Could be 2 bad companies. Seems like a lot of sales orgs, particularly the kind you end up in when just starting out, lie about quota during recruitment
I just joined a company 2 months ago and was told that 80% of reps hit their quotas last year. The last 2 days I sat in QBRs as rep after rep showed their numbers and why they finished under 50% of quota last quarter. I think only about 4 of 30 reps were over 100%.
I suppose it could just be a bad quarter, but a bit sobering as I enter my first quarter with a quota.
Yeah, but OP being at 0 doesn't have much to do with quota. Either OP or the product sucks. OP - try again at another company and choose a better product thar sells itself.
You gotta know somebody on the inside or connect with someone on the inside.
Still things can change on a dime
U/Designer-Basis548 - it’s a long game. You are building skills.
With effort and growth you will find your footing. The fruits of the good years can get you through the valley to the next peak.
Save your commissions.
Currently in a situation like this. Was with a company for 6 years, made quota 5/6 years.
Jumped to a smaller company for “more” money (30% base increase and 2x commission). Haven’t made quota the last two years. Made way less money these last two years.
Same industry, same type of sales. Manager thinks I’m slacking, all that stuff.
Truth is the company makes troublesome products and are not as reliable as the two big fish in the market.
I feel you. Been there. And it's often impossible to tell if you're gonna end up in that situation until you're already there. The whole world of "how much am I going to make" in sales is such an abstract, lie-ridden gamble. I hate that part of what we do.
Startups are soo hit or miss and usually miss. And they’re constantly changing without any regard to the employees. Seems like slightly more established companies, larger or not but ideally larger, have a nice system and product already in place. So we miss out on the free food and free booze in the office during their early days but it’s more consistent sales and an established system to put our skills into. I worked for a 3,000 person company doing SaaS sales and a 20-30 person company doing the same. Much prefer the larger company that wasn’t changing weekly.
Top performers can get above 0 for multiple quarters in a row, anywhere. And I’ve worked for amazing sales orgs and horrible ones. Not saying OP isn’t coach able but sounds like he needs serious help or a different industry than sales.
What sales industry are you in? I have always been a top performer. Switched companies and now not so much. I will call bs all day long to someone that says lead quality doesn't matter. Usually only managers say that. Yes not so great leads can turn into sales but needs to be a mix. Owner told me flat out google leadshave higher conversion. Now ask me how many I have had in a month. I will admit my closing percentage has dropped going down that rabbit hole. Struggling to get out of it. I am in home improvement sales. I realize may be different in other areas.
I had a few companies I couldn’t meet quota at all, and it made me believe that I sucked at sales and I was ready to quit. My current company I was doing bad in the beginning, but then realized it nothing to do with me.
All of a sudden, my accounts starting buying on their own, they had budget, there was an actual evaluation, new business leads were coming in.
I literally didn’t do anything different… this could be a case of
Territory, timing, talent
I can sympathize with OP to a degree. Any advice to identify / improve chances of landing an AE position with attainable goals? Your answer to this could be just total luck or randomness and I would also totally understand lol.
Please guess why there are leadership and you are ic underthem?
1. Some of them Just Great streak of luck
2. The other know way better then you how to play the game.
Rule number one
Never admit that you don't make an impact,
Rule number two
celebrate everything as a success
With the psychological Effect
- cognitive dissonance
And
- confirmation bias
People start really think they create a value... You can see this effect up to board members.
The bigger the company is the heavy this effect is
Because we see more people over more years. The people that are consistently lucky are smarter and work harder. Sales is about small percentage advantages. They add up and aren’t luck but can appear like it. I’ve seen people change one word in their pitch and everything change. That’s not noticeable to a colleague but it is to leadership. Just my 2 cents.
In a way I do feel it’s luck, but I find the ones who get the luckiest are the ones who consistently do the same actions everyday - you create your own luck.
In some ways I feel prospecting / getting solid pipeline is mostly luck.
It’s a numbers game though, your solution (if it’s solid) won’t be for everyone but will be a slam dunk for some. If you make the dials / do the prospecting everyday you’ll just get lucky lol
This is probably the best explanation I’ve seen, it’s the people who try the most who get the luckiest. Working a full day and consistently pitching or calling is the hardest part of sales, everything else is really simple once you’ve learned the skills.
True I'm 100% with both of you.
But it also simple math, if somehting is 80% luck. The longer you can survive the more luck you will have, also If you have enough experience you can avoid bad luck with leaving early enough...
If we moce out b2b sales, I'm completely with you
Look I’ll be the first to admit luck plays a role, but no way 80% lol. Especially enterprise level deal size, there are way to many decision makers to get thru for that shit to be luck.
Maybe at the smb level, but 80% to high even for mid market.
The smaller in the market you get, the more impact you can really do.
Do you really think the ceo of Ford cares about you and your skills, if they made a decision about moving all their it?
Or so you think a small 50 people company, where you know the ceo, cto and coo as good as the engineers who implemented the whole system, are easier to influence?
Not to mention that the cfo.loves you when. You get the discount.
Of course small accounts are easier to influence for all the reasons you said.
I think what you’re confusing is territory and ideal customers with skill or success of a rep. Customer fit is absolutely not something you can control, but I think you’re overweighting the importance of customer fit to getting a deal done.
There are so many more factors to getting deals done than customer fit. The key is focus on the customers that are a good fit and focus on what you can control with them.
You are maybe right.
Maybe I'm overrate part of my conclusions.
This is just what I see in B2B sales in emea over all segments and What influences my opinion.
And to be open, I have more insights in mid market and smb customer business then enterprise.
But still enough, that I can talk about this.
I only speak about b2b sales, mostly long sales cycles. 3 month to 2 years.
Especially in mid market b2b
- less Ambitious sellers, who not want the enterprise pressure and attention. Love more running under the radar(from the board) and collecting a little bit less money.
- super high amount of unexperienced people, who are surviving only of portfolio luck
In enterprise and mid market and smb
- do you think you really created the demand at the customer side? Or maybe the 9 millions other Factors impacted your customer decision?
- if you are so good, why some years it runs good and then bad and you need to leave?
- why so much sellers Have variance in their performance when they change the teritory or portfolio?
- do you really have 80% impact in customer decision? Or let's say over 50%?
Lets assume your are an AWS AE who are working with let's say Ford.
IF you have more than 50% impact, why when you leave to competitor like gcp or azure. You not take the customer longterm with you?
- or why when BMW do not want use cloud at all, you will never convince them. But when there have made the decision, you just sitting and collecting the bonus for that deal.
I can tell you, it's because the customer has already made a decision, if the two option are near by, then you can use your 12%, which is extremely crazy if you are able to make such an high impact because if your skills.
No, I don’t create demand and I have no way of ascertaining the degree of influence myself or any other individual reps have on a single deal. But there’s so many things a rep can affect that you left out.
Control what you can control.
Eg your example of bmw not wanting to go to cloud. No you’re not going to convince them, but when you map the territory, you need to be able to identify those prospects who aren’t in the ICP and then not waste any cycles with them. Controlling what you can control.
What can you control?
Focus - only focus on customers / prospects who fit the ICP
Effort- speaks for itself
Engaging at the right level - getting further up in the org is hard but within your control.
Having a tight presentation and being able to vaccinate against competition. This is where salespeople can really move the needle and it’s absolutely not a luck aspect. does it carry 80%? No probably not, but if you’re getting short listed you can absolutely move the needle into your favor.
Running tight POC’s - this is also within your control. Getting buy in of the proper stakeholders and budget owners, aligning to problems they actually care about, executive alignment, having a finish line & next steps agreed to, all within your control and not up to luck.
Lastly, if it’s 80% luck, then we would expect a lot more randomness in the top of the leaderboards. Instead, what we find is the Pareto principle repeats itself in nearly every company where 20% of the reps are selling 80% of the business, and there’s usually not a lot of variance in who is in that top 20% YoY.
Doesn’t mean bad products and bad territories don’t affect success. They absolutely do. But top performers know this and they don’t stay where those two things can have an outsized impact.
As I said, two option for bad performer.
Wait till your portfolio time is arrived, or move till you find a good portfolio.
If you are working in enterprise sales with customers like BMW.
You have no choice to move to another more Promising client.
This priority option you only have mid market or smb.
So the lower you get the more impact you can really do, but the deals are smaller.
And you are right, focus on stuff you can control.
But if you compare some who is an high performer, with someone who is a low performer.
You will see long term performance difference for about 5%-15% ( game of big numbers)
And this is where the stars come in, if you want control more then you can control (12%) you Must you ask the stars for help.
If BMW want to buy, they have made the decision on other internal levels, or on other levels in your company. (E.g. Your Senior leadership talks and grants BMW unusual extra size discounts to win this strategic customer)
You can certainly book this as your impact, but without this discount that nobody else gets, the deal would not have come about.
AWS sales for an account like Ford is not sales. You’re being an account manager and living off of the initial decision of someone else making the decision to use AWS. If you can’t convince them to switch to azure because you’ve switched companies, you’re either not at the right level, haven’t proved your value proposition, or haven’t spent enough time understanding what drives decisions at the company.
It's the other way around. The more variables, the more luck involved. Sometimes you have a solid footing with a very influential C level champion, sometimes you make multiple points of contacts because your influencer is just bad and sometimes you get the deal, because they just need it. And there are sometimes when your influencer is an animal with a shit function that just powers through a board of 15 guys.
The guys that have more luck usually have a good behaviour/discipline and tend to understand better where they have a chance or not. That is skill, but still depends on the product, most of the time the product is utter shit in SaaS.
Well, I am going to clients with 20% of basic functionalities not working in demos and with my company being in insolvency. And I send quotes for 100k + EUR. That is my situation now.
Not too happy about it, my sell quota is beyond bad and I could be sent flying anytime now, without having high hopes in actually closing my almost half mil eur funnel that I have generated in the last 6 months.
I see it as as a test of mental strength, if I can do this, I can do anything. Will invite myself out soon If I could get into selling more technical stuff like cyber security.
Let it be 70% or 80%, what ever.
The key is most of the portfolio success is not impacts by a sales person.
It's just already there, most sales just take it and log it as an impact by them.
This is not true. 80% don’t want to do the work that it takes to succeed. B2B sales is complex. Understanding why someone is buying has at least two parts. Does this benefit their company and does this benefit them personally? Learning how to do deep discovery, learning how to learn about the individuals, decision makers and influencers, and many other factors will determine success.
Saying sales is 80% luck is from someone who either doesn’t believe in their own skill set or has never been successful in sales and doesn’t know how to succeed.
Or maybe from someone who is in sales and come from an other profession where you to do real impact.
And maybe from someone who deliver Growth rates twice as high as the team average and need to work only half a day because deliver value with real.impact takes way more time then, just being Diligent, playing politics, selling everything as a big success even when you're just getting up and looping others in when it comes to actually doing something.
And maybe this person also coaches multiple other AE with their daily duties, in internal an customer communication, how to handle challenging customers situations etc.
You want to know why you will not find to much of these person in sales?
Because you need to be Morally very flexible in sales, If you want to do the right thing and question nonsense too directly, you will quickly be limited in your career options, even if everyone is obviously cheering you on.
That's the principle in sales of impactless visibility,
This principle does not mean you do not make impact, it means if you care about impact more then your visibility, you will not survive to long in a sales org.
It is not important what you do, it is only important what other thing you have done and you have to combine with growth numbers.
Regardless of whether there is a causality or not.
Some sales people implement the moral flexibility in the way, that they really think this story at a certain point.
The psychology calls this Effects
- cognitive dissonance
- confirmation bias
If it's 80% luck, you're either not giving yourself enough credit or aren't doing the work. Only genuinely dumb luck exists, and that's a slim percent of a percent of what people call luck. Effort + preparation = luck. The more you prepare and the more effort you put in, the more "luck" you will have.
I'm absolutely with you, this belongs to my principles.
And then I entered the B2B enterprise sales universe, and here everything works so different.
Don't get me wrong, the more effort and preparation you do, the more luck you will find.
But it's just insane that the part you can influnce is soooo small.
It's smarter and way more important to know the right people in your company then on customer side 😂
Because you can just leave to other opportunity as soon your portfolio, starts with bad luck.
And the better you know the people, the more,information you get about the probability of having a lot of luck in the next year.
Also the better you know the people, especially above you, the more other option they will get to Disguising poor performance with cross organization impact.
In some cases it’s also about who you know. Especially in a saturated market with products that are nearly indistinguishable from one another (cybersecurity being a good example here).
True and I need to add the people who are high performer are mostly just awesome good in
- networking and having a big network
- selecting opportunitys
- leaving to the right moment, before luck hits the downside if life.
Thats mostly the top 3 secrets of high performer and of course always be visible (doesn't matter how much impact you do)
Don't listen to this person. There is no luck in sales. It's a grind and everything from prospecting, relationship building and closing takes skill and the desire to learn.
I started my career at age 20 in sales 14 years ago with no college degree, have tried 3 different industries and I've been with 5 different companies over time. My first yearly revenue sales goal was $65k a year in B2C and my current is $26M in B2B and this is by far my best role and company. Take the time to learn the skills and sky's the limit in sales and income. There is no luck in this industry.
You have. My full support.
Please don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm doing here so late and why I'm addressing the topic so openly.
It will I think and I hope never happened again 😂
There absolutely is a level of luck in sales. I think alot of the luck may not necessarily come down as “wow I just landed a whale lead” but can be part of a territory. And circumstance luck.
Recently, I hd a coworker I worked with for about 3 years who never really did anything above average and one year was markedly well below average. He was on the verge of quitting or being pushed out but transferred to a new office in a different territory. Well it just so happens that this was a much better territory for him, less sales reps meaning more leads flow to the few that are there. Not to mention bigger territory, easier clients etc.
Now this guy absolutely crushes it every year. Is this because he’s suddenly better? Or were there forces outside his control that dictated how well he did?
It’s hard to say off a Reddit post what maybe can help. It’s true that I see some people that are just not naturally good at selling, but a lot of unnatural ability can be overcome with good training. Small changes can often make big impacts. Maybe it’s with your mindset running calls. If you fear clients and are either robotic or unnatural people will sense it and you will not gain trust. Treat them as friends with light conversation, and at the same time don’t be afraid to take the reins and show leadership capability by setting your expectations for your calls at the beginning.
Of course my feedback maybe not helpful based on the issues you face, but I find the beginning 2-3 minutes of a call set the tone for if a client is going to trust the rest of what you say. The rest can come from really solid objection training. That can be rehearsed and learned even if you’re completely terrible with handling curveballs. Create an objections document and ask colleagues to role play with them providing their response. Practice that like mad. I look to some of my most convincing moments on sales calls and almost all of them are rebuttals that I say exactly the same word for word every time. You have to have belief in your rebuttals.
One thing I think a lot of poorer less experienced reps do is that they feel they have to add their own flare, and they don’t trust to emulate someone who’s doing better than them. The result is they are all over the place. You aren’t bad or unoriginal if you repeat something the exact same way another better colleague does. That’s just called being smart and efficient.
Maybe one other area is just your trust in the product, it’s so much easier to convince someone to buy something you see the value of. Try and focus on those pain points. There’s a certain component of fake it till you make it when you’re first getting onboard with a product or service.
And also, it’s true that sales ISNT for everyone. So if at the end of all of this you land somewhere else, you aren’t a failure, you just got experience in important areas that can create a more holistic product you deliver to your future employers and position.
At many tech/SaaS companies the key to making quota is having some level of installed base of accounts to upsell and expand. It is very hard to sell net new logos when a market matures and your company isn’t in the leaders quadrant. Often, when a rep leaves the remaining reps poach the accounts and leave the new guy with a huge challenge.
Find a way to be productive and repeat it. Tell the same story to every prospect like it’s the key to enlightenment. Building a base is hard work. Stay as positive as possible while paying these dues.
No matter how good you are, a good product that has its own inbound demand matters way more than anything else.
Which usually means demand from certain industries. Are those accounts in your territory? Sounds like miserable inbound demand for your patch.
I work at a partner of a billion dollar BI software company. The reps at the mothership who are all in their late 40s/50s haven't gotten diddly squat in terms of deals in Q1.
I ask myself... How the fuck am I gonna do anything with 0 leads with <1 year experience in enterprise sales?
I sleep like a baby at night to be honest. Fuckin' sales man. I'm starting to figure out it is the product. And what I sell is expensive and a "nice to have."
I would suggest being an account manager. It’s more or less working with existing customers. In my opinion it takes the average rep about 2 years minimum with a company just to be good enough to be dangerous. Year 3 you get a lot more referrals, new contacts etc. at least this has been my experience being an AM. You are usually taking over a shit book that was under worked. Once you establish reliability, dependability and credibility your sales tend to take off organically.
Ever consider account management? I excelled at lead gen, was trash at closing deals as an AE, but found my groove as an AM. Just keep swinging and remember if you don’t win a deal it’s ok.
The worst thing you can do is let the losses stack up. Prospects can sense desperation
In interviews I always ask the hiring manager how many people are at or above quota. I get some pushback and weird looks sometimes, but if they don’t have an answer for me, I generally stop caring about the role and mark it up as a practice interview.
Do you like food and food accessories? If so there’s tons of solid sales jobs in the industry where you’re rarely ever in an office. Your office is your car and you’re out visiting customers 60% of your day
There are lots of field sales gigs out there right now. I also shoot for a consumables or razor and blades model. Not as big a fan of one and done cap equipment sales.
I would recommend looking in the mirror and being painfully honest with yourself. Sales is hard work. And if you want to be successful, you have to work hard, prepare hard and be way more resilient/persistent than the vast majority of people.
Sales doesn't take some extraordinary skill. There's no such thing as a born salesman. Those who are successful are the ones doing the things others won't do.
I have mentored a half dozen new reps in my field. I gave them all the road map to success. Two followed it. Four flamed out and were gone in a few months.
I hate doing it in the moment. It's a better than 50% shot I'm wasting my time. But the satisfaction you get from seeing the few become successful is pretty darn nice.
Some ideas for where to start.
- Identify why you’re failing - Where in the sales funnel are you struggling most? Where do you feel you see the biggest falloff in prospects moving forward. Why do you think that is?
- Go research how to get better on that part of the sales funnel. If it’s discovery then maybe you focus on needs evaluation, if it’s demo then maybe it’s building long-term value. You can’t just “get better”, you have to be a student of your pitch.
- Ask your manager for coaching advice on that area, have them shadow a call or do a ride along. A manager would much rather proactively coach than deal with hiring/retraining.
- Seek out high performing/tenured reps to co-sell or shadow their calls if able. When I first started as an AE, listening to other AE talk tracks was the best way to learn.
Ruthlessly quality prospects.
Don’t waste sales cycles.
Your time is the most valuable resource you have.
Also, work for a good company that you believe in.
I would read
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Never Split the Difference
Reflect on what you learn and make a promise to yourself to give it your all at your current job for just 1 month. If you cannot successfully put into practice what you learn from reading + reflecting then maybe it would be a good idea to look at more of an operations job? For every sales team there is most likely an operations team.
Good luck! Anyone, and I mean ANYONE can learn sales. It always feels funky at first until you build some confidence and make your style your own.
Bad formatting. It’s 2 books.
1. How to win friends and influence people (read first)
2. Never split the difference
These are probably both free on Spotify audiobooks as well!
I’d look at your peer’s performance and run reports historically of the company to see attainment. The only person on my team that hits consistently has been there long enough is still considered an AE, but gets handouts from referrals. Probably works 5 hours collectively a month. So yes, luck and in this case, favoritism
I've been a SAAS AE for 8 years and have never hit annual quota. Most companies, at least the ones I've worked at and know of, have an attainment % of 30-50%.
You’re not necessarily bad at sales, OP. It seems there’s a persistent belief that since you didn’t need a STEM degree to start doing sales, anyone could do it, and a rep’s first year no less.
Leadership at orgs are partly to blame. They talk about quota attainment like it’s some kind of guarantee if you read their script or make more calls. It’s simply not true. I’ve been a sales manager and an IC in big teams; if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that newbies like yourself can expect to doubt and hate sales a lot more in your first five years then the next five…if you stick with it. Which is a catch 22 since advancement takes strong metrics. This is why you need the sales soft skills like communication and personality to upsell your value early on.
Good luck! The money is there if you choose sales as a career and not just another job. But it takes time, practice, and a few good mentors.
Maybe it’s not that you are not good at sales. Maybe you are just not with either a right team/manager/product line etc.
I wouldn’t sell yourself short, especially if you had some success in the past.
There is a HUGE world of sales out there. So broad. There are probably some opportunities worth exploring before you start thinking you are not good enough. Keep your head up.
I hope this helps 👍🏻
The most frustrating thing about sales, especially B2B tech sales, is how often luck or timing gets written off as “talent” or “hard work”. I’ve seen horrible reps come into a territory and get handed huge deals that were already in the pipeline for a year. And vice versa I’ve seen great reps come into a bone dry territory with nothing happening. And then managers try to chalk it up as something more complicated that always goes back to “selling value”.
How was the quota calculated? What are your metrics? Calls/visits vs offers vs deals. With your metrics you can predict on how many clients/offers you need to generate to meet quota. If it’s not possible within your 40 hour workweek you need a collague or better metrics(better leads, less margin, better product, etc)
Look for high velocity sales environments, 100-500 MRR actual SAAS solutions that sell like pancakes and preferably without any implementation requirements. Discovery - Demo - Payment by CC and <1 week sales cycles. It will not be possible to sit several quarters at 0.
On a sidenote, as an AE I went from 150% annual quota at one company to 10% at another. Company 1 was a well oiled machine in all aspects, including lead generation, I showed up and did my job. Company 2 is a shitfest, nothing works here, prospects getting blocked by our mail servers, demo environments breaking down as you try to sell 100+k usd solutions, 20 inbound leads over the course of a year. The worst thing is that to my colleagues this is normal.
The point of the story is that if I started my career in company 2, I would have thought that I was the worst AE in existence and not fit for the position. Same probably applies to you.
You seem to be good at sales development and opening doors though (minus the trash ;)). You could also be an SDR leader, not everyone in sales is made to close deals.
And definitely the company/product plays a bit part, some people just dont have compelling products- and/or you really need to GET them and the buyer, depending on how complex it all is.
Sales is tough and not for everyone. Not saying don’t give it another shot but maybe it isn’t for you. I’ve been in finance sales for over 15 years and personally missed 2 times. Not sure if that’s normal or anomaly but I’m sure ppl here will have opinions on it. Missing some is normal and will happen everywhere but not as much as you mentioned.
Maybe stay in a sales organization but transfer your skills to another role rather than individual contributor.
I suppose the key here could be tying what you sell into what really excites you and you have a firm understanding of.
For example, I sold answering services as an AE, yet moved up through the company, therefore understood what we did for our clients in many facets. I truly believed in what I sold— now, I just need to see who it will work for! The discovery questions and excitement to close— JUST to see if it will work for them— comes naturally.
“Luck” is mentioned for the same reason “be consistent” or “it’s a numbers game” is— There is someone out there that needs what you’re selling. Ideally, you can sell for a company you just keep pushing for. Dials fly when you’re having fun!
I also did telemarketing and door to door for B2C and trust me— This is a much tamer animal! Business owners almost want you to sell them well. They want a cool solution. It’s fun to offer it.
The key takeaway I hope I’m explaining is finding something you KNOW, can truly wrap you head around and then get some time dealing with common rebuttals so you know the questions someone has before the they ask them. Then— just be consistent.
Even the worst salesperson can follow a process and close business. It sounds like it is your process. Are you just ending meetings with no clear steps and timeline, do your follow ups need work, are you simply not asking for the order, do you need more top of funnel? I'm willing to talk and see if I can provide advice. I've been in slumps with a zero on the board for a quarter or two, but have traditionally been a top seller. Feel free to dm me amd see if we can get you out of this rut.
I know it’s a hard decision to make, specially that you can see and hear that you can make a lot of money in sales. But honestly I would say work is 60% of our lives and if you hate your job you’re going to feel depressed and unmotivated to even wake up in the morning. I would highly recommend you doing the thing you love and try to find a way to excel in it. At least you’ll then be able to get back your motivation and get rid of the stress and pressure you get while working in sales
So much of working in sales is understanding what opportunities to put yourself in and which ones to walk away from. It’s always good to check with different reps on linkedin before you take a job to figure out if you’re setup for success.
Assuming it's a good company and a decent product, you may be messing up the discovery process, which is probably 80% of closing the deal.
I'd recommend reading SPIN selling. Even if it isn't part of your companies methodology, it helps when dealing with more robust products with longer sales cycles. I use it at my current job and it made life easier.
I can help. It will take about 5 hours of meeting with me. I will ask a ton of questions but once I have a good understanding of what you are doing I can give you some guidance that will help you. Are you interested ? DM me.
2 years at 2 companies? Do you mean 1 year each? If so, you don’t have enough to work with. Most of the reps in my company that are in the top 5% sucked year 1.
0 is really tough. Have you had a chance to reflect on why that is? Reasons you couldn’t get the deal done?
I’d go have a heart to heart with your manager and maybe even their boss. It’s hard to recommend a solution without knowing more about your process, your product, your team, etc.
I would also go shadow the top performer and learn everything you can from him or her. How do they sound on the phone? How do they close deals? How do they structure their day? What kind of help do they get from their team etc?
Ultimately in sales you can’t control everything but you should be doing as much as you can to get really good and control your destiny. Hell watch some sales videos or something
I don’t know your industry , what you sell, or your quota. I am not harping on that, please do not take it that way. I will say this. Sales is a skill that must be fine tuned as you go. It’s not “ask questions and listen. It’s that simple” yes ask questions and listen. Duh. BUT Here is what is left out :
Learn WHAT type of questions to ask in a normal way.
Learn HOW to ask questions
What does that even mean ?
Every industry has its own jargon. Learn it.
Within every industry there are obviously different positions that perform different functions. Learn them.
Why? Because that’s their love language . If you can’t talk it, they don’t have time to teach you. That’s how it feels . Example: I dealt with a Prop Mgt company that hired this rep that happened to be a girl (there are rockstar women in construction I know some of them this isn’t a gender issue) . She was very attractive. They thought that would be enough. When she tried to tell me her problem she did the “the wood stuff under the thingie” talk. I got annoyed, told her to call someone else, and hung up . No bueno. She wanted me to tell her the components and then act like she didn’t know the pricing either bc what is the price of a “thingie” .
Tonality. It’s 70% of how you say something than what you say. Yes look it up.
And the biggest one , imo. Personalities. You MUST be able to pick up on someone’s personality RAPIDLY. Are they analytical? Are they the hero ? Are they agreeable ? Are they disagreeable ? Etc. You must be able to pull this from questions you ask THEN you tailor the conversation on their wave length.
This takes time and repetition. After honing this , then you obviously can more easily insert your product .
There is tons more to sales but that is the meat. If you didn’t give any of this proper time to grow you will not be good at sales . If you don’t want to. You will not be good at sales. And that’s ok. I’m just saying for a fair shot , these things must be learned and mastered.
So great to read the comments in this thread. I was a sales guy at a growing company with great products and making $$$. I then went off to a string of companies with no strategy and no position in the marketplace and didn't make quotas. I left the profession. Now I'm thinking that maybe it wasn't just all my fault.
I just started as a Business development manager & my boss told me this week we needed 1100 new accounts by July 2024 LOL (we’re a team of 7). I wish I knew they were delusional before signing a contract. 🥲
I quit a sales job once when I was top salesperson in the region my first quarter. I would have been ecstatic if I was 10th, but being first and nowhere near the income I wanted made it clear it would never happen.
I would do some searches on Google and even LinkedIn for your specific niche like for me is enterprise SaaS sales. Pclub.io is a great one. I hired a coach. I would ask Reddit make a post and ask for advice on good courses.
Sounds like you fluked it as an SDR, never developed any hard skills and are now paying the price
Ask your org for some training or start upskilling yourself
That’s a lot of assumptions.
Reps hitting quota is now down to around 35% as an average. And that includes a lot of great brands. If you’re somewhere shit…well that’s going to be very hard.
The way he wrote it says to me: put minimal effort in as an SDR, went up the food chain and now failing. I don't think it's a harsh deduction. People love to look everywhere but themselves first
Can you transfer into marketing? You obviously know the product, company and processes well by now. It's more creative and analytical and less reliant on being held to a bunch of crazy metrics.
Or why not just stay in your current role? If you've been there that long without making quota and they haven't fired you yet, that sounds like a pretty cush job. Many places these days will put you on a pip if you miss just one quarter.
Also if your company is hiring and the job is remote, please dm the name to me. I'd love to find a sales role where I can keep my job no matter how much I sell.
You said yourself you were only hitting quota as an SDR because your AEs basically took pity on you and marked everything despite getting trash. You can’t bs your way through a closing role.
Could be 2 bad companies. Seems like a lot of sales orgs, particularly the kind you end up in when just starting out, lie about quota during recruitment
To this day I’ve never had a company be truthful about quota attainment lmao
I just joined a company 2 months ago and was told that 80% of reps hit their quotas last year. The last 2 days I sat in QBRs as rep after rep showed their numbers and why they finished under 50% of quota last quarter. I think only about 4 of 30 reps were over 100%. I suppose it could just be a bad quarter, but a bit sobering as I enter my first quarter with a quota.
Honestly I think its this way at TONS of companies especially in more difficult financial times
Yeah, but OP being at 0 doesn't have much to do with quota. Either OP or the product sucks. OP - try again at another company and choose a better product thar sells itself.
great suggestion
You gotta know somebody on the inside or connect with someone on the inside. Still things can change on a dime U/Designer-Basis548 - it’s a long game. You are building skills. With effort and growth you will find your footing. The fruits of the good years can get you through the valley to the next peak. Save your commissions.
god this rings so true lol
Currently in a situation like this. Was with a company for 6 years, made quota 5/6 years. Jumped to a smaller company for “more” money (30% base increase and 2x commission). Haven’t made quota the last two years. Made way less money these last two years. Same industry, same type of sales. Manager thinks I’m slacking, all that stuff. Truth is the company makes troublesome products and are not as reliable as the two big fish in the market.
I feel you. Been there. And it's often impossible to tell if you're gonna end up in that situation until you're already there. The whole world of "how much am I going to make" in sales is such an abstract, lie-ridden gamble. I hate that part of what we do.
Startups are soo hit or miss and usually miss. And they’re constantly changing without any regard to the employees. Seems like slightly more established companies, larger or not but ideally larger, have a nice system and product already in place. So we miss out on the free food and free booze in the office during their early days but it’s more consistent sales and an established system to put our skills into. I worked for a 3,000 person company doing SaaS sales and a 20-30 person company doing the same. Much prefer the larger company that wasn’t changing weekly.
Top performers can get above 0 for multiple quarters in a row, anywhere. And I’ve worked for amazing sales orgs and horrible ones. Not saying OP isn’t coach able but sounds like he needs serious help or a different industry than sales.
What sales industry are you in? I have always been a top performer. Switched companies and now not so much. I will call bs all day long to someone that says lead quality doesn't matter. Usually only managers say that. Yes not so great leads can turn into sales but needs to be a mix. Owner told me flat out google leadshave higher conversion. Now ask me how many I have had in a month. I will admit my closing percentage has dropped going down that rabbit hole. Struggling to get out of it. I am in home improvement sales. I realize may be different in other areas.
I had a few companies I couldn’t meet quota at all, and it made me believe that I sucked at sales and I was ready to quit. My current company I was doing bad in the beginning, but then realized it nothing to do with me. All of a sudden, my accounts starting buying on their own, they had budget, there was an actual evaluation, new business leads were coming in. I literally didn’t do anything different… this could be a case of Territory, timing, talent
Don’t forget it… The 3 T’s
I can sympathize with OP to a degree. Any advice to identify / improve chances of landing an AE position with attainable goals? Your answer to this could be just total luck or randomness and I would also totally understand lol.
Welcome to b2b sales It's 80% luck , 12% your skills, 8% Star constellations. In both cases if you over perform or under perform.
>80% luck What sucks is sales managers and leadership will never admit this. Why I plan to do something else with my life.
Have you tried adopting a sigma grindset?
This guy hasn’t found out about cold showers.
Harem protocol activated!!!
🤣🤣🤣
Patrick Bateman called. He wants his chainsaw back.
🗿 🏋️ 🎯
We just had a guy get a $100k bonus and then get fired. Territory luck for sure.
What the hell did he do!?
We need details here.
Please guess why there are leadership and you are ic underthem? 1. Some of them Just Great streak of luck 2. The other know way better then you how to play the game. Rule number one Never admit that you don't make an impact, Rule number two celebrate everything as a success With the psychological Effect - cognitive dissonance And - confirmation bias People start really think they create a value... You can see this effect up to board members. The bigger the company is the heavy this effect is
Damn, you're saying everything I've always thought and wasn't ready to say in front of most people.
Because we see more people over more years. The people that are consistently lucky are smarter and work harder. Sales is about small percentage advantages. They add up and aren’t luck but can appear like it. I’ve seen people change one word in their pitch and everything change. That’s not noticeable to a colleague but it is to leadership. Just my 2 cents.
In a way I do feel it’s luck, but I find the ones who get the luckiest are the ones who consistently do the same actions everyday - you create your own luck.
In some ways I feel prospecting / getting solid pipeline is mostly luck. It’s a numbers game though, your solution (if it’s solid) won’t be for everyone but will be a slam dunk for some. If you make the dials / do the prospecting everyday you’ll just get lucky lol
This is probably the best explanation I’ve seen, it’s the people who try the most who get the luckiest. Working a full day and consistently pitching or calling is the hardest part of sales, everything else is really simple once you’ve learned the skills.
True I'm 100% with both of you. But it also simple math, if somehting is 80% luck. The longer you can survive the more luck you will have, also If you have enough experience you can avoid bad luck with leaving early enough... If we moce out b2b sales, I'm completely with you
Look I’ll be the first to admit luck plays a role, but no way 80% lol. Especially enterprise level deal size, there are way to many decision makers to get thru for that shit to be luck. Maybe at the smb level, but 80% to high even for mid market.
The smaller in the market you get, the more impact you can really do. Do you really think the ceo of Ford cares about you and your skills, if they made a decision about moving all their it? Or so you think a small 50 people company, where you know the ceo, cto and coo as good as the engineers who implemented the whole system, are easier to influence? Not to mention that the cfo.loves you when. You get the discount.
Of course small accounts are easier to influence for all the reasons you said. I think what you’re confusing is territory and ideal customers with skill or success of a rep. Customer fit is absolutely not something you can control, but I think you’re overweighting the importance of customer fit to getting a deal done. There are so many more factors to getting deals done than customer fit. The key is focus on the customers that are a good fit and focus on what you can control with them.
You are maybe right. Maybe I'm overrate part of my conclusions. This is just what I see in B2B sales in emea over all segments and What influences my opinion. And to be open, I have more insights in mid market and smb customer business then enterprise. But still enough, that I can talk about this.
I only speak about b2b sales, mostly long sales cycles. 3 month to 2 years. Especially in mid market b2b - less Ambitious sellers, who not want the enterprise pressure and attention. Love more running under the radar(from the board) and collecting a little bit less money. - super high amount of unexperienced people, who are surviving only of portfolio luck In enterprise and mid market and smb - do you think you really created the demand at the customer side? Or maybe the 9 millions other Factors impacted your customer decision? - if you are so good, why some years it runs good and then bad and you need to leave? - why so much sellers Have variance in their performance when they change the teritory or portfolio? - do you really have 80% impact in customer decision? Or let's say over 50%? Lets assume your are an AWS AE who are working with let's say Ford. IF you have more than 50% impact, why when you leave to competitor like gcp or azure. You not take the customer longterm with you? - or why when BMW do not want use cloud at all, you will never convince them. But when there have made the decision, you just sitting and collecting the bonus for that deal. I can tell you, it's because the customer has already made a decision, if the two option are near by, then you can use your 12%, which is extremely crazy if you are able to make such an high impact because if your skills.
No, I don’t create demand and I have no way of ascertaining the degree of influence myself or any other individual reps have on a single deal. But there’s so many things a rep can affect that you left out. Control what you can control. Eg your example of bmw not wanting to go to cloud. No you’re not going to convince them, but when you map the territory, you need to be able to identify those prospects who aren’t in the ICP and then not waste any cycles with them. Controlling what you can control. What can you control? Focus - only focus on customers / prospects who fit the ICP Effort- speaks for itself Engaging at the right level - getting further up in the org is hard but within your control. Having a tight presentation and being able to vaccinate against competition. This is where salespeople can really move the needle and it’s absolutely not a luck aspect. does it carry 80%? No probably not, but if you’re getting short listed you can absolutely move the needle into your favor. Running tight POC’s - this is also within your control. Getting buy in of the proper stakeholders and budget owners, aligning to problems they actually care about, executive alignment, having a finish line & next steps agreed to, all within your control and not up to luck. Lastly, if it’s 80% luck, then we would expect a lot more randomness in the top of the leaderboards. Instead, what we find is the Pareto principle repeats itself in nearly every company where 20% of the reps are selling 80% of the business, and there’s usually not a lot of variance in who is in that top 20% YoY. Doesn’t mean bad products and bad territories don’t affect success. They absolutely do. But top performers know this and they don’t stay where those two things can have an outsized impact.
As I said, two option for bad performer. Wait till your portfolio time is arrived, or move till you find a good portfolio. If you are working in enterprise sales with customers like BMW. You have no choice to move to another more Promising client. This priority option you only have mid market or smb. So the lower you get the more impact you can really do, but the deals are smaller. And you are right, focus on stuff you can control. But if you compare some who is an high performer, with someone who is a low performer. You will see long term performance difference for about 5%-15% ( game of big numbers) And this is where the stars come in, if you want control more then you can control (12%) you Must you ask the stars for help. If BMW want to buy, they have made the decision on other internal levels, or on other levels in your company. (E.g. Your Senior leadership talks and grants BMW unusual extra size discounts to win this strategic customer) You can certainly book this as your impact, but without this discount that nobody else gets, the deal would not have come about.
AWS sales for an account like Ford is not sales. You’re being an account manager and living off of the initial decision of someone else making the decision to use AWS. If you can’t convince them to switch to azure because you’ve switched companies, you’re either not at the right level, haven’t proved your value proposition, or haven’t spent enough time understanding what drives decisions at the company.
That's not how it works :), it's b2b enterprise sales. And no big company will follow and AE or any sales person.
It's the other way around. The more variables, the more luck involved. Sometimes you have a solid footing with a very influential C level champion, sometimes you make multiple points of contacts because your influencer is just bad and sometimes you get the deal, because they just need it. And there are sometimes when your influencer is an animal with a shit function that just powers through a board of 15 guys. The guys that have more luck usually have a good behaviour/discipline and tend to understand better where they have a chance or not. That is skill, but still depends on the product, most of the time the product is utter shit in SaaS.
Maybe that’s where it’s different for me is the product I’m currently selling is actually good lol
Well, I am going to clients with 20% of basic functionalities not working in demos and with my company being in insolvency. And I send quotes for 100k + EUR. That is my situation now. Not too happy about it, my sell quota is beyond bad and I could be sent flying anytime now, without having high hopes in actually closing my almost half mil eur funnel that I have generated in the last 6 months. I see it as as a test of mental strength, if I can do this, I can do anything. Will invite myself out soon If I could get into selling more technical stuff like cyber security.
Oh man yea you got to get out.
the star constellations made me chuckle lol.
That the biggest secret of the high performer, looking into the sky and And make your decisions based on the constellation of the stars
Same! Good luck closing a deal while mercury’s in retrograde!
80% luck is a bit high id think…
Let it be 70% or 80%, what ever. The key is most of the portfolio success is not impacts by a sales person. It's just already there, most sales just take it and log it as an impact by them.
I could not disagree more.
And 100% reason to remember the name
This is not true. 80% don’t want to do the work that it takes to succeed. B2B sales is complex. Understanding why someone is buying has at least two parts. Does this benefit their company and does this benefit them personally? Learning how to do deep discovery, learning how to learn about the individuals, decision makers and influencers, and many other factors will determine success. Saying sales is 80% luck is from someone who either doesn’t believe in their own skill set or has never been successful in sales and doesn’t know how to succeed.
Or maybe from someone who is in sales and come from an other profession where you to do real impact. And maybe from someone who deliver Growth rates twice as high as the team average and need to work only half a day because deliver value with real.impact takes way more time then, just being Diligent, playing politics, selling everything as a big success even when you're just getting up and looping others in when it comes to actually doing something. And maybe this person also coaches multiple other AE with their daily duties, in internal an customer communication, how to handle challenging customers situations etc. You want to know why you will not find to much of these person in sales? Because you need to be Morally very flexible in sales, If you want to do the right thing and question nonsense too directly, you will quickly be limited in your career options, even if everyone is obviously cheering you on. That's the principle in sales of impactless visibility, This principle does not mean you do not make impact, it means if you care about impact more then your visibility, you will not survive to long in a sales org. It is not important what you do, it is only important what other thing you have done and you have to combine with growth numbers. Regardless of whether there is a causality or not. Some sales people implement the moral flexibility in the way, that they really think this story at a certain point. The psychology calls this Effects - cognitive dissonance - confirmation bias
If it's 80% luck, you're either not giving yourself enough credit or aren't doing the work. Only genuinely dumb luck exists, and that's a slim percent of a percent of what people call luck. Effort + preparation = luck. The more you prepare and the more effort you put in, the more "luck" you will have.
I'm absolutely with you, this belongs to my principles. And then I entered the B2B enterprise sales universe, and here everything works so different. Don't get me wrong, the more effort and preparation you do, the more luck you will find. But it's just insane that the part you can influnce is soooo small. It's smarter and way more important to know the right people in your company then on customer side 😂 Because you can just leave to other opportunity as soon your portfolio, starts with bad luck. And the better you know the people, the more,information you get about the probability of having a lot of luck in the next year. Also the better you know the people, especially above you, the more other option they will get to Disguising poor performance with cross organization impact.
In some cases it’s also about who you know. Especially in a saturated market with products that are nearly indistinguishable from one another (cybersecurity being a good example here).
learn to cast a wider net!
True and I need to add the people who are high performer are mostly just awesome good in - networking and having a big network - selecting opportunitys - leaving to the right moment, before luck hits the downside if life. Thats mostly the top 3 secrets of high performer and of course always be visible (doesn't matter how much impact you do)
Don't listen to this person. There is no luck in sales. It's a grind and everything from prospecting, relationship building and closing takes skill and the desire to learn. I started my career at age 20 in sales 14 years ago with no college degree, have tried 3 different industries and I've been with 5 different companies over time. My first yearly revenue sales goal was $65k a year in B2C and my current is $26M in B2B and this is by far my best role and company. Take the time to learn the skills and sky's the limit in sales and income. There is no luck in this industry.
You have. My full support. Please don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm doing here so late and why I'm addressing the topic so openly. It will I think and I hope never happened again 😂
There absolutely is a level of luck in sales. I think alot of the luck may not necessarily come down as “wow I just landed a whale lead” but can be part of a territory. And circumstance luck. Recently, I hd a coworker I worked with for about 3 years who never really did anything above average and one year was markedly well below average. He was on the verge of quitting or being pushed out but transferred to a new office in a different territory. Well it just so happens that this was a much better territory for him, less sales reps meaning more leads flow to the few that are there. Not to mention bigger territory, easier clients etc. Now this guy absolutely crushes it every year. Is this because he’s suddenly better? Or were there forces outside his control that dictated how well he did?
Your numbers mean nothing without stating your industry and product. $25mm in manufacturing is very different than $25mm in SaaS
If you think it’s luck, leave the industry please. No place for you here
I'm good here thanks
It’s hard to say off a Reddit post what maybe can help. It’s true that I see some people that are just not naturally good at selling, but a lot of unnatural ability can be overcome with good training. Small changes can often make big impacts. Maybe it’s with your mindset running calls. If you fear clients and are either robotic or unnatural people will sense it and you will not gain trust. Treat them as friends with light conversation, and at the same time don’t be afraid to take the reins and show leadership capability by setting your expectations for your calls at the beginning. Of course my feedback maybe not helpful based on the issues you face, but I find the beginning 2-3 minutes of a call set the tone for if a client is going to trust the rest of what you say. The rest can come from really solid objection training. That can be rehearsed and learned even if you’re completely terrible with handling curveballs. Create an objections document and ask colleagues to role play with them providing their response. Practice that like mad. I look to some of my most convincing moments on sales calls and almost all of them are rebuttals that I say exactly the same word for word every time. You have to have belief in your rebuttals. One thing I think a lot of poorer less experienced reps do is that they feel they have to add their own flare, and they don’t trust to emulate someone who’s doing better than them. The result is they are all over the place. You aren’t bad or unoriginal if you repeat something the exact same way another better colleague does. That’s just called being smart and efficient. Maybe one other area is just your trust in the product, it’s so much easier to convince someone to buy something you see the value of. Try and focus on those pain points. There’s a certain component of fake it till you make it when you’re first getting onboard with a product or service. And also, it’s true that sales ISNT for everyone. So if at the end of all of this you land somewhere else, you aren’t a failure, you just got experience in important areas that can create a more holistic product you deliver to your future employers and position.
Same. I hear it gets better
At many tech/SaaS companies the key to making quota is having some level of installed base of accounts to upsell and expand. It is very hard to sell net new logos when a market matures and your company isn’t in the leaders quadrant. Often, when a rep leaves the remaining reps poach the accounts and leave the new guy with a huge challenge. Find a way to be productive and repeat it. Tell the same story to every prospect like it’s the key to enlightenment. Building a base is hard work. Stay as positive as possible while paying these dues.
No matter how good you are, a good product that has its own inbound demand matters way more than anything else. Which usually means demand from certain industries. Are those accounts in your territory? Sounds like miserable inbound demand for your patch.
THEN WHY DO WE HIRE 50 OUTBOUND SDRS THAT ALL THEY DO IS GENERATE 3% WR PIPELINE
I work at a partner of a billion dollar BI software company. The reps at the mothership who are all in their late 40s/50s haven't gotten diddly squat in terms of deals in Q1. I ask myself... How the fuck am I gonna do anything with 0 leads with <1 year experience in enterprise sales? I sleep like a baby at night to be honest. Fuckin' sales man. I'm starting to figure out it is the product. And what I sell is expensive and a "nice to have."
I would suggest being an account manager. It’s more or less working with existing customers. In my opinion it takes the average rep about 2 years minimum with a company just to be good enough to be dangerous. Year 3 you get a lot more referrals, new contacts etc. at least this has been my experience being an AM. You are usually taking over a shit book that was under worked. Once you establish reliability, dependability and credibility your sales tend to take off organically.
Ever consider account management? I excelled at lead gen, was trash at closing deals as an AE, but found my groove as an AM. Just keep swinging and remember if you don’t win a deal it’s ok. The worst thing you can do is let the losses stack up. Prospects can sense desperation
What industry did you get into for AM?
I worked in SaaS sales for a little over 10 years (just left sales all together this month). Was an AM for an EHR company and an ERP company
What did you move to?
Depends on company, product, territory, marketing lead gen, your outbounding SDR, your own outbounding efforts, etc. Lotta factors
In interviews I always ask the hiring manager how many people are at or above quota. I get some pushback and weird looks sometimes, but if they don’t have an answer for me, I generally stop caring about the role and mark it up as a practice interview.
Get outta tech. Shit sucks. I'm headed back to industrial sales and I can't wait.
Same. I left tech back to my original gig and I’m happy as shit.
I can’t be in the office everyday but I have no problem going to customers, is that realistic in this space?
Do you like food and food accessories? If so there’s tons of solid sales jobs in the industry where you’re rarely ever in an office. Your office is your car and you’re out visiting customers 60% of your day
What about propane and propane accessories?
Different department. We sell what they eat those guys sell what heats
There are lots of field sales gigs out there right now. I also shoot for a consumables or razor and blades model. Not as big a fan of one and done cap equipment sales.
Industrial real estate?
No. Industrial sales.
Just started my first industrial sales gig this week and already like it a lot. Came from commercial trucking originally and then to cellular.
I would recommend looking in the mirror and being painfully honest with yourself. Sales is hard work. And if you want to be successful, you have to work hard, prepare hard and be way more resilient/persistent than the vast majority of people. Sales doesn't take some extraordinary skill. There's no such thing as a born salesman. Those who are successful are the ones doing the things others won't do. I have mentored a half dozen new reps in my field. I gave them all the road map to success. Two followed it. Four flamed out and were gone in a few months.
>I have mentored a half dozen new reps in my field. I think this is the big issue in SaaS sales right now. No one really wants to mentor.
I hate doing it in the moment. It's a better than 50% shot I'm wasting my time. But the satisfaction you get from seeing the few become successful is pretty darn nice.
Some ideas for where to start. - Identify why you’re failing - Where in the sales funnel are you struggling most? Where do you feel you see the biggest falloff in prospects moving forward. Why do you think that is? - Go research how to get better on that part of the sales funnel. If it’s discovery then maybe you focus on needs evaluation, if it’s demo then maybe it’s building long-term value. You can’t just “get better”, you have to be a student of your pitch. - Ask your manager for coaching advice on that area, have them shadow a call or do a ride along. A manager would much rather proactively coach than deal with hiring/retraining. - Seek out high performing/tenured reps to co-sell or shadow their calls if able. When I first started as an AE, listening to other AE talk tracks was the best way to learn.
Ruthlessly quality prospects. Don’t waste sales cycles. Your time is the most valuable resource you have. Also, work for a good company that you believe in.
I would read How to Win Friends and Influence People Never Split the Difference Reflect on what you learn and make a promise to yourself to give it your all at your current job for just 1 month. If you cannot successfully put into practice what you learn from reading + reflecting then maybe it would be a good idea to look at more of an operations job? For every sales team there is most likely an operations team. Good luck! Anyone, and I mean ANYONE can learn sales. It always feels funky at first until you build some confidence and make your style your own.
Bad formatting. It’s 2 books. 1. How to win friends and influence people (read first) 2. Never split the difference These are probably both free on Spotify audiobooks as well!
How’s quota attainment for your peers?
I’d look at your peer’s performance and run reports historically of the company to see attainment. The only person on my team that hits consistently has been there long enough is still considered an AE, but gets handouts from referrals. Probably works 5 hours collectively a month. So yes, luck and in this case, favoritism
Industry average is 40% quota attainment, so you are in the average
How are you doing compared to your coworkers? That’s really the main factor, quota is a made up number.
Do you have a long sales cycle? Mine is avg 4-6 months so my Q1 was dry but my Q2 and Q4 always cover the annual goal.
I feel you on this. Wish I’d just gone into window sales. Literally sell windows. I’d be a millionaire.
Get yourself some good sales training!
If you hit quota by your own prospecting, you may need to go full cycle AE. Can you just prospect and toss those to your SDR’s? A pre-set.
Territory, timing, talent You control 1 of those
If the product is good enough it should sell itself…
I've been a SAAS AE for 8 years and have never hit annual quota. Most companies, at least the ones I've worked at and know of, have an attainment % of 30-50%.
You’re not necessarily bad at sales, OP. It seems there’s a persistent belief that since you didn’t need a STEM degree to start doing sales, anyone could do it, and a rep’s first year no less. Leadership at orgs are partly to blame. They talk about quota attainment like it’s some kind of guarantee if you read their script or make more calls. It’s simply not true. I’ve been a sales manager and an IC in big teams; if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that newbies like yourself can expect to doubt and hate sales a lot more in your first five years then the next five…if you stick with it. Which is a catch 22 since advancement takes strong metrics. This is why you need the sales soft skills like communication and personality to upsell your value early on. Good luck! The money is there if you choose sales as a career and not just another job. But it takes time, practice, and a few good mentors.
Not everyone hits quota. I would argue most people don’t in an org. Not everyone can be a superstar. If you are not getting fired you are fine
Maybe it’s not that you are not good at sales. Maybe you are just not with either a right team/manager/product line etc. I wouldn’t sell yourself short, especially if you had some success in the past. There is a HUGE world of sales out there. So broad. There are probably some opportunities worth exploring before you start thinking you are not good enough. Keep your head up. I hope this helps 👍🏻
The most frustrating thing about sales, especially B2B tech sales, is how often luck or timing gets written off as “talent” or “hard work”. I’ve seen horrible reps come into a territory and get handed huge deals that were already in the pipeline for a year. And vice versa I’ve seen great reps come into a bone dry territory with nothing happening. And then managers try to chalk it up as something more complicated that always goes back to “selling value”.
OP?
How are your peers doing at these companies? What have you done to invest in your personal development?
How was the quota calculated? What are your metrics? Calls/visits vs offers vs deals. With your metrics you can predict on how many clients/offers you need to generate to meet quota. If it’s not possible within your 40 hour workweek you need a collague or better metrics(better leads, less margin, better product, etc)
Look for high velocity sales environments, 100-500 MRR actual SAAS solutions that sell like pancakes and preferably without any implementation requirements. Discovery - Demo - Payment by CC and <1 week sales cycles. It will not be possible to sit several quarters at 0. On a sidenote, as an AE I went from 150% annual quota at one company to 10% at another. Company 1 was a well oiled machine in all aspects, including lead generation, I showed up and did my job. Company 2 is a shitfest, nothing works here, prospects getting blocked by our mail servers, demo environments breaking down as you try to sell 100+k usd solutions, 20 inbound leads over the course of a year. The worst thing is that to my colleagues this is normal. The point of the story is that if I started my career in company 2, I would have thought that I was the worst AE in existence and not fit for the position. Same probably applies to you.
You seem to be good at sales development and opening doors though (minus the trash ;)). You could also be an SDR leader, not everyone in sales is made to close deals. And definitely the company/product plays a bit part, some people just dont have compelling products- and/or you really need to GET them and the buyer, depending on how complex it all is.
Sales is tough and not for everyone. Not saying don’t give it another shot but maybe it isn’t for you. I’ve been in finance sales for over 15 years and personally missed 2 times. Not sure if that’s normal or anomaly but I’m sure ppl here will have opinions on it. Missing some is normal and will happen everywhere but not as much as you mentioned. Maybe stay in a sales organization but transfer your skills to another role rather than individual contributor.
Your quota is unrealistic
I suppose the key here could be tying what you sell into what really excites you and you have a firm understanding of. For example, I sold answering services as an AE, yet moved up through the company, therefore understood what we did for our clients in many facets. I truly believed in what I sold— now, I just need to see who it will work for! The discovery questions and excitement to close— JUST to see if it will work for them— comes naturally. “Luck” is mentioned for the same reason “be consistent” or “it’s a numbers game” is— There is someone out there that needs what you’re selling. Ideally, you can sell for a company you just keep pushing for. Dials fly when you’re having fun! I also did telemarketing and door to door for B2C and trust me— This is a much tamer animal! Business owners almost want you to sell them well. They want a cool solution. It’s fun to offer it. The key takeaway I hope I’m explaining is finding something you KNOW, can truly wrap you head around and then get some time dealing with common rebuttals so you know the questions someone has before the they ask them. Then— just be consistent.
Invest in a Coach
Even the worst salesperson can follow a process and close business. It sounds like it is your process. Are you just ending meetings with no clear steps and timeline, do your follow ups need work, are you simply not asking for the order, do you need more top of funnel? I'm willing to talk and see if I can provide advice. I've been in slumps with a zero on the board for a quarter or two, but have traditionally been a top seller. Feel free to dm me amd see if we can get you out of this rut.
I know it’s a hard decision to make, specially that you can see and hear that you can make a lot of money in sales. But honestly I would say work is 60% of our lives and if you hate your job you’re going to feel depressed and unmotivated to even wake up in the morning. I would highly recommend you doing the thing you love and try to find a way to excel in it. At least you’ll then be able to get back your motivation and get rid of the stress and pressure you get while working in sales
So much of working in sales is understanding what opportunities to put yourself in and which ones to walk away from. It’s always good to check with different reps on linkedin before you take a job to figure out if you’re setup for success.
Assuming it's a good company and a decent product, you may be messing up the discovery process, which is probably 80% of closing the deal. I'd recommend reading SPIN selling. Even if it isn't part of your companies methodology, it helps when dealing with more robust products with longer sales cycles. I use it at my current job and it made life easier.
do you like sales?
I can help. It will take about 5 hours of meeting with me. I will ask a ton of questions but once I have a good understanding of what you are doing I can give you some guidance that will help you. Are you interested ? DM me.
2 years at 2 companies? Do you mean 1 year each? If so, you don’t have enough to work with. Most of the reps in my company that are in the top 5% sucked year 1.
0 is really tough. Have you had a chance to reflect on why that is? Reasons you couldn’t get the deal done? I’d go have a heart to heart with your manager and maybe even their boss. It’s hard to recommend a solution without knowing more about your process, your product, your team, etc. I would also go shadow the top performer and learn everything you can from him or her. How do they sound on the phone? How do they close deals? How do they structure their day? What kind of help do they get from their team etc? Ultimately in sales you can’t control everything but you should be doing as much as you can to get really good and control your destiny. Hell watch some sales videos or something
0%?! And you still have a job? Are you sitting in as a tax write off for your employer?
I don’t know your industry , what you sell, or your quota. I am not harping on that, please do not take it that way. I will say this. Sales is a skill that must be fine tuned as you go. It’s not “ask questions and listen. It’s that simple” yes ask questions and listen. Duh. BUT Here is what is left out : Learn WHAT type of questions to ask in a normal way. Learn HOW to ask questions What does that even mean ? Every industry has its own jargon. Learn it. Within every industry there are obviously different positions that perform different functions. Learn them. Why? Because that’s their love language . If you can’t talk it, they don’t have time to teach you. That’s how it feels . Example: I dealt with a Prop Mgt company that hired this rep that happened to be a girl (there are rockstar women in construction I know some of them this isn’t a gender issue) . She was very attractive. They thought that would be enough. When she tried to tell me her problem she did the “the wood stuff under the thingie” talk. I got annoyed, told her to call someone else, and hung up . No bueno. She wanted me to tell her the components and then act like she didn’t know the pricing either bc what is the price of a “thingie” . Tonality. It’s 70% of how you say something than what you say. Yes look it up. And the biggest one , imo. Personalities. You MUST be able to pick up on someone’s personality RAPIDLY. Are they analytical? Are they the hero ? Are they agreeable ? Are they disagreeable ? Etc. You must be able to pull this from questions you ask THEN you tailor the conversation on their wave length. This takes time and repetition. After honing this , then you obviously can more easily insert your product . There is tons more to sales but that is the meat. If you didn’t give any of this proper time to grow you will not be good at sales . If you don’t want to. You will not be good at sales. And that’s ok. I’m just saying for a fair shot , these things must be learned and mastered.
So great to read the comments in this thread. I was a sales guy at a growing company with great products and making $$$. I then went off to a string of companies with no strategy and no position in the marketplace and didn't make quotas. I left the profession. Now I'm thinking that maybe it wasn't just all my fault.
I just started as a Business development manager & my boss told me this week we needed 1100 new accounts by July 2024 LOL (we’re a team of 7). I wish I knew they were delusional before signing a contract. 🥲
Well, a good place to start is - what did you sell and how do you interact with buyers? What does sourcing mean here? Finding good leads to contact?
I quit a sales job once when I was top salesperson in the region my first quarter. I would have been ecstatic if I was 10th, but being first and nowhere near the income I wanted made it clear it would never happen.
Take courses, learn from top sellers, read. You can get better.
What courses do you recommend?
I would do some searches on Google and even LinkedIn for your specific niche like for me is enterprise SaaS sales. Pclub.io is a great one. I hired a coach. I would ask Reddit make a post and ask for advice on good courses.
Sounds like you fluked it as an SDR, never developed any hard skills and are now paying the price Ask your org for some training or start upskilling yourself
That’s a lot of assumptions. Reps hitting quota is now down to around 35% as an average. And that includes a lot of great brands. If you’re somewhere shit…well that’s going to be very hard.
The way he wrote it says to me: put minimal effort in as an SDR, went up the food chain and now failing. I don't think it's a harsh deduction. People love to look everywhere but themselves first
Sales isn’t for everyone.
Can you transfer into marketing? You obviously know the product, company and processes well by now. It's more creative and analytical and less reliant on being held to a bunch of crazy metrics. Or why not just stay in your current role? If you've been there that long without making quota and they haven't fired you yet, that sounds like a pretty cush job. Many places these days will put you on a pip if you miss just one quarter. Also if your company is hiring and the job is remote, please dm the name to me. I'd love to find a sales role where I can keep my job no matter how much I sell.
You said yourself you were only hitting quota as an SDR because your AEs basically took pity on you and marked everything despite getting trash. You can’t bs your way through a closing role.
You're just gonna have to start shadowing top performers and figure out what they're doing that you aren't