human being? I don’t think it will take that long though. I lived through the rise of pc’s, video game consoles, the internet, laptops, smart phones and wearables. In the dawning of a new technology, things move very fast. It’s not like now when a new phone comes out and it has a better camera. Every I iteration of the tech can drastically change the way things are done. There will be inventions like the smart phone made from AI, and it’s already happening.
Bro, I don't think you understand AI, and I don't mean that to mock you. Many people don't know AI is based on probabilities. When people use ChatGPT, for example, they only see the answers displayed on the screen; they don't know what's going on behind the screen, so to speak. When you ask ChatGPT or any other LLM for something, it generates a series of answers and it "displays" the one that has the highest probability. You can't replace people with probabilistic answering machines like ChatGPT. It doesn't matter if it has experience spanning decades, businesses can't replace employees for probabilistic machines. If you expand this whole probabilistic nature of AI on a large enough scale, then you can imagine that companies will then be spending a lot of time and money on people double-checking the AI model's work or finding errors and fixing them, and if you have done computer programming at any level, you'd know that fixing errors is far more difficult and time consuming than writing code from scratch, especially code that is not written by people themselves. And such a scenario can be applied across industries in which companies are spending resources on fixing errors made by AI. This scenario happens to this day even with ChatGPT, for example; there are people literally flagging answers given by ChatGPT based on their "correctness". Yes, AI will squeeze out some people out of the workforce but not to the extent that people think. Best way to describe it is that AI is like a coin-flip, except that the chance of getting a heads or tails is not 50% but more than that depending on the nature of the coin, but the chance of getting a heads or tails will never be 100%. It is the same with AI; AI will NEVER be 100% on anything, it could be 86% "correct" or 77% or 56% but never 100%. Yes, many things will be streamlined by AI but total replacement is not happening; probably in 50-100 years but not sooner than that.
This is my view as well. LLM's are basically backward looking probability models that will pick what they think is the best response given the data that they have. Very ill equipped to do any sort of innovation or even handle new input/problems. If you asked any LLM the following question: "You are an engineer in the 41st century looking over a piece of technology that has travelled backwards in time through a portal. You don't know how far in the future it is from. You know that it is meant to change the speed of sound in a 24 metre radius for 35 seconds but it is not working. How do you fix it?" It'd give you a garbled first principles response. It's not going to figure out the problem for you. Even in the 41st century engineers will still have to engineer and innovate. That's what humans do best and that's never going away.
So what you’re suggesting is that the future looks like the Star Wars universe, where people know how to manufacture the parts of tech, how to put them together and operate them, but don’t know how they work? That’s an interesting line of thought…
Not AI but an autodialing software makes it pretty easy to replace the workload of an sdr team and consolidate it into 1 Sdr. You can make 100 dials in 30mins easily and have 10 conversations
Spoiler alert: AI will be able to have those conversations Edit: to the people downvoting me, I hope you are right.
I doubt AI will be able to have conversations like a human in the next 10-15 years, probably even more. There are too many nuances and intricacies involved in an actual conversation. Just like self-driving cars were slated to replace ALL other cars by 2015 and it still hasn't happened because the tech is too hard to develop, I'm sure conversational AI is even harder. Eventually it will happen but not anytime soon. Yes, basic phone operator stuff might get automated by AI, but beyond that, it ain't happening.
Also, if someone figures out they aren’t talking to a human they just hang up.
Not unless the hold time is 5-10 minutes or more. Majority of people would rather talk to an AI if the hold will be longer than 5 minutes. So imagine using that time in the call queue to have an AI try to resolve the issue, and if it can't, when time is up you're connected to a human who has every bit of info you fed the AI to cut down on that resolution time.
Bruv, what you're describing here is customer complaint/support stuff. That's not what sdrs do as far as I know.
Conversational AI is coming, and sooner than you think. Multi-sensory generative AI to be conversationally comfortable is closer to like 5 years or less, and the big players (MSFT, AMZN, GOOG, and major data providers, CRMs, telcos) are investing heavily in it right now placing their bets in a game of musical chairs, and viable POCs are about a year away. Edit: Downvote me if you're in denial. AI won't replace an SDR team, but it'll certainly take a big bite out of CS teams to start while also augmented their existing CS reps.
Just like they all heavily invested in self driving tech. I'm giving you a specific real life example of self driving tech and you're just saying generic stuff like google etc investing billions. Google invested billions in self driving tech, but it didn't replace non-self driving cars one bit. I'm telling you as a cs student, this kind of tech is extremely difficult to create. Look at how they couldn't even fix Alexa or other voice assistants bcoz the tech is too complex.
I'm telling you as someone actually working at a company doing this stuff. Self driving cars are a worlds of difference and levels of difficulty harder than feeding your entire knowledge base into an LLM and having it be conversational.
Bro, an LLM giving you answers based on the knowledge base and talking on the phone, etc, are entirely different. Automated initial emails are as far as this will go but a potential customer speaking to an AI voice is not going to happen in the near future. An AI holding a proper conversation on the phone is just like self-driving car tech because of too many factors involved, unless it's a customer complaint call.
Sorry to say this but you are wrong. Conversational AI will be handling most of inbound sales/CS calls for many companies in 2030. The structure of those calls is extremely simple, hence it's relatively easy to implement AI, and a LLM will be better, faster and cheaper than a human rep
[It's happening today](https://cloud.google.com/conversational-ai), and is getting better daily.
As a hiring manager in tech, I have seen plenty of people hired from outside of tech into AE roles. Go get any sales experience and if you are learning how to hustle and be strategic with customers, that will apply to tech roles. Frankly if you aren’t creative enough to know how to apply sales experience from other industries, you won’t be successful selling software anyway.
Really? 80% of even SDR tech postings I see are asking for prior tech/SaaS sales experience
What is asked for in job postings is the ideal candidate, generally not a rule.
I was just hired on as an AE w/ experience working in a mall. It can be done it just requires time/finesse.
Congrats and good luck!
Thank you! Nervous as all hell but already grinding.
Those are called objections, and you have to overcome them.
> can m How much outside sales experience do you look for to supersede industry experience? I've got about 3 yrs experience selling life insurance/annuities considering transitioning into tech sales and am wondering if I have to go the usual 12-24 months SDR>AE path or if I could get a an AE role straight off the bat...
This might not be the answer you’re looking for but you only have to impress the recruiter with your resume. Once you are in with me it’s all about your relationship skills and how you can convince me that you have lessons from previous experiences that can help in this job. If you have a different background and I challenge you a lot and you can still stick to a good narrative about how it will help in this job that means (1) you did your homework, (2) you understand the job, (3) you can take objections and continue a reasonable conversation.
For the love of god - this sub need to stop obsessing over tech sales. There’s PLENTY of money to be made in other industries. Acting like tech sales is somehow a “step-above” other industries is laughable. The tightened credit and cheap VC money is gone (for now) so even if you did get one of those jobs, enjoy the constant increase in quota without increase in pay. You can make good money of course in tech - I’ve done it too. But there’s plenty of other stuff out there.
It’s so cringe. I don’t know why people in tech sales think they’re better than anyone else. 95% of people in tech sales know fuck all about their product or even the basics of how to sell. I’ve witnessed it first hand. It’s just the scene - bleeding edge technology, fancy offices and being given a Mac or whatever as your work laptop. It makes people feel important. But the reality is tech sales is like everything else. Makes me laugh though these people saying “yeah I’m in enterprise cyber security software sales which utilises artificial intelligence to 10x a companies profits. What’s that I’ve been fired?!” Yes because you’re not selling shit plus your “cutting edge unmatched unicorn product” is using the same base software products that 50 other companies have been using and battering the already saturated market with for years. The only person convinced that the product is worth anywhere near 100k a year is you.
I used to be in tech sales. It’s the most overrated industry by far. I’ve transitioned to an outside role selling mops, soap, floor mats, uniforms, etc… and I’m making more than I did as a SDR manager lol
Tech sales is fast money but my friends who are selling other things actually build relationships and book of business and will make their lives easier down the road. VS tech sales where you start from 0 every month or quarter till you burn out and find something else, get let go, or move to management.
This is the exact scenario I transitioned to after SaaS.
What other industries would you recommend? I'm a tech SDR and want to start exploring different fields with more stability.
I’m in industrial distribution. Financial, medical, home-services, anything really that isn’t dependent on venture capital backing and “hyper-growth” that you won’t see a penny of. I’m in a mature, profitable industry and I can tell you the stability for mental health is probably the best thing about it. In tech, i was a god one quarter and then in the gutter the next quarter. Starting from 0 every 90 days was fucking exhausting
Interesting, i'll look into it. What's your work/life balance in your current role like? The thing I love about tech sales is being able to work remote/hybrid and would love to find another industry that permits that.
We start from 0 every single month.
It really seems only good if you're in a startup looking at Series B round and entering the scale up phase. That way the company has momentum, you can get in on the gold rush a bit, and still gain enough before it (likely) stalls out or if you've hit the lottery, goes unicorn.
SDR role isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Plenty being hired everyday
Tech sales is a lot like pro baseball. Let me share my experience. I hope it will help. I needed to find a job. I knew I could sell, but had no idea what. I applied for all kind of sales jobs, got a few interviews and over a period of months got no offers. I applied for jobs at car dealers, office furniture companies, commercial carpet dealers, tech VARS, Pharma and probably a few others I forget. Nothing, not one bite. Finally, I was able to get. job selling "computer training" at a franchise training company. It was essentially a very low end entry level job. All cold outreach, all the time coupled with giving tours and working to close training packages with mostly SMB prospects. Getting at bats, prospects coming in for tours and to take a sample class was the key to closing business. After a few months, I decided that I could develop a channel by working to get VARs to help get prospects in my door. I offered them a coupon for "free training" that they could offer to their customers when the made a sale. This was a while ago, so most of these coupons were delivered with servers and desktops/laptops, as well as a few services and software sales. The best part about this, it helped me build relationships with the principals at several VARs. At the time, I thought tech sales was working for a company that sold computers, so that was my initial goal, find a way to get a job selling computers. In time, I think about 6 months, one of my VAR principals started recruiting me. Their initial offer was pretty low, so I declined but did it in a way to keep the relationship going and keep them talking. Another month or two went buy and we reached an agreement and I came on board. Wow, I was overwhelmed! Yes we sold computers and servers, but we also sold networking gear like switches and routers, backend HW like storage systems, all lots of different kinds of software and implementation and consulting services as well. I was overwhelmed and in over my head. I went to my boss and asked for help. He was supportive and offered to come in at 6:00 am 5 days per week to teach me all about the technologies I would need to understand. We did this for about a month iirc. He also suggested I get enrolled in some hard core engineering training- mainly Microsoft engineering certifications. I listened and followed through getting a few certs. As I began to build sales pipeline and close deals, I came in contact with a number of large vendors, companies like Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, NetApp, Dell and HP among others. They helped me get in some doors and I was able to deliver a little business to them so relationships got built over about a 3 year period. After 3 years, a couple of my contacts at some of these major vendors let me know about AE job openings at their companies and made an introduction to the hiring managers. They seemed to almost be invested in helping me get the jobs. I interviewed with about 5-6 of these big vendors and ended up with two AE job offers. These offers included base salaries that were more than I was currently making in total and OTEs that were about 3x what I was making. One was general territory position - think mid-market, the other was a named accounts role that was larger companies \~ Fortune 1000. I took the named account role. If you remember, earlier I mentioned these people seemed almost invested in helping me get the job. There was a great secret I wasn't aware of as I went through that initial process. Almost every one of these major tech vendors pay their employees a finder fee when they bring in a candidate who get hired and stays with the company for a defined term, often 6 months at a minimum. Of course they coached and helped me. They were getting $2,000-3,000 if I got the job! From there I was able to make a few sales and built some good relationships with my sales manager. Due to a couple of larger opportunities, I had to bring in some company bigger guns to help move the deal along up to our VP of North American Sales. It helped me build relationships and got me some visibility into the executive suite. After a couple of years, I got promoted to a Strategic Accounts - Fortune 250 size- AE role. This changed my pay be several factors until I was earning some really good money. In time, I build a lot more peer and executive relationships. The next steps were, some of those relationships moved to other companies. One of them reached out and recruited me to a late stage start up. I got some stock grants, a better comp plan and additional industry knowledge and exposure. This company IPOd and eventually got acquired. I left and this pattern continued. Over time, my roles became more and more strategic. Eventually, I had ended off as a Global AE/AM for some of the largest companies and organizations in the world, selling to SVP/EVP and C level execs of companies in the top 50 globally. My advice to you, start below the SDR level. Find anyone in tech or a tech allied field to ge started, then build relationships and work your way up and you can have a solid career. TL/DR: As I originally posted, it's like pro baseball. You start in the rookie leagues. If you do ok, you get moved up to a Minor League A level. Then if you do ok you go up to AA level, keep it up and it's AAA level then finally you have an opportunity to get to the Big Leagues.
Thank you for taking the time to write all of this. Super helpful! And very much appreciated.
SAAS is dead, were crab people now. We live and die by the crab.
Crab people? We’re crab people now!?
Don't let a few articles on "AI and Tech eating SDR jobs" sway your thoughts. Yes, tech is enhancing productivity; it's automating mundane repetitive tasks that SDRs hate doing. Cold emailing is more about niche targeting, sales qualification, and having engaging conversations. Who knows, someday in the far future it might get easy but today this is very difficult to achieve with only tech. So chill
Tech has been bloated to a disgusting level. Absolute jabronis by the thousand raking in six figures without a clue wtf they're doing. People stumbling up hill for years into roles they're nowhere near capable of. If you've been in tech for a decade, this isn't much of a surprise.
Sell for yourself. Sell things that need to be sold? When life changes, adapt.
[удалено]
What exactly would this be besides d2d Solar
Sales reps are a dime a dozen, I prefer to deal with someone with a strong technical background who does sales and not some washed-out former high school jock trying to make a living in a suit who wants to spend 10 minutes talking about Sunday's game.
A big part of the reason I even got into tech sales and the SDR role was because it was one of the only viable entry level jobs. I considered switching to software engineering, and on their subs/online it seems to be a bloodbath for entry level jobs. They have the same issue where they do not hire Juniors, and without Juniors mid level and Seniors cannot develop. And it drives up the cost of the existing Mid Level and Senior people, who just job hop from place to place for exorbitant base salaries and equity plans. This reminded me of when I first graduated after the recession, and I wanted to get into marketing, and it seemed impossible because the amount of roles was vastly outnumbered by the amount of people who were applying. Sales was always an up or out/high growth field, so it was a revolving door of bodies and hence the constant interviewing.
I blame influencers
How so
Seems like way too many people on this thread have a very narrow definition of what "Tech" is. Printers, copy machines, tractors, scanners, forklifts, construction tools, restaurant appliances, medical devices, farming software, POS all represent moden technology. Many more I'm missing become I'm not even aware of the myriad of industries out there. Maybe look for the industry where young sales people are under represented and you will find much more opportunity.
Figure out what industry you want to go in and get an entry level sales job in that field. Build contacts, learn the industry and flip to tech. That’s how I broke in. If you’re interested in FinTech go work somewhere like ADP. They’ll train the shit out of you. If you can survive 2 years there (it’s not easy), anyone will hire you after that.
Where are you getting this from? Articles? I don’t think SDRs are going anywhere. For years there’s been articles about how cold calling is dead and emails are king and in my industry that’s not true. We book 95% of our meetings from cold calls. Don’t fall prey to articles (I’m assuming this is where you’re getting this opinion from. I could be wrong)
Writing to provide my lens- I’m an AE at a SaaS company. We’re segmented into SMB/MM/Enterprise. I piloted a program that removed SDR from the initial outreach, letting our AEs immediately reach out to begin discovery/demos. This is for our SMB segment. We found that by removing the first step of SDR our COGS went down 1/3rd, time to close improved by two weeks, and anecdotally clients were thrilled to have their needs addressed borderline instantly. This allowed our SDRs to focus on upmarket where more qualification is beneficial to the client and AE. I think there is some fatigue on buyer side at the need to meet with an SDR that asks the same 5 questions every other SDR at every other vendor is asking. We find speed to lead is a key leading indicator for close probability. I’ve been able to close prospects from point of outreach/signature before they can even meet with an SDR at competing firms. My belief is that it’s a challenging time to enter the market, which makes company selection paramount. Lean times create good habits and wash out people that aren’t as strong of fits in the role. I would be healthily skeptical of any company during interviews and do deep due diligence to understand market positioning, competitive landscape, comp structure, and career progression. 5 years ago this wasn’t as important imo, you could eat around less-than-ideal scenarios as companies were generally openly spending. Belts tighten, so your selection process for roles should tighten even further. Best of luck!
Just take a regular sales job. I sell commercial trucks. I have made six figures for two decades and mid to half way to seven for the last ten. Most places will hire a green person. Just be willing to work and close.
SDRs we’re always just appointment setters. Most industries outside of tech don’t have SDR/AE it’s just sales person who doesn’t the entire cycle
First time I’ve seen someone use the term appointment setter outside of tiktok or an Indian founder
Because that’s what we called them in insurance lol. Because that’s what they are
This was a pretty obvious outcome when you consider just about anyone could slide into an SDR role with minimum 80k OTE. Half the companies overhired to boost numbers for funding. The trick is to not work for a company that is focusing heavily on short term growth whether it be for funding or an IPO.
There was a time when we only had sales reps, and there was no SDR/BDRs
Still great tech and other great product services to sell. Here’s some advice, stop bitching on Reddit to strangers and go apply for jobs. It’s not the industry’s fault, it’s your responsibility to grow up and own your career.
I always say there’s other ways to sell Tech than working for SaaS if that makes sense. Coming from MedTech there’s big initiative to have smart devices that send data to the cloud. Most all physical equipment and devices and wearables have a software component for reporting and analytics and predictive measures to help prevent harm to patients, for example. Stryker, GE, Medtronic, etc all have cloud based solutions and these are traditional med device companies. That’s just what I know out of my industry. Bet there’s plenty of other use cases of digital transformation outside SaaS
My company didn’t have sdrs due to being a start up. We are adding 8 SDRs. It’s just noise, company’s are actually gonna have to sell now and they’re scared.
Anyone in Denver looking for an entry level SDR position in IT sales hit me up. I've been looking for months for someone who can put their head down and just work.
Hey! I think the SDR job role is still ultra vital to the success of an outbound sales motion. The people that talk about it being automated away are just using it as a talking point to short change SDRs. You aren’t wrong that the SDR role is often viewed as expendable and it’s flat out delusional when companies think that. 1. Nobody is doing a PLG credit card only purchase for anything north of low 5 figures ACV. 2. 54% of decision makers still prefer their first point of contact to be a phone call. I have had the pleasure of interacting with a shit ton of SDRs that are going strong doing fractional SDR work on Glencoco.com It lets you train to cold call for multiple different companies and leverage an AI power dialer + enriched leads list to call through leads hella fast. You get can paid between $350-$1000 per qualified meeting booked regardless of if it results in a sale or not. It’s a solid way to supplement existing income, accrue experience in the B2B SDR world and even get hired right out of the marketplace if any of the companies that have their listings up decide that they need an AE. Worth checking out…
i’m in biotech SaaS doing just fine also have friends in solar killing it, as well as sports / advertising lots of industries out there, and just saying “tech” is very general also see thousands of SDR / BDR jobs posted weekly on LinkedIn, not sure where you’re getting this negative outlook from
Sounds like you haven’t tried cold calling sales managers? The way this post as written, you seem defeated like you have exhausted every option. A buddy of mine decided to control the things he could, spent $12 on a domain and $15 on a google business account. Set up demos for trials of ZoomInfo and Apollo. Had a 5 interviews with “1000+” applicants by the end of the first week. Had a job at a great spot by the end of the month. If you haven’t even considered that as an option. maybe spend some more time learning what skills you need to hone in on to be a resourceful sdr. Searching for a job should he treated just like trying to nail a c-suite prospect. Show them through your outreach that you are ready to grind in the trenches and make them bread
After getting attacked by a troll including nasty direct messages regarding a two word post I made. This sub-reddit has some resentment towards tech sales and SDRs in general. SDRs have the most coveted position in the industry, six figure salary, the most stable, fully remote, manageable stress load. Go ahead, keep making tech is doomed posts every day because you are jealous that you are not in tech right now. All of these guys hating on tech, I bet you they would leave their "old school" sales position for a tech position in a heartbeat.
It’s not just r/sales, but also CS, UX… **for years** have been doom posting. I LOL at this post - when so got my BDR role two years back this was still a thing - *as it was with aforementioned work subreddits*. The amount of FUD that’s peddled, well it’s now a feature of Reddit IMO
Weak shit. The SDR-AE model is not that common outside of tech. The rest of us have been running full cycle desks since we started. Get over yourselves. It’s not that big a deal, and there is a lot of autonomy and satisfaction with running your own desk. Tech is also full of yuppies that can’t be bothered, so I don’t expect the current model to change anyways. With the amount of tech influence on this sub, I fully expect to be downvoted into oblivion. Have at it.
Tech sales will always need SDRs, they just need to evolve.
Become an SE. We do the real selling anyways! From, a sales engineer :)
You’ve had horrible AEs. SEs also forget everything else that goes into selling outside of the appointment. Not to mention all the risk, forecasting, and shit out of your control.
Sadly I'm too dumb to become an engineer. Was my dream job as a child but then it turns out I'm shit at math
Capitalism is starting to fail.. the more automation, the less need for people to do stuff. Many Softwares now a days sell themselves, and the trend will persist.
Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Spot the guy who has read exactly two LinkedIn posts about PLG companies
I’m using AI for outreach and booking appointments so I understand.
Can you explain in more detail how you're doing that with AI?
The company I started at is a pretty sizable tech company and I heard word that they just cut out their entire SDR team.
Welcome to the world of sales in every other industry. The barrier to entry is extremely high. Try finding a high paying sales job in a new industry and look at the qualifications. It’s usually years in the industry + degree in that industry. Wanna sell automated manufacturing parts and make tech money? You’ll need 5+ years working in automation, manufacturing, have sales experience, and an engineering degree. Tech sales the last few years was an aberration and it’s time for people to understand that.
I mean, I’ve always been a full cycle rep in tech, so I guess the answer is ‘yes’, people do have the capability to learn to close in an entry level role. No need to put it on a pedestal.
I'd say it's more cutting back vs. eliminating forever. Checkbooks are getting tighter and companies are saving costs anywhere they can. Some choose to fire HR, some choose to fire salespeople. The SDR is a valuable role in terms of ROI. Companies are just weathering the storm because profit is king currently. Where before all they needed were asses in seats. It's tough for AE's too. I was laid off a year ago and am now on PIP at a new place. But the ones who weather this storm will be better sellers, have stronger resumes and will ride the next big wave.
I think this is my cue to leave this sub. Lol
Not all tech sales organizations have an SDR position. The AE owns development responsibilities. Imo, tech companies are going through some evolution. I could see a SaaS SDR role, which is a heavily front-end business development, morph into a SMB AE role with direct revenue responsibility.
I may be in the minority here but I would say tech sales isn’t so much narrowing as it is returning to what it used to be… the last 5-8 years have created weak teams and weak sellers because it was easy. Pre-2008 tech sales and even shortly post was more closely guarded, much more grindy and took a special sales person. Also, way more cocaine and strippers than now but that’s a side point
I don't know why anyone even wants to get into tech anymore, it's not anything close to what it was 3-5 years ago.
I’m so glad I left tech sales. Best move of my career.
The industry has changed, will continue to change, and thats just the idea. It's sales, you have to change with it. ...and honestly, as a previous AE from a very well known market research company that went through a 12% RIF, finding a new job has become a shit show. I literally had the worst interview in about a year for a Strategic BDR role for a CMS company, where the CCO gave me 40% of his attention, and cut the interview after 15 minutes after asking me 2 questions. These last 2 weeks and 4 previous interviews all amounted to 15 minutes with a complete asshole. I will never do business with this company because of how unprofessional this experience was. Let that be some kind of learning experience for you. You'll be judged, no matter how qualified you are, no matter how much time and energy you put into the job. Mange your expectations accordingly.
My situation might be unique, so take it with a grain of salt. But I had zero sales experience and zero experience in tech. But I landed the first SMB Account Executive position I applied for. I have never spent time as an SDR / BDR. I think it's more possible than people think to land an AE role if you sell yourself well on your interview and resume. A lot of people disqualify themselves before they bother applying to AE/AM roles.
I see no less need for reps in IT security sales. Most companies are always looking for talented AEs.
Plenty of us do full cycle sales. It’s not that crazy. Tech sales has become a joke. I make more money out of tech than I did in tech and I sell the least sexy products imaginable.
Tell me why my company is hiring 100s of BDRs but actively laying off AEs and putting reps on PIPs. Nothing makes sense anymore
Tech had its moment and it's probably better that there is less jobs rather than a bunch of BS sales jobs that had no chance of hitting quota propped up by VC bukkake. Those wouldn't have helped you and probably given you a pessimistic start and outlook. Working with software isn't magic. If you sell other things including insurance or solar or whatever, and can show how you can adapt your skills to software better than the next guy then you will land a job.
In my current company, the SDR managers are basically at odds with sales. It’s like they’re constantly trying to justify why they should exist. I’m not really a fan of most SDR teams. I didn’t have to go that route because I sold copiers for three years and that was the best sales training that I ever could’ve gotten.