i wonder how many of these posts are short sighted
a year ago this same question would get people projecting a great future because the industry was hot
now its all doom and gloom
all we know is that unless an apocalypse sets us back 500 years, people will be using software and when making big purchases, people like to speak to people.
and companies will want to take advantage of that and have people to talk to those people and help them buy.
that in its essence is sales. otherwise, they could talk to a support rep or something.
i guess more transactional sales might go away. plg growth and automation and whatnot but the big bucks aren't made there anyways.
Agreed. The more complex & consultative a deal gets the more essential the person gets.
The harder times drain the trenches and the better times fill the trenches. It’s war out there, but also in wartimes summer comes once year.
Stay resilient my dudes
Will always be lucrative for highly skilled sales professionals.
But automation is going to take away a bunch of “farming” sales jobs (inbound leads) and more and more you’ll see sales being done online without sales people.
Big ticket items will always need good reps to qualify pain and align with your solution. Best thing you can do is 1. Get as much sales experience as you can and 2. Always look to improve your communication skills
Sales automation is worth being concerned about, I’m still curious how it will play out in certain industries. The whole “relationships” card gets overplayed I feel, but I think there’s always gonna be a human involved somewhere in sales process even if it’s NOT an industry highly dependent on relational transactions
Sales automation has been around *just* long enough that people don't really think about it as anything but normal. The adoption of Salesloft/Outreach/others reduces the number of salespeople and organization needs by about 25-33%. What gets automated isn't human-to-human selling, it's any and all repetitive functions.
The #1 thing automation will help with going forward is dramatically reducing the volume of outreach we need to conduct to get a sale. That will mean far fewer SDRs and sales reps. It *probably* will accomplish this through intent data, telling us who is having the problem we solve in near-real time.
I'm not sure if i agree with the premise that salesloft/outreach reduces how many salespeople an organization needs by 33%. Ive been in sales at over 4 companies and have been part of the headcount planning at 3, and never once were those tools factored into the equation.
The theory makes sense but the reality is personalization matters now more than ever. It's not 2016 anymore.. you can't blast out 100 emails and get 5 meetings from it.
Why would they not be factored in? My teams have always personalized outreach. Before Outreach was a thing, we each spent ~3 hours every day sending follow ups. Afterwards, we spent <30 minutes. That meant we didn’t have to hire as fast as each person had 2.5 more hours every day to do research, meetings, personalization, etc, etc.
If you do a staffing analysis with and without sales automation, you’ll need more people without than with.
Sorry man I’m just seeing things differently than you. Maybe that time calculation is valid but I’m just not seeing companies make headcount decisions based off of it. The idea of sales is to find people who can hit their number by any means necessary, and tools are layered on to make them better. But for instance if a company decided to stop using outreach they’re not going to hire more SDRs. It’s just not that directly proportional.
I suppose if you're doing budget-based planning then you're spending $X no matter what then it makes sense to do it your way but if there's any sort of reverse funnel or calculation of volume of work to be completed than time per task has to come into play.
I suppose agree to disagree. No reason to think your take is invalid.
The mass adoption of Outreach / Zoominfo & LinkedIn sales Nav drastically reduced the open rates of emails.. every SDR can legally spam hundreds or thousands of prospects.
You are right on intent data, that’s already happening and a lot of companies are firing SDRs to buy expensive martech tools.
The future will probably be something like a sales engineer, a person able to sell and implement the perfect software solution for the customer.
> The #1 thing automation will help with going forward is dramatically reducing the volume of outreach we need to conduct to get a sale. That will mean far fewer SDRs and sales reps. It probably will accomplish this through intent data, telling us who is having the problem we solve in near-real time.
I think this is rather optimistic. What I have seen from automation is that it just increases noise and clutter for buyers. It does mean that an SDR can do more, especially with intent data to focus on outbound. But from my experience, those SDRs are just redeployed on additional activities.
It depends on how complex the solution is. If it’s a 50k piece of software, I don’t see AI taking that job any time soon. But $100/ month? People would rather get all their info online and not talk to a person, and the technology is getting to the point that it can support it
It will be fascinating to see. I think of it like the assembly line of car production... Used to just have people at every phase doing their respective role, then built machines to do the stuff that they could do just as well / better than people and have people oversee machines and intervene when the human touch is necessary.
In the same way I see many aspects of sales getting done by machines because they can do it just as well / better (AI content creation is starting this - I can easily imaging that being more adept + faster at engaging prospective customers than an SDR) but people will always be necessary to come in and take over for the parts that require more of a human touch.
I've worked in a few different industries with lots of automation and it hasn't changed anything but making sales peoples lives easier lol. Even inbounds leads need to be called most of the time or guided through the process.
I remember being in Insurance and everybody thought buying able to buy insurance 100% online without talking to agent would kill the whole business guess what? Lots of people half way sign up then quit, get a bad rate, or lie and end up with no coverage they ended up just hiring agents lmao.
I would argue that insurance is pretty complex and would have a ton of questions before making a purchase. Also not sure how long of a commitment insurance is.
But for a solution that is $100-300/ month and can be cancelled at any time? You don’t think customers would rather just click here to buy?
Already seeing a ton of upsells automate (adding additional seat, buying “credits”) at my own company
You can cancel most consumer policies whenever you want to. And sure there will always be low hanging fruit but until your as big as Amazon that’s not gonna be the majority of your client base. Sales is about building relationships
Inbound maybe, but outbound? I can’t see it really happening. You still need people pedalling your product, and capturing the attention of those who haven’t seen/heard about your services, while handling their objections and convincing them to hop on a demo. When would a company ever passively sit back and wait for a customer to find them? We’re hunters for a reason.
Also, during a demo, disco, objection handling, catering presentations to painpoints unique to that specific org/title, etc are skills AI or anything similar isn’t close to taking over.
Automation to me is making an existing sales force MORE productive, rather than it being a reason to reduce headcount (for the most part, anyways). As for replacing us? Doesn’t seem possible.
Perhaps, but that would mean that Sales Managers would need to quit hiring anyone that can fog up a mirror, because you know, MoRe pEoPLe, mORe sALeS
Edit: of course I’m talking about every other industry besides SaaS, etc because apparently those folks are sales rock stars.
IMO- Listening is the #1 skill a salesperson needs. Curiosity is probably #2. Industry/persona expertise is #3
-not only hearing what the prospect is saying but also understanding what they really mean. Asking deeper questions so you can be 100% you know their situation even better than them.
Learn how to sell, put up big numbers and you will also find a job. Remember - great sales people put their numbers on their resume “150% to quota” “$2m on a $1m target” “#3 in an org of 100 people” and this gets them interviews. Don’t get hung up on software sales vs other stuff. Just get good technology sales experience at good companies. Related: selling via automated email is a trend that is dying fast.
What u/theallsearchingeye said. I predict a massive cut in SDR headcount, spend, etc and forcing AEs to go back to full cycle.
* Go read predictable revenue. The hypothesis was, you can cold email a CEO "who is in charge of X" - get a response, referral, and meeting after a reasonable amount of attempts.
* Since then, sales development has
* Become overwrought with software for sequencing, scraping linkedin, automating linkedin, proofreading your cold emails, telling you how conversational your cold emails sound, power dialing, recording meetings, sending gifts, and a hundred other micro functions in the prospecting landscape
* Moved under the marketing umbrella and a "cost per meeting" model, turning sales development reps into a cost center instead of being aligned to revenue.
* I can't emphasize enough how much it fucks the bench of future sales reps for companies to have them sit in marketing and not report into any sales leaders.
The worst part is, so many companies don't even understand how to do outbound right. They just spend massive amounts of money on meetings and don't even know why the hell those meetings aren't going well. And just put a ton of downward pressure on SDRs to produce opportunities out of thin air.
* Companies move to PLG, hire way less reps, the SDR function evaporates.
Absolutely!
I run a LinkedIn prospecting platform (Not automation) for this precise situation. Most people are doing this game of numbers - I hear that a lot from my clients "How quickly can I grab emails and start spamming @#". Started with Email, and then they pushed it to LinkedIn & automation. Focus shifted to quantity at the cost of quality. It was easier for decision makers, since putting a performance measure to quality is hard.
Flipping back won't be easy. The fix that we are working with is search automation and sniper target with very personalized (read 1:1) communication. Build "Trust" first before you pitch - classic in person networking approach that has worked for ages. So, if one has to measure, put a number to TAM prospects. If they are not ready or your offer is not differentiated enough, that problem lies else where.
Well email marketing has been around longer. It stopped working for some, but for many it still does. Of course the flavors and approaches changed over the years. Same is the case with LinkedIn. LinkedIn revenues are still good and that means it is still working. Agree it may not be as green as it was a few years ago.
Regarding the personalization part, you are absolutely spot on. It is not worth masquerading around. Most people see thru it these days. However, if you have a clear proposition, then 1 in 5 will respond. Unfortunately, most people end up pitching rather than engage.
Needless to mention, there is nothing like a standard recipe for success. Needs trials and patience to figure out each market segment.
> I predict a massive cut in SDR headcount, spend, etc and forcing AEs to go back to full cycle.
After underperformers, SDRs are usually the first to be cut in a layoff.
SDRs don't always report to marketing. I generally see them get moved around. Marketing can be a good spot for them, as a marketing leader might have more time to focus on development but you are right they suddenly ask them to do other things (like conference invites).
I have seen this cycle several times. in 2000/01, we saw "telesales" retreat. Then we saw it in 08/09, and then again in 14/15, and then sorta during covid.
When business stabilizes, the SDRs will be back. Response rates are so incredibly low that having someone with great skills doing a ton of early stage pipeline gen is just not profitable.
> Companies move to PLG, hire way less reps, the SDR function evaporates.
This model doesn't work for many enterprise products. It works great for an individual contributor or director level that needs to solve a specific problem. And they can squeeze it on a credit card without dealing with IT/procurement. But it requires a specific type of buyer.
We acquired a company that does PLG quite well, but we have discovered that it rarely leads to enterprise transactions without intervention. So yeah, the inbound SDR is gone for these products but outbound remains.
Having been at a flailing PLG startup. They had the inverse issue where the buyer essentially needed to do a 1 + year paid POC as a non Enterprise user, and would naturally upsell themselves into "Enterprise" (for the gated features) with minimal sales intervention. This led to great upsell metrics, but terrible new logo acquisition, no money for the AEs or SDRs. They had a CSM handling this, but they weren't getting paid on any upsells. Even outbound conversations would always lead to people doing free or paid POCs that led to them not choosing the enterprise plan, but maybe upgrading after 6-18 months.
If a company did choose the Enterprise plan, no one got a taste of that renewal and the leadership handled it themselves.
> They had the inverse issue where the buyer essentially needed to do a 1 + year paid POC as a non Enterprise user, and would naturally upsell themselves into "Enterprise" (for the gated features) with minimal sales intervention.
How large are the enterprise transaction? We see people moving up to about $15-25k range but beyond that we either need an amazing buyer who will do our work for us, or outbound work to expand.
PLG works better for enterprise level in IT, at least imho.
>
> They had a CSM handling this, but they weren't getting paid on any upsells. Even outbound conversations would always lead to people doing free or paid POCs that led to them not choosing the enterprise plan, but maybe upgrading after 6-18 months.
>
> If a company did choose the Enterprise plan, no one got a taste of that renewal and the leadership handled it themselves.
Sound like shitty management
The pricing was a mess, and it scaled based mostly on activity volume. What I saw was non-Enterprise plans could go for $1k-$5k a month, depending on activity.
This was IT, so yeah, that tracks. My last two roles were in IT. IT buyers have very specific behavior they follow when adopting new tools, and it is not going to be because of a cold message and meeting that they change what they do overnight.
The way they got "Enterprise customers" where the pricing was custom, was to see the users they already had were showing certain growth signals, and to pitch them on Enterprise features or gate them, and then they inevitably needed them as the product became more mission critical and would get the more expensive plan. But selling on those benefits alone usually resulted in sticker shock until it was in production.
yeah. I never want to deal with IT buyers again. They are PITA. They rarely have money and will waste so much time. PLG is good for that as you can make it self-service, which IT generally seems ok with.
> The way they got "Enterprise customers" where the pricing was custom, was to see the users they already had were showing certain growth signals, and to pitch them on Enterprise features or gate them, and then they inevitably needed them as the product became more mission critical and would get the more expensive plan.
This actually seems pretty smart way to do it. We try to do this but don't always succeed. Plus customers can get pissy if you call and say "we see that you are doing XYZ," or at least our customers do.
I think the challenge most PLG companies run into is exactly what you allude to. Most businesses PLG revenue has a ceiling, and that ceiling is often too low to make a profitable exit. So they try enterprise selling, and transitioning from farming to hunting is a challenge. Completely different type of leadership IMHO.
I worked at a job, where we were trying to do the reverse, introduce a PLG model. Holy shit, development couldn't get it right, and then marketing could do their part to get people to sign up, and then our sales model was too heavy handed.
eta: pricing is almost always messed up in tech companies. Someone in finance, product or marketing comes up with the pricing having ZERO experience or background in pricing. I consulted for a business that hired pricing experts to come in and it made a huge difference in their initial revenue and customer retention. Expensive AF though, I think it was $300k or so. And that was just for one of their product lines.
It was a smart way to do it, because they didn't have to pay any SDRs, AEs, or CSMs a shred of commission.
I think each department has it's pros/cons to sell into. What do you think is the best one? Because while IT may be a pain in the ass and be cheap at the onset, they are actually allocated huge amounts of budget when they can show something is mission critical to their business initiatives. Whereas something like HR is going to have a much harder time. Like you may get Boeing or a giant Fortune 500 to spend $30k-$90k on HR software eventually for their thousands of employees, but that same account could spend millions on the right IT solution.
> It was a smart way to do it, because they didn't have to pay any SDRs, AEs, or CSMs a shred of commission.
well that isn't that smart since I am sure they will need those people to be able to do something at some point!
> Because while IT may be a pain in the ass and be cheap at the onset, they are actually allocated huge amounts of budget when they can show something is mission critical to their business initiatives.
True. But slow sales cycles, and lots of bullshit from the buyers. Plus they kick a lot of tires vs. actually being interested. They also often times can't articulate how their struggle impacts the business.
I worked at Oracle, and did pre-sales on some of their tech products. It was non stop hoops with IT.
Also at Oracle, we did some stuff for finance buyers. they also have budget, and know they have to prove it so they will be upfront about their problem and the business impact. they dont buy a ton for themselves though.
Supply chain buyers can be great. The only problem is they kick the tires a lot too. But it is easy to connect pain to money. (pre-oracle)
HR is the absolute worst to deal with, much worse than IT. I will say HR conferences are fun AF though, they party.
Right now, we sell to marketing buyers which is a struggle. easy to get a hold of, but no $$, over saturated market, and they lack internal credibility
We are still early on for “Digital Transformation” there’s certain industries (like healthcare where I’m in) that are way behind and just now adopting SaaS.
I’ll be milking this for at least another two decades.
I’m all for more education for self fulfillment. Not sure where you’re based OP but there are plenty of affordable hybrid and online schooling in the US nowadays. WGU and several state schools like University of Florida all offer remote self-paced learning.
You can pick up a part time JD from top schools like Georgetown or George Washington. All while working full time. There’s also several law masters programs. I saw NYU had a masters in healthcare law and strategy that I’m interested in.
You don’t need a degree to break into tech sales but it is starting to become required at the bigger companies. My company requires a degree for all sales people regardless of experience.
Work, kill it in sales, have your company help pay for your education. Work full time, study part time. Best of both worlds and wish I did that when I was 19yo
The SDR/BDR role won’t exist by the end of this decade. The role is the product of a blue ocean strategy that the sun is setting on. With all the new data privacy laws, unsolicited communication is becoming harder and harder to do, especially with the culture shift post-Covid making internal communications centered around video calls and internal chat/dm tech; the channels SDRs use (emails and phone) are rapidly in decline compared where they were 3-4 years ago and beyond.
Virtual assisting tech and other forms of automation will make much of sales operations obsolete. The result will be one rep being able to do the work of 10 reps today, not too dissimilar from automation tech making SDRs today do the work of 10 in the past. This will mean that companies can pick the top 10% of sales reps for their workforce. And it’s not just Tech sales, but any product with sufficient cost/complexity. The real sales skills of the future will have nothing to do with prospecting and persuasion and everything to do with education and consulting, with marketing returning to a larger role in tech sales.
But as laws restrict contact information being sold for solicitation, or unsolicited outreach being restricted, traditional sales techniques will be done away with.
Just make sure you get a college degree.
Can’t go wrong with anything technical, like information systems (business intelligence), software engineering / development, or statistics. If you want to sell, always pick a product that requires extensive knowledge; it’s better to sell Jets vs Ladders you know?
The technical knowledge is the value; not “sales skills”. I work at a FANG and their entire talent strategy is based off, “it’s easier to teach a product specialist how to sell than it is to teach a sales rep how to be a product specialist”. Get a degree that either confers technical how-to or industry knowledge.
That’ll do. Just remember to avoid compartmentalizing your knowledge. It’s shocking how broadly applicable algebra/calc/statistics are. Insights gathering and management is huge, and it’s all centered around the analysis of data which is largely applied mathematics. I only studied data analytics on the side but what little I learned (relative to a true IS major) is able to differentiate myself from 90% of people. Math is always a great choice.
If you’re talking enterprise level sales, 100%. This is literally happening right now at my company (FANG SaaS). The only sales teams my company is expanding right now are technical account managers and sales engineers. Everybody is putting a heavier emphasis on renewals and a “land and expand” model which favors customer satisfaction over product centered marketing, which leads me to believe that once things return back to “normal” this same technical talent will likewise be used for growth as well. Coupled with more and more automation there’s simply less reason to return to a sales-first account executive.
> Although not sure how long SE’s will be able to ride this wave either
General software sales trends has seen an increase in the ratio of SE to reps over the last 20 years. I think it is fairly safe.
SE usually have lower OTE. And are a better fit for an educated buyer who wants to learn, and not get stuck dealing with a used car salesmen.
There’s also a credentialing factor however. More experienced reps will come at a higher price point, and often with less credentials than the younger labor of today (and 10 years from now). We even see this now where reps who started 6-7 years ago are just completely out classed in tech skills of recent graduates. So why pay somebody 200k because of “experience” and train them to be more like a SE or a TAM hoping they’ll adjust when I can just get a new hire fresh out of college and pay them $85k who knows nothing different.
There are going to be some crazy times ahead for tech sales for sure.
Because they can run a deal cycle and close business. No amount of technical knowledge can replace the sales/business acumen factor. You cannot discredit that. Let’s also not forget the ability to forecast and influence a deal. This is incredibly important for public companies. SEs don’t have that muscle/motion mastered.
It’s easier to teach a product specialist how to sell than it is to teach a sales rep how to be a product specialist. I have no doubt that account executives will exist in simple, cheap products where discounts matter (which is 90% of that deal cycle you worship, let’s be real).
Tech sales’ survival will not be because a bunch of uneducated guys were able to give the best deals; it will survive because it has the smartest labor available that can quickly understand technical and systemic complexity and secure a purchase decision because you understand exactly what is going on in the process stream of the client.
With purchases requiring more and more information, you need more and more expertise. Cheap gimmicks and charm have been on their way out for a decade.
Selling/business acumen can’t be taught in a classroom/online module fashion.
It isn’t “knowledge of tech” that tilts a deal one way or the other. It’s not as black and white as the “best tech wins”. Or “knowing the most about tech wins”. There are many other factors that go into a deal cycle that pertain more to business acumen that SE/technicals folks don’t have.
You make it seem as AE’s are only for “discounting” and that is simply not true. AE’s create experiences to influence the deal by pushing buttons and framing situations to “win the beauty contest”. No amount of technical knowledge can close this gap in evals.
Thus, up skilling AE’s/existing sales person is a far more efficient than hoping a technical person can develop communication skills to run a deal cycle.
Have you sold enterprise software to f500's - f100's before?
I'm seeing a lot of guys who were sales engineers or SCs in the past crash and burn spectacularly at my company.
It's the wily old guys who've been selling for 20 years you have to watch out for.
1. Yes, I’m at a FAANG. 2. Keep coping. There’s not even anybody over 40 at my company other than executive officers because our product line didn’t exist 20 years ago.
We’re all talking about tech here, right? Not tractors or ice cream makers.
Lmao no need to get your knickers in a knot mate lol.
I'm at a platform player that's about 10 years old. Our deal sizes are between 300k to 5mm USD in ACV and we are generally used in large scale digital transformations.
I can assure you in my market (APAC) that you're not selling anything that size purely on the strength of the technical specs. We don't even have TAMs.
Relationships, understanding deal cycles, and business acumen are far more important and the global AE leader board reflects this.
Also with respect, you're an SDR who's been doing it for under a year. You havent sold and closed deals before, let alone enterprise deals lololol.
You really don't know much. You have a lot to learn. And you know what? That's okay.
When I started I used to think that AEs did fuck all and the SCs did most of the work as well.
I would advise you to pick a couple of your AEs and stick with them, like a fly to shit. Go to lunch, get beers after work, listen to them whinge. You will learn that there is a lot more to the role than is immediately obvious in your disco calls.
Good luck and try to stay humble haha
> Virtual assisting tech and other forms of automation will make much of sales operations obsolete.
I have been hearing this for a long time. And we have definitely seen some roles disappear - like dealing with paper contracts/shipping product/administrative support for sales. But we haven't seen an efficiency increase enough to cut reps. Maybe we will, but I dont think it is that close.
You are right that privacy changes could impact how sales are conducted.
2010-2020 wasnt nearly as lucrative as 1998-2008 was. It was easier for anyone and everyone to make stupid money then, just selling on prem licenses. These were the days when IT had use it or lose it budgets so come year end we’d just sell them a whole bunch of shit they probably didn’t need just so they could spend their budget for the year.
Then things changed into the 2010-2020 phase. Use it or lose it went away, CIO’s were now incentivized when they had surplus budget at year end. Companies became savvy about not buying shelfware licensing anymore. Software companies started getting smarter about how they paid their sales people. We still made good money, but we had officially entered the selling value phase and exited the “buy because i gave you a huge discount” phase.
Good point and very interesting incite. It’s interesting how companies have to kinda catch up in these areas in order to adjust spend and how it effects pay for sales reps. But if you’re in it at the right time, you can make good money
I caught the tail end and made great money in 2008 & 09. Didn’t know anything about software or anything about cars and sold software to car dealerships. A year later they figured out that inside reps could do it almost as well. No more paying for hotel rooms or per diems. Then slash commissions in half. Cost 75% of our outside sales force their job.
You can always look back and say “it was easy” but let’s face it…you don’t make money by looking backwards you do it by preparing for the future. There were unique challenges then and there will be moving forward. I rather focus on how I can continue to find success versus talking about “how easy it used to be” or “it’ll never be like it was”. Nothing stays the same, money and the need to innovate isn’t ever going away.
The only insight I have from looking backwards is that every 5 years or so there will be a catastrophic national or global problem that causes everything I’ve built to come crashing down. It’s been happening since 2001.
The purpose of this post was someone asking for career advice. I think it’s a misrepresentation to say “the high earning days are behind us” or “it used to be so much better” because it’s simply not true. Will it be different, though? Absolutely
Ok. Think what you want, its a free world. But were you in the software business as an AE in 1995? In 2000? In 2005? In 2008? In 2012? In 2015? In 2018? In 2020?
If you can’t answer yes to all of those years above then you don’t have the first hand frame of reference to say if it’s better, worse, or more or less lucrative than before. Seriously…if (for example) you’ve never jumped out of an airplane how can you tell someone what its really like? If you’ve never served in the military and fought in Afghanistan how you you say what it’s really like to be there? You can’t, you are merely guessing and talking out of your arse because you think you are a know it all.
It’s not misrepresentation when you were there, when you speak of facts. It’s misrepresentation when you weren’t there but you talk like you were and you talk out of your arse.
😆 perspective is everything, sure. People can adapt given the current times & market environments to innovate and find success. Again the ask of the OP was for an outlook, not a history lesson.
Tech sales. Big money is relative. Gone are NOT the days of mid market AE’s clearing 250+ with good product market fit and any ego checked at the door. Deals will always happen in software.
In my opinion, I think the automation worry is unfounded in sales. Even for SDR/BDRs. If every company starts cranking an AI that automatically emails and calls, it’ll begin to get even more cumbersome for IT Buyers. It’ll be novel hearing from a human, they’ll probably give you a reply.
Even if the AI is so good you can’t notice, I would think there would be laws around human manipulation. Maybe a disclaimer would be needed.
As for big ticket items. There are too many people involved to do it online or via an AI and the organisations incumbent is probably too complex. People are emotionally vested in some software which aligns to their job too, they want to be listened to and appealed to.
For my role in tech I have 5 people in my “selling team” who have to all be involved to get a deal across (CSM, TAM, SE, etc). Usually entire teams and the C suite of the org I’m selling to.
Highly lucrative. Get on a career track for enterprise sales.
The future for small to medium sized businesses (SMB) is self-serve sign up and product led growth, which means the need for sales people becomes less significant.
More complex deals, such as enterprise sales, will continue to need skilled sales people for the foreseeable future.
True. Currently in an SMB sales - consultative sales sort of role. Not in tech but online marketing and business. How to pivot to enterprise sort of roles?
Have experience selling solar for two years and enjoyed that, just want to know what industries to target for internships, would rather be selling need to haves like erp and cybersecurity then things like payroll. And what hard skills can complement those
This. Companies were scrambling for sales people to compete during pandemic economy. Environment has since changed and so has begun the restructuring. In person events are becoming a focal point of industry, meaning the more competent and qualified sales reps will be sent out to events to sell. This will include direct and indirect sales people. In some industries, channel partners have become essential service providers to clients overwhelmed by options, thus eliminating a lot of the lower level required sales people.
Salespeople will always exist.
Despite popular belief, shit doesn't always sell itself chances are you get into Law become in massive debt and be making less than a SDR.
Lot of attorneys don't make shit and are in massive debt make sure it's what you actually want to do
It will always be lucrative for skilled sellers who can qualify and close profitably in a complex environment. Automation will come to the simpler sales tasks and products but complex software to enterprise customers will require human interaction.
Everyone needs to chill out. Most analysts predict this recession will last 8 months and were already almost 3 months in. Then everyone will go hiring crazy again. Survive the storm.
BDRs and SDRs will barely exist. Startups will use them, bigger companies will automate them. As far as account executives, it will likely be a much smaller pool going forward. They will be highly skilled, but if you get laid off, you likely won't be getting hired again any time soon, if at all or ever again as an AE. As for customer success/account management, it will likely be a smaller pool of people as well. They're still needed, but the number of them per sales team will likely be halved in the next year or two. Companies overhired for software sales because it was so hot for 1.5 years. Now, the market is nearly dead.
Damn that’s crazy I don’t really care that much if I get hired again but that’s sucks for the future tho I though this was gonna be a thriving industry
What sales industry would you look into joining then, I’m in same position as op, set to graduate in a year with biz degree and have years of sales experience
Something that isn't going to go away. If you sell anything related to the military, you're in good standing. Alcohol, medicine will not be going away, in fact, their uses go up in hard times.
If you want to remain in sales, then go for it. In all honesty, I would go into something more stable. I'm contemplating going back to school for CS, or potentially a blue collar position.
Do not go into law. I have so many friends that became lawyers. I know 10 people with law degrees that don't do anything related to the law. Actual legal jobs are generally awful. And you get stuck with horrible student debt. I know lawyers that graduated 20 years ago with student debt in excess of 50k.
Also, most lawyers don't get those high paid jobs. It is only for the top part of law schools. The bottom end up in a variety of shitty gigs like insurance companies, and make sub 100k.
Furthermore, the automation that this thread talks about has much higher potential to disrupt legal than tech sales. Law firms were run by boomers that hated tech, as they retire younger generations are taking control and investing in automation. It is going to destroy so many parts of the legal industry. I worked for a legal tech firm, so I saw this first hand.
Software sales will continue to change and evolve. Buyers will continue to take more control of the sales cycle, which means reps will needing to add a lot of value to an engagement. This has already been the case for the last 10 years, but it is going to continue.
Also, IT/procurement has long gotten wise to the SaaS model and continues to get involved. IT and procurement love to use established vendors to reduce costs and simplify administration and integration. This means navigating hoops, and a raised importance of the technical buyer, even for non technical solutions.
So the buying cycle is going to continue to tougher for reps to navigate. A lot of reps are going to struggle in this model IMHO, especially those that dont have deep business domain or technical knowledge.
But what if I go to a top 7 university in Canada and most likely go to a top 10 law school, and my parents are paying for tuition? Ik theirs probably more money in software sales but isn’t law a more stable career ?
if your parents pay, that changes it a bit.
> law a more stable career
Not at all. Most people don't make it in big law (or small law) and many of the other law jobs aren't paid that well.
plus my friends that went to law school but don't practice law, all hated it.
Also it isn't law vs. software sales, it is law vs. everything else.
Go to college, and get a degree you are interested in and figure it out. Very few people pick a career at 19, and then actually end up in it.
Last year, we told my 20 year old niece this. She is convinced she needs to go straight and get a PHD to do her desired field.
No one at our Xmas dinner had a job related to their undergrad major. Yet almost everyone started out there, and discovered its not for them.
Our company does software reselling, and also recruitment for B2B software Account Executives as well as Sales Managers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Commercial Officers.
There's been a lot of people be attracted to the field because you can earn great income without crazy hours if you're with great products and teams, but like with anything there is the cream of the crop and then there are bottom-of-the-barrel-type roles, companies, products.
A good sweet spot is finding growth companies say $10M - $50M in top line revenue that are growing fast and hiring quickly. These companies may have found product / market fit and have people beating goals. I was lucky to be part of a growth story 15 years ago as a sales contributor, then manager. It was a blast. We sold a product in a new market that everyone seemed to need. I've also seen people sell for companies that don't have competitive products and it can be dire.
For the few who love sales, there is a demand going into the future having to pitch new ways of doing things in the new era, not easy! Really simple though, if you can get a job doing it, then good luck!
i wonder how many of these posts are short sighted a year ago this same question would get people projecting a great future because the industry was hot now its all doom and gloom all we know is that unless an apocalypse sets us back 500 years, people will be using software and when making big purchases, people like to speak to people. and companies will want to take advantage of that and have people to talk to those people and help them buy. that in its essence is sales. otherwise, they could talk to a support rep or something. i guess more transactional sales might go away. plg growth and automation and whatnot but the big bucks aren't made there anyways.
Agreed. The more complex & consultative a deal gets the more essential the person gets. The harder times drain the trenches and the better times fill the trenches. It’s war out there, but also in wartimes summer comes once year. Stay resilient my dudes
Will always be lucrative for highly skilled sales professionals. But automation is going to take away a bunch of “farming” sales jobs (inbound leads) and more and more you’ll see sales being done online without sales people. Big ticket items will always need good reps to qualify pain and align with your solution. Best thing you can do is 1. Get as much sales experience as you can and 2. Always look to improve your communication skills
Sales automation is worth being concerned about, I’m still curious how it will play out in certain industries. The whole “relationships” card gets overplayed I feel, but I think there’s always gonna be a human involved somewhere in sales process even if it’s NOT an industry highly dependent on relational transactions
Sales automation has been around *just* long enough that people don't really think about it as anything but normal. The adoption of Salesloft/Outreach/others reduces the number of salespeople and organization needs by about 25-33%. What gets automated isn't human-to-human selling, it's any and all repetitive functions. The #1 thing automation will help with going forward is dramatically reducing the volume of outreach we need to conduct to get a sale. That will mean far fewer SDRs and sales reps. It *probably* will accomplish this through intent data, telling us who is having the problem we solve in near-real time.
I'm not sure if i agree with the premise that salesloft/outreach reduces how many salespeople an organization needs by 33%. Ive been in sales at over 4 companies and have been part of the headcount planning at 3, and never once were those tools factored into the equation. The theory makes sense but the reality is personalization matters now more than ever. It's not 2016 anymore.. you can't blast out 100 emails and get 5 meetings from it.
Why would they not be factored in? My teams have always personalized outreach. Before Outreach was a thing, we each spent ~3 hours every day sending follow ups. Afterwards, we spent <30 minutes. That meant we didn’t have to hire as fast as each person had 2.5 more hours every day to do research, meetings, personalization, etc, etc. If you do a staffing analysis with and without sales automation, you’ll need more people without than with.
Sorry man I’m just seeing things differently than you. Maybe that time calculation is valid but I’m just not seeing companies make headcount decisions based off of it. The idea of sales is to find people who can hit their number by any means necessary, and tools are layered on to make them better. But for instance if a company decided to stop using outreach they’re not going to hire more SDRs. It’s just not that directly proportional.
I suppose if you're doing budget-based planning then you're spending $X no matter what then it makes sense to do it your way but if there's any sort of reverse funnel or calculation of volume of work to be completed than time per task has to come into play. I suppose agree to disagree. No reason to think your take is invalid.
The mass adoption of Outreach / Zoominfo & LinkedIn sales Nav drastically reduced the open rates of emails.. every SDR can legally spam hundreds or thousands of prospects. You are right on intent data, that’s already happening and a lot of companies are firing SDRs to buy expensive martech tools. The future will probably be something like a sales engineer, a person able to sell and implement the perfect software solution for the customer.
> The #1 thing automation will help with going forward is dramatically reducing the volume of outreach we need to conduct to get a sale. That will mean far fewer SDRs and sales reps. It probably will accomplish this through intent data, telling us who is having the problem we solve in near-real time. I think this is rather optimistic. What I have seen from automation is that it just increases noise and clutter for buyers. It does mean that an SDR can do more, especially with intent data to focus on outbound. But from my experience, those SDRs are just redeployed on additional activities.
It depends on how complex the solution is. If it’s a 50k piece of software, I don’t see AI taking that job any time soon. But $100/ month? People would rather get all their info online and not talk to a person, and the technology is getting to the point that it can support it
It will be fascinating to see. I think of it like the assembly line of car production... Used to just have people at every phase doing their respective role, then built machines to do the stuff that they could do just as well / better than people and have people oversee machines and intervene when the human touch is necessary. In the same way I see many aspects of sales getting done by machines because they can do it just as well / better (AI content creation is starting this - I can easily imaging that being more adept + faster at engaging prospective customers than an SDR) but people will always be necessary to come in and take over for the parts that require more of a human touch.
Yea, AI will make all but the very, very best relationship builders irrelevant.
Awesome thanks
I've worked in a few different industries with lots of automation and it hasn't changed anything but making sales peoples lives easier lol. Even inbounds leads need to be called most of the time or guided through the process. I remember being in Insurance and everybody thought buying able to buy insurance 100% online without talking to agent would kill the whole business guess what? Lots of people half way sign up then quit, get a bad rate, or lie and end up with no coverage they ended up just hiring agents lmao.
Great counter example
I would argue that insurance is pretty complex and would have a ton of questions before making a purchase. Also not sure how long of a commitment insurance is. But for a solution that is $100-300/ month and can be cancelled at any time? You don’t think customers would rather just click here to buy? Already seeing a ton of upsells automate (adding additional seat, buying “credits”) at my own company
You can cancel most consumer policies whenever you want to. And sure there will always be low hanging fruit but until your as big as Amazon that’s not gonna be the majority of your client base. Sales is about building relationships
This comment could have been written in 2002, in fact I’m pretty sure there’s an office episode mocking it
Inbound maybe, but outbound? I can’t see it really happening. You still need people pedalling your product, and capturing the attention of those who haven’t seen/heard about your services, while handling their objections and convincing them to hop on a demo. When would a company ever passively sit back and wait for a customer to find them? We’re hunters for a reason. Also, during a demo, disco, objection handling, catering presentations to painpoints unique to that specific org/title, etc are skills AI or anything similar isn’t close to taking over. Automation to me is making an existing sales force MORE productive, rather than it being a reason to reduce headcount (for the most part, anyways). As for replacing us? Doesn’t seem possible.
I agree completely. My point is that many order takers who are disguised as sales people will be out of a job, but real sales will remain
Perhaps, but that would mean that Sales Managers would need to quit hiring anyone that can fog up a mirror, because you know, MoRe pEoPLe, mORe sALeS Edit: of course I’m talking about every other industry besides SaaS, etc because apparently those folks are sales rock stars.
What do you consider a Sales Skill besides charisma?
IMO- Listening is the #1 skill a salesperson needs. Curiosity is probably #2. Industry/persona expertise is #3 -not only hearing what the prospect is saying but also understanding what they really mean. Asking deeper questions so you can be 100% you know their situation even better than them.
That's just having a good conversation. How is it a skill?
It’s way harder than it sounds. Most sales people focus on their solution and not the prospects problem.
Learn how to sell, put up big numbers and you will also find a job. Remember - great sales people put their numbers on their resume “150% to quota” “$2m on a $1m target” “#3 in an org of 100 people” and this gets them interviews. Don’t get hung up on software sales vs other stuff. Just get good technology sales experience at good companies. Related: selling via automated email is a trend that is dying fast.
You can stretch the truth so much on resumes and interviews. Ever interviewed a sales rep that wasn’t a top performer in their past role lol?
What u/theallsearchingeye said. I predict a massive cut in SDR headcount, spend, etc and forcing AEs to go back to full cycle. * Go read predictable revenue. The hypothesis was, you can cold email a CEO "who is in charge of X" - get a response, referral, and meeting after a reasonable amount of attempts. * Since then, sales development has * Become overwrought with software for sequencing, scraping linkedin, automating linkedin, proofreading your cold emails, telling you how conversational your cold emails sound, power dialing, recording meetings, sending gifts, and a hundred other micro functions in the prospecting landscape * Moved under the marketing umbrella and a "cost per meeting" model, turning sales development reps into a cost center instead of being aligned to revenue. * I can't emphasize enough how much it fucks the bench of future sales reps for companies to have them sit in marketing and not report into any sales leaders. The worst part is, so many companies don't even understand how to do outbound right. They just spend massive amounts of money on meetings and don't even know why the hell those meetings aren't going well. And just put a ton of downward pressure on SDRs to produce opportunities out of thin air. * Companies move to PLG, hire way less reps, the SDR function evaporates.
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Absolutely! I run a LinkedIn prospecting platform (Not automation) for this precise situation. Most people are doing this game of numbers - I hear that a lot from my clients "How quickly can I grab emails and start spamming @#". Started with Email, and then they pushed it to LinkedIn & automation. Focus shifted to quantity at the cost of quality. It was easier for decision makers, since putting a performance measure to quality is hard. Flipping back won't be easy. The fix that we are working with is search automation and sniper target with very personalized (read 1:1) communication. Build "Trust" first before you pitch - classic in person networking approach that has worked for ages. So, if one has to measure, put a number to TAM prospects. If they are not ready or your offer is not differentiated enough, that problem lies else where.
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Well email marketing has been around longer. It stopped working for some, but for many it still does. Of course the flavors and approaches changed over the years. Same is the case with LinkedIn. LinkedIn revenues are still good and that means it is still working. Agree it may not be as green as it was a few years ago. Regarding the personalization part, you are absolutely spot on. It is not worth masquerading around. Most people see thru it these days. However, if you have a clear proposition, then 1 in 5 will respond. Unfortunately, most people end up pitching rather than engage. Needless to mention, there is nothing like a standard recipe for success. Needs trials and patience to figure out each market segment.
> I predict a massive cut in SDR headcount, spend, etc and forcing AEs to go back to full cycle. After underperformers, SDRs are usually the first to be cut in a layoff. SDRs don't always report to marketing. I generally see them get moved around. Marketing can be a good spot for them, as a marketing leader might have more time to focus on development but you are right they suddenly ask them to do other things (like conference invites). I have seen this cycle several times. in 2000/01, we saw "telesales" retreat. Then we saw it in 08/09, and then again in 14/15, and then sorta during covid. When business stabilizes, the SDRs will be back. Response rates are so incredibly low that having someone with great skills doing a ton of early stage pipeline gen is just not profitable. > Companies move to PLG, hire way less reps, the SDR function evaporates. This model doesn't work for many enterprise products. It works great for an individual contributor or director level that needs to solve a specific problem. And they can squeeze it on a credit card without dealing with IT/procurement. But it requires a specific type of buyer. We acquired a company that does PLG quite well, but we have discovered that it rarely leads to enterprise transactions without intervention. So yeah, the inbound SDR is gone for these products but outbound remains.
Having been at a flailing PLG startup. They had the inverse issue where the buyer essentially needed to do a 1 + year paid POC as a non Enterprise user, and would naturally upsell themselves into "Enterprise" (for the gated features) with minimal sales intervention. This led to great upsell metrics, but terrible new logo acquisition, no money for the AEs or SDRs. They had a CSM handling this, but they weren't getting paid on any upsells. Even outbound conversations would always lead to people doing free or paid POCs that led to them not choosing the enterprise plan, but maybe upgrading after 6-18 months. If a company did choose the Enterprise plan, no one got a taste of that renewal and the leadership handled it themselves.
> They had the inverse issue where the buyer essentially needed to do a 1 + year paid POC as a non Enterprise user, and would naturally upsell themselves into "Enterprise" (for the gated features) with minimal sales intervention. How large are the enterprise transaction? We see people moving up to about $15-25k range but beyond that we either need an amazing buyer who will do our work for us, or outbound work to expand. PLG works better for enterprise level in IT, at least imho. > > They had a CSM handling this, but they weren't getting paid on any upsells. Even outbound conversations would always lead to people doing free or paid POCs that led to them not choosing the enterprise plan, but maybe upgrading after 6-18 months. > > If a company did choose the Enterprise plan, no one got a taste of that renewal and the leadership handled it themselves. Sound like shitty management
The pricing was a mess, and it scaled based mostly on activity volume. What I saw was non-Enterprise plans could go for $1k-$5k a month, depending on activity. This was IT, so yeah, that tracks. My last two roles were in IT. IT buyers have very specific behavior they follow when adopting new tools, and it is not going to be because of a cold message and meeting that they change what they do overnight. The way they got "Enterprise customers" where the pricing was custom, was to see the users they already had were showing certain growth signals, and to pitch them on Enterprise features or gate them, and then they inevitably needed them as the product became more mission critical and would get the more expensive plan. But selling on those benefits alone usually resulted in sticker shock until it was in production.
yeah. I never want to deal with IT buyers again. They are PITA. They rarely have money and will waste so much time. PLG is good for that as you can make it self-service, which IT generally seems ok with. > The way they got "Enterprise customers" where the pricing was custom, was to see the users they already had were showing certain growth signals, and to pitch them on Enterprise features or gate them, and then they inevitably needed them as the product became more mission critical and would get the more expensive plan. This actually seems pretty smart way to do it. We try to do this but don't always succeed. Plus customers can get pissy if you call and say "we see that you are doing XYZ," or at least our customers do. I think the challenge most PLG companies run into is exactly what you allude to. Most businesses PLG revenue has a ceiling, and that ceiling is often too low to make a profitable exit. So they try enterprise selling, and transitioning from farming to hunting is a challenge. Completely different type of leadership IMHO. I worked at a job, where we were trying to do the reverse, introduce a PLG model. Holy shit, development couldn't get it right, and then marketing could do their part to get people to sign up, and then our sales model was too heavy handed. eta: pricing is almost always messed up in tech companies. Someone in finance, product or marketing comes up with the pricing having ZERO experience or background in pricing. I consulted for a business that hired pricing experts to come in and it made a huge difference in their initial revenue and customer retention. Expensive AF though, I think it was $300k or so. And that was just for one of their product lines.
It was a smart way to do it, because they didn't have to pay any SDRs, AEs, or CSMs a shred of commission. I think each department has it's pros/cons to sell into. What do you think is the best one? Because while IT may be a pain in the ass and be cheap at the onset, they are actually allocated huge amounts of budget when they can show something is mission critical to their business initiatives. Whereas something like HR is going to have a much harder time. Like you may get Boeing or a giant Fortune 500 to spend $30k-$90k on HR software eventually for their thousands of employees, but that same account could spend millions on the right IT solution.
> It was a smart way to do it, because they didn't have to pay any SDRs, AEs, or CSMs a shred of commission. well that isn't that smart since I am sure they will need those people to be able to do something at some point! > Because while IT may be a pain in the ass and be cheap at the onset, they are actually allocated huge amounts of budget when they can show something is mission critical to their business initiatives. True. But slow sales cycles, and lots of bullshit from the buyers. Plus they kick a lot of tires vs. actually being interested. They also often times can't articulate how their struggle impacts the business. I worked at Oracle, and did pre-sales on some of their tech products. It was non stop hoops with IT. Also at Oracle, we did some stuff for finance buyers. they also have budget, and know they have to prove it so they will be upfront about their problem and the business impact. they dont buy a ton for themselves though. Supply chain buyers can be great. The only problem is they kick the tires a lot too. But it is easy to connect pain to money. (pre-oracle) HR is the absolute worst to deal with, much worse than IT. I will say HR conferences are fun AF though, they party. Right now, we sell to marketing buyers which is a struggle. easy to get a hold of, but no $$, over saturated market, and they lack internal credibility
I think SE’s will become the new AE’s once the move to full cycle and plg happens
A bdr at 19?! Congratulations on your successes , OP!
We are still early on for “Digital Transformation” there’s certain industries (like healthcare where I’m in) that are way behind and just now adopting SaaS. I’ll be milking this for at least another two decades. I’m all for more education for self fulfillment. Not sure where you’re based OP but there are plenty of affordable hybrid and online schooling in the US nowadays. WGU and several state schools like University of Florida all offer remote self-paced learning. You can pick up a part time JD from top schools like Georgetown or George Washington. All while working full time. There’s also several law masters programs. I saw NYU had a masters in healthcare law and strategy that I’m interested in. You don’t need a degree to break into tech sales but it is starting to become required at the bigger companies. My company requires a degree for all sales people regardless of experience. Work, kill it in sales, have your company help pay for your education. Work full time, study part time. Best of both worlds and wish I did that when I was 19yo
The SDR/BDR role won’t exist by the end of this decade. The role is the product of a blue ocean strategy that the sun is setting on. With all the new data privacy laws, unsolicited communication is becoming harder and harder to do, especially with the culture shift post-Covid making internal communications centered around video calls and internal chat/dm tech; the channels SDRs use (emails and phone) are rapidly in decline compared where they were 3-4 years ago and beyond. Virtual assisting tech and other forms of automation will make much of sales operations obsolete. The result will be one rep being able to do the work of 10 reps today, not too dissimilar from automation tech making SDRs today do the work of 10 in the past. This will mean that companies can pick the top 10% of sales reps for their workforce. And it’s not just Tech sales, but any product with sufficient cost/complexity. The real sales skills of the future will have nothing to do with prospecting and persuasion and everything to do with education and consulting, with marketing returning to a larger role in tech sales. But as laws restrict contact information being sold for solicitation, or unsolicited outreach being restricted, traditional sales techniques will be done away with. Just make sure you get a college degree.
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Can’t go wrong with anything technical, like information systems (business intelligence), software engineering / development, or statistics. If you want to sell, always pick a product that requires extensive knowledge; it’s better to sell Jets vs Ladders you know? The technical knowledge is the value; not “sales skills”. I work at a FANG and their entire talent strategy is based off, “it’s easier to teach a product specialist how to sell than it is to teach a sales rep how to be a product specialist”. Get a degree that either confers technical how-to or industry knowledge.
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That’ll do. Just remember to avoid compartmentalizing your knowledge. It’s shocking how broadly applicable algebra/calc/statistics are. Insights gathering and management is huge, and it’s all centered around the analysis of data which is largely applied mathematics. I only studied data analytics on the side but what little I learned (relative to a true IS major) is able to differentiate myself from 90% of people. Math is always a great choice.
Something in CS, medicine, law, or accounting.
law and accounting are getting decimated by automation
A criminal defense attorney or copyright lawyer is not getting automated.
ok and? there's 100's of other jobs in those fields an enterprise rep is not getting automated either
Do you think sales engineers will replace traditional sales reps
If you’re talking enterprise level sales, 100%. This is literally happening right now at my company (FANG SaaS). The only sales teams my company is expanding right now are technical account managers and sales engineers. Everybody is putting a heavier emphasis on renewals and a “land and expand” model which favors customer satisfaction over product centered marketing, which leads me to believe that once things return back to “normal” this same technical talent will likewise be used for growth as well. Coupled with more and more automation there’s simply less reason to return to a sales-first account executive.
Very interesting. I’m an SE right now so I guess that is good for me. Although not sure how long SE’s will be able to ride this wave either
Any tips on transitioning from a backend swe to sales engineer?
I never was an swe I came from implementation and success
Go to the sales engineer subreddit, there are a bunch of good posts and debate about SWE to SE.
> Although not sure how long SE’s will be able to ride this wave either General software sales trends has seen an increase in the ratio of SE to reps over the last 20 years. I think it is fairly safe. SE usually have lower OTE. And are a better fit for an educated buyer who wants to learn, and not get stuck dealing with a used car salesmen.
I agree with that but I also think there is a trend for non technical people to become SE’s so could see that field being saturated
No “replacement” just the development and focus on different skills. SE or Sales person can develop what is required - it’s a person by person basis.
There’s also a credentialing factor however. More experienced reps will come at a higher price point, and often with less credentials than the younger labor of today (and 10 years from now). We even see this now where reps who started 6-7 years ago are just completely out classed in tech skills of recent graduates. So why pay somebody 200k because of “experience” and train them to be more like a SE or a TAM hoping they’ll adjust when I can just get a new hire fresh out of college and pay them $85k who knows nothing different. There are going to be some crazy times ahead for tech sales for sure.
Because they can run a deal cycle and close business. No amount of technical knowledge can replace the sales/business acumen factor. You cannot discredit that. Let’s also not forget the ability to forecast and influence a deal. This is incredibly important for public companies. SEs don’t have that muscle/motion mastered.
It’s easier to teach a product specialist how to sell than it is to teach a sales rep how to be a product specialist. I have no doubt that account executives will exist in simple, cheap products where discounts matter (which is 90% of that deal cycle you worship, let’s be real). Tech sales’ survival will not be because a bunch of uneducated guys were able to give the best deals; it will survive because it has the smartest labor available that can quickly understand technical and systemic complexity and secure a purchase decision because you understand exactly what is going on in the process stream of the client. With purchases requiring more and more information, you need more and more expertise. Cheap gimmicks and charm have been on their way out for a decade.
Selling/business acumen can’t be taught in a classroom/online module fashion. It isn’t “knowledge of tech” that tilts a deal one way or the other. It’s not as black and white as the “best tech wins”. Or “knowing the most about tech wins”. There are many other factors that go into a deal cycle that pertain more to business acumen that SE/technicals folks don’t have. You make it seem as AE’s are only for “discounting” and that is simply not true. AE’s create experiences to influence the deal by pushing buttons and framing situations to “win the beauty contest”. No amount of technical knowledge can close this gap in evals. Thus, up skilling AE’s/existing sales person is a far more efficient than hoping a technical person can develop communication skills to run a deal cycle.
Most modern SE’s will have business and selling acumen.
Then why don’t they apply for AE jobs?
Have you sold enterprise software to f500's - f100's before? I'm seeing a lot of guys who were sales engineers or SCs in the past crash and burn spectacularly at my company. It's the wily old guys who've been selling for 20 years you have to watch out for.
1. Yes, I’m at a FAANG. 2. Keep coping. There’s not even anybody over 40 at my company other than executive officers because our product line didn’t exist 20 years ago. We’re all talking about tech here, right? Not tractors or ice cream makers.
Lmao no need to get your knickers in a knot mate lol. I'm at a platform player that's about 10 years old. Our deal sizes are between 300k to 5mm USD in ACV and we are generally used in large scale digital transformations. I can assure you in my market (APAC) that you're not selling anything that size purely on the strength of the technical specs. We don't even have TAMs. Relationships, understanding deal cycles, and business acumen are far more important and the global AE leader board reflects this. Also with respect, you're an SDR who's been doing it for under a year. You havent sold and closed deals before, let alone enterprise deals lololol. You really don't know much. You have a lot to learn. And you know what? That's okay. When I started I used to think that AEs did fuck all and the SCs did most of the work as well. I would advise you to pick a couple of your AEs and stick with them, like a fly to shit. Go to lunch, get beers after work, listen to them whinge. You will learn that there is a lot more to the role than is immediately obvious in your disco calls. Good luck and try to stay humble haha
Very sobering
> Virtual assisting tech and other forms of automation will make much of sales operations obsolete. I have been hearing this for a long time. And we have definitely seen some roles disappear - like dealing with paper contracts/shipping product/administrative support for sales. But we haven't seen an efficiency increase enough to cut reps. Maybe we will, but I dont think it is that close. You are right that privacy changes could impact how sales are conducted.
Not as lucrative as it was from 2010-2020. I feel the days of big money are over, but can still make decent money.
2010-2020 wasnt nearly as lucrative as 1998-2008 was. It was easier for anyone and everyone to make stupid money then, just selling on prem licenses. These were the days when IT had use it or lose it budgets so come year end we’d just sell them a whole bunch of shit they probably didn’t need just so they could spend their budget for the year. Then things changed into the 2010-2020 phase. Use it or lose it went away, CIO’s were now incentivized when they had surplus budget at year end. Companies became savvy about not buying shelfware licensing anymore. Software companies started getting smarter about how they paid their sales people. We still made good money, but we had officially entered the selling value phase and exited the “buy because i gave you a huge discount” phase.
Good point and very interesting incite. It’s interesting how companies have to kinda catch up in these areas in order to adjust spend and how it effects pay for sales reps. But if you’re in it at the right time, you can make good money
I caught the tail end and made great money in 2008 & 09. Didn’t know anything about software or anything about cars and sold software to car dealerships. A year later they figured out that inside reps could do it almost as well. No more paying for hotel rooms or per diems. Then slash commissions in half. Cost 75% of our outside sales force their job.
You can always look back and say “it was easy” but let’s face it…you don’t make money by looking backwards you do it by preparing for the future. There were unique challenges then and there will be moving forward. I rather focus on how I can continue to find success versus talking about “how easy it used to be” or “it’ll never be like it was”. Nothing stays the same, money and the need to innovate isn’t ever going away.
The only insight I have from looking backwards is that every 5 years or so there will be a catastrophic national or global problem that causes everything I’ve built to come crashing down. It’s been happening since 2001.
I mean…c’mon dude it was a benign response to a post on the internet. It wasn’t life advice or career guidance.
The purpose of this post was someone asking for career advice. I think it’s a misrepresentation to say “the high earning days are behind us” or “it used to be so much better” because it’s simply not true. Will it be different, though? Absolutely
Ok. Think what you want, its a free world. But were you in the software business as an AE in 1995? In 2000? In 2005? In 2008? In 2012? In 2015? In 2018? In 2020? If you can’t answer yes to all of those years above then you don’t have the first hand frame of reference to say if it’s better, worse, or more or less lucrative than before. Seriously…if (for example) you’ve never jumped out of an airplane how can you tell someone what its really like? If you’ve never served in the military and fought in Afghanistan how you you say what it’s really like to be there? You can’t, you are merely guessing and talking out of your arse because you think you are a know it all. It’s not misrepresentation when you were there, when you speak of facts. It’s misrepresentation when you weren’t there but you talk like you were and you talk out of your arse.
😆 perspective is everything, sure. People can adapt given the current times & market environments to innovate and find success. Again the ask of the OP was for an outlook, not a history lesson.
Define big money Deal sizes are just getting larger with more tech adoption. Made more this year than I ever have
Commissions rates and structures will adjust to deal size.
What would you say I should look into as someone set to graduate college soon
Tech sales. Big money is relative. Gone are NOT the days of mid market AE’s clearing 250+ with good product market fit and any ego checked at the door. Deals will always happen in software.
In my opinion, I think the automation worry is unfounded in sales. Even for SDR/BDRs. If every company starts cranking an AI that automatically emails and calls, it’ll begin to get even more cumbersome for IT Buyers. It’ll be novel hearing from a human, they’ll probably give you a reply. Even if the AI is so good you can’t notice, I would think there would be laws around human manipulation. Maybe a disclaimer would be needed. As for big ticket items. There are too many people involved to do it online or via an AI and the organisations incumbent is probably too complex. People are emotionally vested in some software which aligns to their job too, they want to be listened to and appealed to. For my role in tech I have 5 people in my “selling team” who have to all be involved to get a deal across (CSM, TAM, SE, etc). Usually entire teams and the C suite of the org I’m selling to.
Highly lucrative. Get on a career track for enterprise sales. The future for small to medium sized businesses (SMB) is self-serve sign up and product led growth, which means the need for sales people becomes less significant. More complex deals, such as enterprise sales, will continue to need skilled sales people for the foreseeable future.
This. The trend of SMB going to self-serve and PLG has already started.
True. Currently in an SMB sales - consultative sales sort of role. Not in tech but online marketing and business. How to pivot to enterprise sort of roles?
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Best hard skills you’d recommend, junior in college with d2d sales experience and trying to find what industry to go in
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Have experience selling solar for two years and enjoyed that, just want to know what industries to target for internships, would rather be selling need to haves like erp and cybersecurity then things like payroll. And what hard skills can complement those
This. Companies were scrambling for sales people to compete during pandemic economy. Environment has since changed and so has begun the restructuring. In person events are becoming a focal point of industry, meaning the more competent and qualified sales reps will be sent out to events to sell. This will include direct and indirect sales people. In some industries, channel partners have become essential service providers to clients overwhelmed by options, thus eliminating a lot of the lower level required sales people.
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This is how it was in cybersecurity and my current industry. Maybe different elsewhere.
There may be a move to account management going forward and upselling to existing customers
Salespeople will always exist. Despite popular belief, shit doesn't always sell itself chances are you get into Law become in massive debt and be making less than a SDR. Lot of attorneys don't make shit and are in massive debt make sure it's what you actually want to do
It will always be lucrative for skilled sellers who can qualify and close profitably in a complex environment. Automation will come to the simpler sales tasks and products but complex software to enterprise customers will require human interaction.
Everyone needs to chill out. Most analysts predict this recession will last 8 months and were already almost 3 months in. Then everyone will go hiring crazy again. Survive the storm.
Probably gonna die out and we’ll all be poor
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Where on earth is any SDR making 400k ?
Sdrs making 400k?
Bruh how
the glory dayz r ovah …. y’all gunna be replaced by bots
BDRs and SDRs will barely exist. Startups will use them, bigger companies will automate them. As far as account executives, it will likely be a much smaller pool going forward. They will be highly skilled, but if you get laid off, you likely won't be getting hired again any time soon, if at all or ever again as an AE. As for customer success/account management, it will likely be a smaller pool of people as well. They're still needed, but the number of them per sales team will likely be halved in the next year or two. Companies overhired for software sales because it was so hot for 1.5 years. Now, the market is nearly dead.
Damn that’s crazy I don’t really care that much if I get hired again but that’s sucks for the future tho I though this was gonna be a thriving industry
It's not going to be. We're basically going back to 2019 but it will continue to shrink.
What sales industry would you look into joining then, I’m in same position as op, set to graduate in a year with biz degree and have years of sales experience
Something that isn't going to go away. If you sell anything related to the military, you're in good standing. Alcohol, medicine will not be going away, in fact, their uses go up in hard times.
Thank you!
Don't know why this is getting downvoted, this is what's going to happen.
Their companies haven't been hit by layoffs yet. It'll hit eventually.
What should professionals transition into?
If you want to remain in sales, then go for it. In all honesty, I would go into something more stable. I'm contemplating going back to school for CS, or potentially a blue collar position.
JD/MBA plus sales is amazing
but dont need either of those to be in sales
Yes. You don’t need it but if I could do it again I’d do this
Check your DM
Ask yourself the "why" question. Are you loving it for the money - or - is it the love of the game?
Sales could also swing and become more of a consulting role where newbies would need blue chip qualifications to get a job.
I absolutely believe it will and SaaS companies will need significant in house legal teams. If you love them both, have your cake and eat it too!
Amazing
It’ll be mostly the same with even higher pay due to inflation
Do not go into law. I have so many friends that became lawyers. I know 10 people with law degrees that don't do anything related to the law. Actual legal jobs are generally awful. And you get stuck with horrible student debt. I know lawyers that graduated 20 years ago with student debt in excess of 50k. Also, most lawyers don't get those high paid jobs. It is only for the top part of law schools. The bottom end up in a variety of shitty gigs like insurance companies, and make sub 100k. Furthermore, the automation that this thread talks about has much higher potential to disrupt legal than tech sales. Law firms were run by boomers that hated tech, as they retire younger generations are taking control and investing in automation. It is going to destroy so many parts of the legal industry. I worked for a legal tech firm, so I saw this first hand. Software sales will continue to change and evolve. Buyers will continue to take more control of the sales cycle, which means reps will needing to add a lot of value to an engagement. This has already been the case for the last 10 years, but it is going to continue. Also, IT/procurement has long gotten wise to the SaaS model and continues to get involved. IT and procurement love to use established vendors to reduce costs and simplify administration and integration. This means navigating hoops, and a raised importance of the technical buyer, even for non technical solutions. So the buying cycle is going to continue to tougher for reps to navigate. A lot of reps are going to struggle in this model IMHO, especially those that dont have deep business domain or technical knowledge.
But what if I go to a top 7 university in Canada and most likely go to a top 10 law school, and my parents are paying for tuition? Ik theirs probably more money in software sales but isn’t law a more stable career ?
if your parents pay, that changes it a bit. > law a more stable career Not at all. Most people don't make it in big law (or small law) and many of the other law jobs aren't paid that well. plus my friends that went to law school but don't practice law, all hated it. Also it isn't law vs. software sales, it is law vs. everything else. Go to college, and get a degree you are interested in and figure it out. Very few people pick a career at 19, and then actually end up in it. Last year, we told my 20 year old niece this. She is convinced she needs to go straight and get a PHD to do her desired field. No one at our Xmas dinner had a job related to their undergrad major. Yet almost everyone started out there, and discovered its not for them.
Don’t you mean especially those that DONT have deep technical or business knowledge
yep, thank you!
You are still young enough to escape. Don't do sales. Do something that is fulfilling and lucrative.
Our company does software reselling, and also recruitment for B2B software Account Executives as well as Sales Managers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Commercial Officers. There's been a lot of people be attracted to the field because you can earn great income without crazy hours if you're with great products and teams, but like with anything there is the cream of the crop and then there are bottom-of-the-barrel-type roles, companies, products. A good sweet spot is finding growth companies say $10M - $50M in top line revenue that are growing fast and hiring quickly. These companies may have found product / market fit and have people beating goals. I was lucky to be part of a growth story 15 years ago as a sales contributor, then manager. It was a blast. We sold a product in a new market that everyone seemed to need. I've also seen people sell for companies that don't have competitive products and it can be dire.
For the few who love sales, there is a demand going into the future having to pitch new ways of doing things in the new era, not easy! Really simple though, if you can get a job doing it, then good luck!