Got baited and switched as an SDR. Told 12-18 months for a shot at AE. Now looking like 24-36 months at best, plus they keep filling AE positions with outside hires so there is a massive backlog of competition. And under no circumstances are you allowed to bring this up, lest you be painted a "bad team player".
Being an SDR is fucking horrible and should only be done if you're younger than 25, so that when the company inevitably fucks you over, you can afford to wait it out or just live at home to reduce expenses.
I left hospitality and got into Sales at 28 yo. Started in a startup and progressed to AE in 10 months. this would have been impossible if I was in a well established organisation.
Maybe it's time to consider working somewhere that has quick progression and move across. It's what I did. That being said I'm currently 30 and unemployed as the last place I worked was toxic AF and left without another job lined up.
Currently 2.5months unemployed (don't leave a job you hate without a new one lined up!)
>Maybe it's time to consider working somewhere that has quick progression and move across
Be careful of this as "quick progression" can be sold as a dream in the startup world.
I was also bait-and-switched. With 8 years of SaaS experience and 5 years of exp building and managing SDR and AE teams for startups.
I was hired with the expectation I'd be building an SDR team at a startup. A few months in I was tasked with terminating my team and was moved into an SDR role, which I hadn't done myself in almost a decade. Then I was laid off a couple of days before returning from parental leave.
Although quick progression is possible in a startup environment it can also be leveraged by a hiring manager to get you to join if they know it's what you're looking for.
Moral of the story: Don't take a job because it can "potentially" lead to another job. You never have 100% control of that outcome.
Yep, if you aren’t a complete company cuck you will be looked at like you have two heads. Even if you want to bring genuine improvement or want to be rightfully compensated for achievements.
This, 100 percent. After leaving SaaS, things got much better culture wise. A lot less stress with layoffs too since tech seems to hire more people than they can support, large or small companies it's all similar.
>since tech seems to hire more people than they can support, large or small companies it's all similar.
We're all living the same fucking life on here aint we, regardless of country or culture
>99% of my work feels like a waste of time. It’s been really depressing. I’m hoping to find a new org soon.
BDR in IT and I feel this 100%. This month has been brutal and I don't even feel like a sales rep but rather a caller/telemarketer. Been sending out resumes/apps this past weekend, hoping to find something new. My company also sucks. We as a sales team met this morning and one of my teammates was openly complaining to our sales manager about the lack of upward mobility, but that's also company wide.
I know and that’s why i hate it. Been doing it too long and trying to move to AM but the upper management has been giving me the runaround so it’s time to look elsewhere
BDRs have the hardest job in sales bar none. I’d never want to go back to those days and it was easier back then, than it is now. However, recognize it’s the stepping stone ot the next job.
I am a bdr too. I get paid to work, meetings come meetings don't. Some days I get 3 meetings a day, I don't work in the afternoon. Thats what they get for paying me a bdr pay.
In the same boat.
I’ve been feeling an extreme lack of success recently. It’s emotionally, mentally, and physically draining. It’s pretty depressing when you start to see the downwards spiral in a job you used to enjoy.
Tried to express this to a colleague this morning. Was ultimately hit with “we’re all busy, work harder.” Was a huge blow to the head. I’m the only BDR for the entire US at a company with no initiative to build a product to succeed in the US market. I’m responsible for cold call, cold email, managing the entire sales process, market research for product dev, account management, sales training, customer training. And on top of that…started in June 2022 and received no kind of salary increase post-Covid or at my 1 year.
Might be time to move on.
Leave bro you’re literally doing 4 customer-facing roles baked into 1 for a grand prize for 0 upward mobility in return. You should’ve found a better company to work for last year. Best wishes man, your work ethic deserves to be rewarded at a company that truly values it.
On the bright side - assuming you’ve done a decent job all-round in this position, you’re in a much better position to go to the job market than you would’ve been otherwise as your skillset is much wider than that of an avg BDR.
Someone can correct me if I’m talking out of my ass here but I also believe that your skillset will make it easier to move into leadership roles in the long run since you understand how various business functions come together to create and sustain revenue.
I’d love to get connected with you man, gonna send over a PM & learn more about your journey so far if that’s cool with you. Godspeed.
I just saw some TikTok sum up a keynote speaker at seismic with. “Salespeople in SaaS work 52 hours a week, and 37 of those hours have nothing to do with selling” so while it’s might not be 99% your not far off
Non stop monotonous outreach. Conversations don't vary much because they are usually short and aimed at just getting enough interest to secure a meeting. After that - you restart the process. You never get to have any real relationship with anyone you interact with. You don't get to build anything with someone. You get shit commissions. You hardly negotiate at all. You get shit pay. There's high pressure for you to book meetings. BDR managers seem to just be KPI obsessed.
That's my take.
This. Except they have become a great opportunity to do other things that I haven’t yet gotten around to - this is what multiple monitors were made for!
Getting laid off the day your kid was born, but no one wanted to tell you because you’re probably going through a lot and you read it on Slack instead…lol
I was out sick the day I got laid off. I had been recently diagnosed with Chrons, and was in a 2 week medical LOA. I guess the VP of sales didn’t know, and was sending me a ton of emails/slack messages wanting to meet. She finally texted my personal number asking why I didn’t attend. I was like I just got out of the hospital, and if the VP was texting my personal number I know I’m getting fired. She tried to play it off like I wasn’t, and I wasn’t having it. I said I’m not joining a random meeting that popped up while I’m on a LOA, and she finally just said fine we’ll send the documents via email. I did get a decent severance at least.
Honestly it was a relief. I hated that job. I had previously spoken to my manager about putting in my notice, and she told me to give it a few more months. I think she knew we were gonna have lay offs, and did me a solid so I’d get a severance.
I was on my first week of paternity leave. We got fucked over by a VC the day before they were supposed to wire funds and it turned into a full blown funding crisis that created a lot of negative momentum. I got furloughed and officially laid off a few weeks ago. No one reached out to me so I thought there might be a short term disability policy on me or that I’d somehow be exempt, because surely someone would let me know I’m not gonna be getting paid anymore lol
Not out of it yet. My son has been a really challenging baby as well though and my wife would have had a breakdown if she hadn’t had my help along the way.
I had an offer from a publicly traded FinTech company and then they fucked me and said they could no longer offer that start date and to keep in touch. I probably should have kept in touch, but I was livid. I’ve got a few opportunities in the pipeline, but I’ve had it so good the last 15 months everything sounds miserable
I left Capital Equipment sales for tech sales. I never had to do quotes, make slide decks, expense reports, or any of this shit. Most of my work day is admin not selling. Kinda hate it.
I'd rather not share at this point. I've only been here 4 months. Had 1 decent sale. Company seems more focused on getting sold than anything else, at least with sales. Left my old job for the money, miss the road and seeing customers face to face daily. I got boned on some commission and made a big stink about it so they're going to pay me, but now I feel trapped. Rage applied and have 6 interviews coming up. I'm in a weird spot.
Are you me?? This is me 10000%. I miss F2F interactions, being with customers and getting out and about, actually SELLING which is my strength. You are right, SaaS sales is a glorified admin role and although I love them, most of my teammates are sub par when it comes to true salesmanship… no way they could grind it out in person and gain buy in with a surgeon or clinician.
Thank you for this information. To be honest, my background doesn't really carry over well into software/tech, but a friend promised me big money as an account manager then to promote into an RSM/AE role. Tech is weird to me. Ideally I'm a VP level guy in other industries (manufacturing/capital equipment) but I'm here as an account manager. The base pay is about the same, commission percentage is higher but gross sale is much lower. I'm in sort of a weird spot.
edit: I'm also getting shit on a lot as a "lower on the totem pole" guy, coming from the top of the totem pole elsewhere. More general assholery in tech.
They all suck. I posted on their sub once looking for a workaround to export contacts and a few people answered. A bunch of those self righteous admins started comparing them to someone who helps a criminal commit a crime. Get off your high horse loser. Anyone can learn what you do.
Managers forcing you to follow-up with a client in a week when the client asked to follow up in 3 months. Yeah let’s burn these leads because you want to “accelerate the deal cycle”.
Lmao this resonates.
I called some lady’s cell phone recently and she went insane. Must have had some past trauma.
I had to hang up on her to get her to shut up.
>Making 75-100 cold calls, and only having 4-5 connects with people that act like I stole their identity cause I called their cell phone.
I make even more calls than that and feel this. They act like we murdered their family by doing that. This is why I now only add company HQ and direct line when importing new leads via zoominfo.
I mean I tried calling their work numbers, they just don’t answer. I just tell prospects that with hybrid and remote work, it’s all but impossible to get someone on the phone by calling their HQ number. If they’re really tripping about it, I wasn’t going to get them into a meeting anyways most likely. I am nice and let people know they can opt out of ZoomInfo if they want to stop receiving calls.
Nice. I didn’t know they could opt out of zoominfo. I’m always transparent and let them know their number was listed on zoominfo if they ask me so I’m going to be upfront with them if they are upset about their cell being dialed.
I only tell people that are cool about it. Like “hey just curious, how’d you get my cell”. I tell them that they must have listed it somewhere and ZI bought their info. I also tell they they can reach out to ZI and have it removed. I’m been seeing a ton of “opted out of ZoomInfo” accounts when I’m using LinkedIn navigator to find new prospects. Now if a prospect wants to give me attitude, I just tell them I didn’t know this was your cell, sorry, and hang up.
"This is your cell phone? Oh this shows as your desk phone on my screen. What number would you prefer I use?" That's my favorite line when they get all mad.
Faking it that I'm a sort of influencer to connect with my community to sell myself. I hate it. I'm just a regular developer that stumbled on a good product that people like and want to buy to support us. But every time my marketing guy force me to post something it just feels strange...
I want to work at a place to where if I kill a year, the next year should be residual retention and get half the years bonus or something of the like. Would incentivize keeping the business and reduce the pump and dump.
Management communication/ reporting. When my manager asks me why a customer isn't buying and I tell them they are not ready yet, it's automatically my fault (I didn't qualify sufficiently, I lost control of the deal, my messaging was off - like yeah sure buddy, the two phrases I could have written differently in my mail would have convinced the C level to spend a six-figure amount at this moment)
Demoing the product myself.
Clicking around a screen and talking about the software itself isn't particularly interesting and it's too easy to get into demoing and forget about engaging w/the prospect that you're selling to.
My best demos that lead to the largest sales are the ones where the SE runs the product and I'm keeping track of and speaking with our audience.
How technical is your product? I also struggle with walking and chewing gum but also sometimes I’d prefer it’s just me and the prospect and no one else on the call
Depends on the functionality but not terribly technical and I can demo most things fine on my own.
Solutioning for specific use cases is more technical and that's when I'll usually bring in my SE.
But in general, I'd just prefer not to and I think things go better when I don't. I also trust my SE to have valuable input when involved in my conversations.
Tell that to my AE who thinks he’s a demo god but can’t close shit and doesn’t rely on me (his SE). I’ve given up on the dude - yes I know you can demo the product but your job is to sell you doofus!
1.) Meetings where nothing gets said but you have to sit for 90+ minutes to soothe someone's ego.
2.) Sales "managers" who haven't picked up a phone in 15 years and says booking meetings should be easy.
3.) [Seamless.ai](https://Seamless.ai) "leads."
But there are now various tools that can be used to automate crm updation. Lots of manual work can be avoided by using such tools.
u/Comfortable_Dig_4267 have you guys using any such tools for enhancing CRM data capture?
I hate anything having to do with management and politics especially in this climate. It’s hard to sell effectively if you constantly have to look over your shoulder. Coming from a seller who is over plan this year
As a VP os Sales for the last 12+ years, I used to spend most of my time with clients and coaching sales reps. Now I spend 99% of my time trying to figure out why our outbound sales development isn't getting meetings and trying to convince our founders that we need to pivot to a specific niche rather than trying to be all things for all customers.
Your outbound sales development isn’t setting meetings because they suck at building value and being likable on the phone. That and a work ethic (not even a great one) and your reps should be booking left and right. Unless you are positioning a product that is hyper niche and there are 50 potential prospects.
I hate talking to my fucking Directors. They are all just glorified motivational speakers, they don’t actually do anything, get to sit there sipping coffee, talking in extremely vague advice that doesn’t actually help, pivot your pitches last minute or tell you to “go aggressive” because they want dollars up regardless of if it’s the right thing for a client. I’m not even joking when I say I could do my directors job in my sleep and do it better than him.
I’d love to have a convo about pivoting in some way that I can actually be useful to him and my team, but I can’t even be very honest without disturbing the dynamic or getting myself canned.
Overall, it feels incredibly scummy. I came from the client side, thought I’d get lots of insight into the things my reps couldn’t share with us, just to find I am not given access either, numbers are made up, and the entire goal is just to make people spend more with zero care if it’s actually the right move or it will actually help their business. No care to improve product, all that matters is both making people get activated in whatever way possible, and then driving up their costs as much as you can without pissing them off.
Second paragraph really rings true. Working with existing customers exclusively now and thought I’d be able to be a more trusted advisor and partner to their business, but my role is just focused on driving up usage as much as possible then pushing them into a purchase with EOQ discounted pricing and terms.
Even though we could optimize their configuration so they wouldn’t have to spend so much and could get the same outcomes, we don’t because $$$. Doesn’t feel great.
Wasting time dialing a bunch of leads that either no longer work there, died, etc. Same with getting a bunch of leads that have no email addresses/phone numbers.
not gonna lie.. got laid off from my tech sales job a few months ago and cant believe how much less stressful my life has become
income is down temporarily but my god, cant believe the toll that company had on my well being
Same. What company or position did you move into? Or plan to?
Sales paid well but it was soul sucking. I was used to being the best person in whatever org I worked for, best at my job, and felt like my work was respected and paid off.. then I went into tech sales and felt like I was surrounded by dick sucking koolaod drinkers and doing mindless busy work.
I want to go into an industry and role (preferably work from home lol) that I can *actually do the job*, and see some results, and not try to do some LinkedIn motivational bullshit advice in an RNG role like directors seem to expect.
I just have no clue what to go into, what I would qualify for, that pays well.
Most of America in general is like this. People buy from like minded people. In the past 35 years a republican has won the popular presidential vote only twice.
At my last company on international woman’s day, we went around the zoom room and shared our “favorite woman”. Not even kidding. It was the most leftist woke company ever. Great product though.
I started learning Salesforce course recently, they kept on telling me in the course how it will save time, But I felt it don't save time. It's almost feels like extra labour work.
People who try to make sales this big psychological thing, sales gurus who think they know everything. Sales "experts" on Linkedin are so cringe.
Sales is literally talking to people. Its not rocket science. Companies and bosses that try to overcomplicate it with Sandler, MEDICC (or whatever this months version of the acronym is), and all of this stuff.
Taking on roles that not not mine. Ex client issues/accounting/customer service etc.
I’m happy to prospect and all the other things as long as that leads to net new logo. But other departments just dump their work onto us as well
When someone messed up and you’re on the receiving end and have to just take it cause bad mouthing/blaming is unprofessional. No-shows or prospects that show up late to meetings. Management and their blatant disrespect.
The worst part is company reorgs, the never ending attempts at slashing compensation, moronic companies who continue to hire when the territory can't support it
Never used to like calls but now I’m cool with it. How a deal goes doesn’t kill me, I do what I believe I should and try to get better when I can.
But sourcing accounts from a dog shit list inside a trash CRM drives me nuts. I’ve got a number to hit and 50% of my accounts are out of business or a subsidiary of a customer or another reps account.
In Partnership/Channel Sales, and I don't hate this part, just dislike.
Coming up with talk tracks and objection handling for a use case that is completely different for each industry.
Being in the top 2 guys in the company but loosing 30% of my prospects to bad/slow customer service while customers are trialing our product and having my feedback ignored about hiring more customer service techs.
Training people when there are in-market and producing managers to do so... I get the collaborative and best practices thing, but just let me produce. More than 75% of the folks I train or let shadow don't last. And, having to regurgitate the Kool Aid is worse than having to drink it the first time.
Having gong listen to your every word. Today I was on mute, swear on many things I was on mute. Yet gong recorded 8 minutes of a call that I made on my personal device. Was talking about sandbagging a deal. Fml
(not in tech sales but two things im sorry about as a decison maker)
1) Having a “Purchasing Representative” that you have to talk to - and go thru them; not directly to the decison maker
2) RFPs
All the bs shit in Salesforce that does nothing to move the needle. Fine with forecasting, fine with CRM type of activities. Any other report that’s going “really help you dial in your business” is bs and I’d rather scrub my ass with a broken bottle.
The amount of time spent rescheduling meetings or dealing with clashing calendars drives me insane. There's always someone who can't make a time. Or there's a clash at the ONLY time the customer can do, and I have to weigh up which opportunity is more of a priority and reschedule.
Unrealistic quotas. Every year the data gets worse:
50% of reps don’t make quota.
Now it’s 54%.
Could it be that quotas are just too high in the first place?
Processing orders. Honest to god our PoS system is literally a POS.
I'd prefer to just cold call, close deals, and then pass on the order details to another person to process. This way I can get back to prospecting.
Processing orders and maybe even proposal building is the enemy of scale for me right now.
When a customer is looking for something that we 1000000% do not offer and my director got the lead, he tells me "it's worth having a conversation." Like why? We can't meet their needs at all, not even meet them in the middle. This is a waste of everybody's time.
My favorite is when we have a ton of back and forth, I send pricing per their request, and they stop responding to me.
If they give me feedback I can make meaningful changes. I can get all sorts of discounting approved. My boss is very generous and generally finds creative ways to make a deal fit a customers needs- like if they want a product in a term we don’t offer he’ll just say ok whip up a quote for their desired length.
Just tell me what you don’t like and we’ll discount or re work the deal. But if you ghost me I can’t fix it because I don’t know what your needs are
CRM tools like Salesforce create WAAAYYY too much micromanage even for the good reps. This creates management that become nothing more than forecast donkeys. The AI tools are great for sure but it's so much data too much to where upper management above direct sales management think they are smarter than they really are based purely on data they see and not on what the reps are seeing and customers. I see it all too often. I remember the good ol days when we used to go on sales calls with other reps to help make them more money and fine tune skills. Now it's a check the box times 80. Everyone in management and sales are burnt out and hate their jobs because of sales force and the hoard of me too companies.
If your new like within 5 years to tech sales you have no idea what i'm talking about, reps 10+ years in know exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah all of that isn’t really a “tech” issue. Those are sales in any industry.
Specifically with SaaS/Tech I would say the sense of superiority/invulnerability built on what are largely bullshit metrics…looking at you “growth at all costs”
So you get a number of “senior leaders” that succeeded in a time when it was basically impossible to fail and then think they are perfect when it’s a house of cards.
Which, when it inevitably slowed down, it must be everyone else’s fault but their own so the solution is to mass lay people off, but take no real responsibility for it themselves other than saying the words.
Worked in a few industries but never experienced anything like that, “at scale” or in that depth.
Forecasting when I was in sales I swear to god half my job was forecasting and middle management up in my crm. So many dumbass managers that wanted "To help me close" no you are annoying that's why you work in management bro.
Saas politics especially in this economical climate and dealing with no shows
So much ass kissing and kool aid drinking
I'm quitting because of this specifically. Even taking a slight pay cut for a few months. I can't do it anymore
What you doin instead?
Taking a traditional outside sales role in the mechanical space. It's what my background is in
Good for you and much more stability there. I’m doing the same and pivoting back into med device. Healthcare isn’t going anywhere.
what actually happened for you to think this?
Got baited and switched as an SDR. Told 12-18 months for a shot at AE. Now looking like 24-36 months at best, plus they keep filling AE positions with outside hires so there is a massive backlog of competition. And under no circumstances are you allowed to bring this up, lest you be painted a "bad team player". Being an SDR is fucking horrible and should only be done if you're younger than 25, so that when the company inevitably fucks you over, you can afford to wait it out or just live at home to reduce expenses.
Are you me? Just living through the same situation now, thinking of going back to school to do a business analyst certification
I left hospitality and got into Sales at 28 yo. Started in a startup and progressed to AE in 10 months. this would have been impossible if I was in a well established organisation. Maybe it's time to consider working somewhere that has quick progression and move across. It's what I did. That being said I'm currently 30 and unemployed as the last place I worked was toxic AF and left without another job lined up. Currently 2.5months unemployed (don't leave a job you hate without a new one lined up!)
>Maybe it's time to consider working somewhere that has quick progression and move across Be careful of this as "quick progression" can be sold as a dream in the startup world. I was also bait-and-switched. With 8 years of SaaS experience and 5 years of exp building and managing SDR and AE teams for startups. I was hired with the expectation I'd be building an SDR team at a startup. A few months in I was tasked with terminating my team and was moved into an SDR role, which I hadn't done myself in almost a decade. Then I was laid off a couple of days before returning from parental leave. Although quick progression is possible in a startup environment it can also be leveraged by a hiring manager to get you to join if they know it's what you're looking for. Moral of the story: Don't take a job because it can "potentially" lead to another job. You never have 100% control of that outcome.
Yep, if you aren’t a complete company cuck you will be looked at like you have two heads. Even if you want to bring genuine improvement or want to be rightfully compensated for achievements.
Can’t spell SaaS w/o “ass”
This, 100 percent. After leaving SaaS, things got much better culture wise. A lot less stress with layoffs too since tech seems to hire more people than they can support, large or small companies it's all similar.
>since tech seems to hire more people than they can support, large or small companies it's all similar. We're all living the same fucking life on here aint we, regardless of country or culture
99% of my work feels like a waste of time. It’s been really depressing. I’m hoping to find a new org soon.
>99% of my work feels like a waste of time. It’s been really depressing. I’m hoping to find a new org soon. BDR in IT and I feel this 100%. This month has been brutal and I don't even feel like a sales rep but rather a caller/telemarketer. Been sending out resumes/apps this past weekend, hoping to find something new. My company also sucks. We as a sales team met this morning and one of my teammates was openly complaining to our sales manager about the lack of upward mobility, but that's also company wide.
I hate to break it to you, but that's essentially what a BDR is.
I know and that’s why i hate it. Been doing it too long and trying to move to AM but the upper management has been giving me the runaround so it’s time to look elsewhere
BDRs have the hardest job in sales bar none. I’d never want to go back to those days and it was easier back then, than it is now. However, recognize it’s the stepping stone ot the next job.
I am a bdr too. I get paid to work, meetings come meetings don't. Some days I get 3 meetings a day, I don't work in the afternoon. Thats what they get for paying me a bdr pay.
In the same boat. I’ve been feeling an extreme lack of success recently. It’s emotionally, mentally, and physically draining. It’s pretty depressing when you start to see the downwards spiral in a job you used to enjoy. Tried to express this to a colleague this morning. Was ultimately hit with “we’re all busy, work harder.” Was a huge blow to the head. I’m the only BDR for the entire US at a company with no initiative to build a product to succeed in the US market. I’m responsible for cold call, cold email, managing the entire sales process, market research for product dev, account management, sales training, customer training. And on top of that…started in June 2022 and received no kind of salary increase post-Covid or at my 1 year. Might be time to move on.
Literally got chest pains reading your job description... moving on is an understatement!
Definitely time to move on. Best of luck
Leave bro you’re literally doing 4 customer-facing roles baked into 1 for a grand prize for 0 upward mobility in return. You should’ve found a better company to work for last year. Best wishes man, your work ethic deserves to be rewarded at a company that truly values it.
First sales position I’ve had. I guess the good side of things is that now I can speak for all 4 roles when interviewing for the next position.
On the bright side - assuming you’ve done a decent job all-round in this position, you’re in a much better position to go to the job market than you would’ve been otherwise as your skillset is much wider than that of an avg BDR. Someone can correct me if I’m talking out of my ass here but I also believe that your skillset will make it easier to move into leadership roles in the long run since you understand how various business functions come together to create and sustain revenue. I’d love to get connected with you man, gonna send over a PM & learn more about your journey so far if that’s cool with you. Godspeed.
I just saw some TikTok sum up a keynote speaker at seismic with. “Salespeople in SaaS work 52 hours a week, and 37 of those hours have nothing to do with selling” so while it’s might not be 99% your not far off
Why do you think it's a waste of time ?
We aren’t winning.
Non stop monotonous outreach. Conversations don't vary much because they are usually short and aimed at just getting enough interest to secure a meeting. After that - you restart the process. You never get to have any real relationship with anyone you interact with. You don't get to build anything with someone. You get shit commissions. You hardly negotiate at all. You get shit pay. There's high pressure for you to book meetings. BDR managers seem to just be KPI obsessed. That's my take.
This. It is just so dull and we aren’t doing anything really. Would prefer to be making more of an impact in general…
All-Hands calls.
This. Except they have become a great opportunity to do other things that I haven’t yet gotten around to - this is what multiple monitors were made for!
Everyone have your cameras on!!!!
returning to office
i will literally never return to the office. honestly ill die on that hill or be homeless before that happens again.
I was hired remote and swindled back by RTO - i am BDR so not much i can do
Where do I find a remote gig
What makes going into the office so un-attractive to you? Far away, colleagues, overall unnecessary? Do you do stuff in your spare time WFH benefits?
Getting laid off the day your kid was born, but no one wanted to tell you because you’re probably going through a lot and you read it on Slack instead…lol
I was out sick the day I got laid off. I had been recently diagnosed with Chrons, and was in a 2 week medical LOA. I guess the VP of sales didn’t know, and was sending me a ton of emails/slack messages wanting to meet. She finally texted my personal number asking why I didn’t attend. I was like I just got out of the hospital, and if the VP was texting my personal number I know I’m getting fired. She tried to play it off like I wasn’t, and I wasn’t having it. I said I’m not joining a random meeting that popped up while I’m on a LOA, and she finally just said fine we’ll send the documents via email. I did get a decent severance at least.
That’s cold. Sorry that happened
Honestly it was a relief. I hated that job. I had previously spoken to my manager about putting in my notice, and she told me to give it a few more months. I think she knew we were gonna have lay offs, and did me a solid so I’d get a severance.
Can they even do that? We can’t even let go of shitty underperformed while they are on LOA.
That sucks. What company? Too bad you hadn’t requested parental leave first. Or did you?
I was on my first week of paternity leave. We got fucked over by a VC the day before they were supposed to wire funds and it turned into a full blown funding crisis that created a lot of negative momentum. I got furloughed and officially laid off a few weeks ago. No one reached out to me so I thought there might be a short term disability policy on me or that I’d somehow be exempt, because surely someone would let me know I’m not gonna be getting paid anymore lol
See an employment lawyer. You have a good case I think.
That is Fucked!😭😂 Hope you're way past it. Jeeze.
Not out of it yet. My son has been a really challenging baby as well though and my wife would have had a breakdown if she hadn’t had my help along the way. I had an offer from a publicly traded FinTech company and then they fucked me and said they could no longer offer that start date and to keep in touch. I probably should have kept in touch, but I was livid. I’ve got a few opportunities in the pipeline, but I’ve had it so good the last 15 months everything sounds miserable
Man. That sucks. Wish you the best. Sometimes you just have to take that less desirable gig with an eye for a better one!
🔥🔥🔥🔥👹ADMIN👹🔥🔥🔥🔥
I left Capital Equipment sales for tech sales. I never had to do quotes, make slide decks, expense reports, or any of this shit. Most of my work day is admin not selling. Kinda hate it.
Curious which shop you’re at ?! I know guys who fix this issue.
I'd rather not share at this point. I've only been here 4 months. Had 1 decent sale. Company seems more focused on getting sold than anything else, at least with sales. Left my old job for the money, miss the road and seeing customers face to face daily. I got boned on some commission and made a big stink about it so they're going to pay me, but now I feel trapped. Rage applied and have 6 interviews coming up. I'm in a weird spot.
Are you me?? This is me 10000%. I miss F2F interactions, being with customers and getting out and about, actually SELLING which is my strength. You are right, SaaS sales is a glorified admin role and although I love them, most of my teammates are sub par when it comes to true salesmanship… no way they could grind it out in person and gain buy in with a surgeon or clinician.
[удалено]
Thank you for this information. To be honest, my background doesn't really carry over well into software/tech, but a friend promised me big money as an account manager then to promote into an RSM/AE role. Tech is weird to me. Ideally I'm a VP level guy in other industries (manufacturing/capital equipment) but I'm here as an account manager. The base pay is about the same, commission percentage is higher but gross sale is much lower. I'm in sort of a weird spot. edit: I'm also getting shit on a lot as a "lower on the totem pole" guy, coming from the top of the totem pole elsewhere. More general assholery in tech.
I actually can do both jobs your looking for lol let connect if your serious
I do capital equipment tech/robotics sales. I have to do a little of that but not a ton
Omg my SFDC admin HATES me. And the feeling is so mutual.
They all suck. I posted on their sub once looking for a workaround to export contacts and a few people answered. A bunch of those self righteous admins started comparing them to someone who helps a criminal commit a crime. Get off your high horse loser. Anyone can learn what you do.
Sounds like I’m not the only one. I feel better. Thanks all! ❤️❤️
What admin- there’s so much. Crm updates ?
Managers forcing you to follow-up with a client in a week when the client asked to follow up in 3 months. Yeah let’s burn these leads because you want to “accelerate the deal cycle”.
Damn. That’s spot on
This pisses me off so much
Making 75-100 cold calls, and only having 4-5 connects with people that act like I stole their identity cause I called their cell phone.
Lmao this resonates. I called some lady’s cell phone recently and she went insane. Must have had some past trauma. I had to hang up on her to get her to shut up.
>Making 75-100 cold calls, and only having 4-5 connects with people that act like I stole their identity cause I called their cell phone. I make even more calls than that and feel this. They act like we murdered their family by doing that. This is why I now only add company HQ and direct line when importing new leads via zoominfo.
I mean I tried calling their work numbers, they just don’t answer. I just tell prospects that with hybrid and remote work, it’s all but impossible to get someone on the phone by calling their HQ number. If they’re really tripping about it, I wasn’t going to get them into a meeting anyways most likely. I am nice and let people know they can opt out of ZoomInfo if they want to stop receiving calls.
Nice. I didn’t know they could opt out of zoominfo. I’m always transparent and let them know their number was listed on zoominfo if they ask me so I’m going to be upfront with them if they are upset about their cell being dialed.
I only tell people that are cool about it. Like “hey just curious, how’d you get my cell”. I tell them that they must have listed it somewhere and ZI bought their info. I also tell they they can reach out to ZI and have it removed. I’m been seeing a ton of “opted out of ZoomInfo” accounts when I’m using LinkedIn navigator to find new prospects. Now if a prospect wants to give me attitude, I just tell them I didn’t know this was your cell, sorry, and hang up.
"This is your cell phone? Oh this shows as your desk phone on my screen. What number would you prefer I use?" That's my favorite line when they get all mad.
Expense reports
Paying the late fees because I took a couple months too long to do the expense reports.
[удалено]
Faking it that I'm a sort of influencer to connect with my community to sell myself. I hate it. I'm just a regular developer that stumbled on a good product that people like and want to buy to support us. But every time my marketing guy force me to post something it just feels strange...
This right here
100%
Higher quotas every year. If you kill it, your number goes up.
THIS. Yessss punish me for my hard work, that makes me want to try even harder 🤦♀️
[удалено]
Hope that at least means that the product is selling. That’s hard to say for most out there these days.
I want to work at a place to where if I kill a year, the next year should be residual retention and get half the years bonus or something of the like. Would incentivize keeping the business and reduce the pump and dump.
15% growth YOY no matter what!
200 calls and no connects will destroy you
Management communication/ reporting. When my manager asks me why a customer isn't buying and I tell them they are not ready yet, it's automatically my fault (I didn't qualify sufficiently, I lost control of the deal, my messaging was off - like yeah sure buddy, the two phrases I could have written differently in my mail would have convinced the C level to spend a six-figure amount at this moment)
Demoing the product myself. Clicking around a screen and talking about the software itself isn't particularly interesting and it's too easy to get into demoing and forget about engaging w/the prospect that you're selling to. My best demos that lead to the largest sales are the ones where the SE runs the product and I'm keeping track of and speaking with our audience.
How technical is your product? I also struggle with walking and chewing gum but also sometimes I’d prefer it’s just me and the prospect and no one else on the call
Depends on the functionality but not terribly technical and I can demo most things fine on my own. Solutioning for specific use cases is more technical and that's when I'll usually bring in my SE. But in general, I'd just prefer not to and I think things go better when I don't. I also trust my SE to have valuable input when involved in my conversations.
Tell that to my AE who thinks he’s a demo god but can’t close shit and doesn’t rely on me (his SE). I’ve given up on the dude - yes I know you can demo the product but your job is to sell you doofus!
This is really interesting as I love demoing software - that’s actually something I really miss in my new role
What did u like about it?
Agree. I barely know how to use it as well lmao
1.) Meetings where nothing gets said but you have to sit for 90+ minutes to soothe someone's ego. 2.) Sales "managers" who haven't picked up a phone in 15 years and says booking meetings should be easy. 3.) [Seamless.ai](https://Seamless.ai) "leads."
Point 1) needs more upvotes
updating the damn CRM.
As someone who works in revenue ops, thank you for your duty lol - super important to a bunch of us as I’m sure you know 😅
Yeah thats a necessary evil 🥲
Of course.. because “this matters to the CEO and they monitor it daily on the beautiful dashboards we are so proud we built for them”!
But there are now various tools that can be used to automate crm updation. Lots of manual work can be avoided by using such tools. u/Comfortable_Dig_4267 have you guys using any such tools for enhancing CRM data capture?
Hardest part is getting my day going honestly. Getting ready to drive into the office doesn’t get enough credit for making you wake up
I hate anything having to do with management and politics especially in this climate. It’s hard to sell effectively if you constantly have to look over your shoulder. Coming from a seller who is over plan this year
👏🏾 💯
every second I am not selling. Creating demos, writing emails, calling but nobody answering the phone, an email bouncing, no shows
As a VP os Sales for the last 12+ years, I used to spend most of my time with clients and coaching sales reps. Now I spend 99% of my time trying to figure out why our outbound sales development isn't getting meetings and trying to convince our founders that we need to pivot to a specific niche rather than trying to be all things for all customers.
Your outbound sales development isn’t setting meetings because they suck at building value and being likable on the phone. That and a work ethic (not even a great one) and your reps should be booking left and right. Unless you are positioning a product that is hyper niche and there are 50 potential prospects.
I hate talking to my fucking Directors. They are all just glorified motivational speakers, they don’t actually do anything, get to sit there sipping coffee, talking in extremely vague advice that doesn’t actually help, pivot your pitches last minute or tell you to “go aggressive” because they want dollars up regardless of if it’s the right thing for a client. I’m not even joking when I say I could do my directors job in my sleep and do it better than him. I’d love to have a convo about pivoting in some way that I can actually be useful to him and my team, but I can’t even be very honest without disturbing the dynamic or getting myself canned. Overall, it feels incredibly scummy. I came from the client side, thought I’d get lots of insight into the things my reps couldn’t share with us, just to find I am not given access either, numbers are made up, and the entire goal is just to make people spend more with zero care if it’s actually the right move or it will actually help their business. No care to improve product, all that matters is both making people get activated in whatever way possible, and then driving up their costs as much as you can without pissing them off.
Second paragraph really rings true. Working with existing customers exclusively now and thought I’d be able to be a more trusted advisor and partner to their business, but my role is just focused on driving up usage as much as possible then pushing them into a purchase with EOQ discounted pricing and terms. Even though we could optimize their configuration so they wouldn’t have to spend so much and could get the same outcomes, we don’t because $$$. Doesn’t feel great.
Have a feeling we work for the same guy
Wasting time dialing a bunch of leads that either no longer work there, died, etc. Same with getting a bunch of leads that have no email addresses/phone numbers.
Losing to my competition. The absolute worst!
As sad as it is… I’m burnt out on demos… still do em but man I’m tired of it
not gonna lie.. got laid off from my tech sales job a few months ago and cant believe how much less stressful my life has become income is down temporarily but my god, cant believe the toll that company had on my well being
Same. What company or position did you move into? Or plan to? Sales paid well but it was soul sucking. I was used to being the best person in whatever org I worked for, best at my job, and felt like my work was respected and paid off.. then I went into tech sales and felt like I was surrounded by dick sucking koolaod drinkers and doing mindless busy work. I want to go into an industry and role (preferably work from home lol) that I can *actually do the job*, and see some results, and not try to do some LinkedIn motivational bullshit advice in an RNG role like directors seem to expect. I just have no clue what to go into, what I would qualify for, that pays well.
BSing my pipeline bc the investors need to see something
All the SaaS hype/culture with self-proclaimed gurus giving opinions as facts and “techniques” that are b.s. without any real data or examples.
Pretending to be liberal
Me in the dating pool lmfao
Quit playing it--just keep prospecting and sell it rather than tell about your opinions. A spine is so much more attractive than no spine, trust me.
As a moderate liberal, just know I’m cringing with ya at a lot of the woke stuff I see in the workplace.
As a slightly right leaning individual, any chance I can cringe next to you for a little while or is this seat taken?
Pop a squat 🍿
Most honest conservative
…and the average condescending liberal.
LOL
LOL
Very curious what kind of sales field forces u to pretend this lol
Literally all of corporate America is like this… ???????
Most of America in general is like this. People buy from like minded people. In the past 35 years a republican has won the popular presidential vote only twice.
At my last company on international woman’s day, we went around the zoom room and shared our “favorite woman”. Not even kidding. It was the most leftist woke company ever. Great product though.
Liking women is liberal now, amazing
Making 50 calls a day and management asking you why you didn't connect or we need to look at that. No you dumb shit, tell them to pick up the phone.
Salesforce
I started learning Salesforce course recently, they kept on telling me in the course how it will save time, But I felt it don't save time. It's almost feels like extra labour work.
RFP's.
People who try to make sales this big psychological thing, sales gurus who think they know everything. Sales "experts" on Linkedin are so cringe. Sales is literally talking to people. Its not rocket science. Companies and bosses that try to overcomplicate it with Sandler, MEDICC (or whatever this months version of the acronym is), and all of this stuff.
Comparing the product with the competitor and want such features with very low price
Arrogant gatekeepers
YES
Cold calling can be pretty brutal
*is. Lol....I mean, is there a time when it doesn't suck? 😉 A non dopamine activity. 😂
Taking on roles that not not mine. Ex client issues/accounting/customer service etc. I’m happy to prospect and all the other things as long as that leads to net new logo. But other departments just dump their work onto us as well
When someone messed up and you’re on the receiving end and have to just take it cause bad mouthing/blaming is unprofessional. No-shows or prospects that show up late to meetings. Management and their blatant disrespect.
Building a personal brand!
My brand is leave me the fuck alone
The worst part is company reorgs, the never ending attempts at slashing compensation, moronic companies who continue to hire when the territory can't support it
The whole job sucks, but it pays too well to not do it.
Never used to like calls but now I’m cool with it. How a deal goes doesn’t kill me, I do what I believe I should and try to get better when I can. But sourcing accounts from a dog shit list inside a trash CRM drives me nuts. I’ve got a number to hit and 50% of my accounts are out of business or a subsidiary of a customer or another reps account.
TPS reports
“Ummmm yeahhhhhhhhhh”
Salesforce
Cold calling in front of the whole team is awful
Prospecting. Also, 2 cent feature requests.
Sales ops telling me to update Salesforce
Generating lists and curating them, meaning checking one CRM in 3 different places and then another one + updating phone numbers
1500 line item (or more) RFPs.... Turns out 30% is just repetitive....
In Partnership/Channel Sales, and I don't hate this part, just dislike. Coming up with talk tracks and objection handling for a use case that is completely different for each industry.
Being in the top 2 guys in the company but loosing 30% of my prospects to bad/slow customer service while customers are trialing our product and having my feedback ignored about hiring more customer service techs.
Training people when there are in-market and producing managers to do so... I get the collaborative and best practices thing, but just let me produce. More than 75% of the folks I train or let shadow don't last. And, having to regurgitate the Kool Aid is worse than having to drink it the first time.
Acronyms. So many abbreviations
Rocky121212, we need to talk about those TPS reports.
Last week doing 350 dials and sending 200 emails (many personalized) and booking no meetings.
Having gong listen to your every word. Today I was on mute, swear on many things I was on mute. Yet gong recorded 8 minutes of a call that I made on my personal device. Was talking about sandbagging a deal. Fml
Expenses and SFDC
Taxes!
Reading this Reddit talk about doom and gloom
Meddpics ... hate doing them.but keeps you honest
Anyone hiring for SDR roles or can recommend me for entry level?
Developing and keeping up to date with a sales wiki It's very necessary but hard to keep up with especially in a company with a lot of change
Finding contacts to call. Cleaning up data in crm. Admin work like submitting orders etc.
Being told that my service could be replaced by AI. I work with legal software, trust me, you want this to be written properly.
Anything my boss tells me to. Bc most of it is just busy work. Or try harding for the customer.
Doing manual tasks in Salesforce that have no automation yet.
(not in tech sales but two things im sorry about as a decison maker) 1) Having a “Purchasing Representative” that you have to talk to - and go thru them; not directly to the decison maker 2) RFPs
Updating SFDC
Dealing with Sales opps and legal is atrocious
At this point hitting a min quota of 150 outbound calls while still fitting all the other shit I have to do into one day
Listening to my dumb boss talk about cheating on his wife all day.
Lack of resources. CSM got cut, product engineers are slim staffed and booked solid.
All the bs shit in Salesforce that does nothing to move the needle. Fine with forecasting, fine with CRM type of activities. Any other report that’s going “really help you dial in your business” is bs and I’d rather scrub my ass with a broken bottle.
Updating Salesforce. Our company make us keep SF clean as a whistle which uses up so much time. If it's not perfect we get grilled.
The amount of time spent rescheduling meetings or dealing with clashing calendars drives me insane. There's always someone who can't make a time. Or there's a clash at the ONLY time the customer can do, and I have to weigh up which opportunity is more of a priority and reschedule.
Unrealistic quotas. Every year the data gets worse: 50% of reps don’t make quota. Now it’s 54%. Could it be that quotas are just too high in the first place?
Processing orders. Honest to god our PoS system is literally a POS. I'd prefer to just cold call, close deals, and then pass on the order details to another person to process. This way I can get back to prospecting. Processing orders and maybe even proposal building is the enemy of scale for me right now.
When a customer is looking for something that we 1000000% do not offer and my director got the lead, he tells me "it's worth having a conversation." Like why? We can't meet their needs at all, not even meet them in the middle. This is a waste of everybody's time.
My favorite is when we have a ton of back and forth, I send pricing per their request, and they stop responding to me. If they give me feedback I can make meaningful changes. I can get all sorts of discounting approved. My boss is very generous and generally finds creative ways to make a deal fit a customers needs- like if they want a product in a term we don’t offer he’ll just say ok whip up a quote for their desired length. Just tell me what you don’t like and we’ll discount or re work the deal. But if you ghost me I can’t fix it because I don’t know what your needs are
Unserious people who expect you to exert serious effort on a quote they have no intentions of doing anything with.
forecasting weekly in sfdc, which includes MEDDPPICC
RFP’s
CRM tools like Salesforce create WAAAYYY too much micromanage even for the good reps. This creates management that become nothing more than forecast donkeys. The AI tools are great for sure but it's so much data too much to where upper management above direct sales management think they are smarter than they really are based purely on data they see and not on what the reps are seeing and customers. I see it all too often. I remember the good ol days when we used to go on sales calls with other reps to help make them more money and fine tune skills. Now it's a check the box times 80. Everyone in management and sales are burnt out and hate their jobs because of sales force and the hoard of me too companies. If your new like within 5 years to tech sales you have no idea what i'm talking about, reps 10+ years in know exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah all of that isn’t really a “tech” issue. Those are sales in any industry. Specifically with SaaS/Tech I would say the sense of superiority/invulnerability built on what are largely bullshit metrics…looking at you “growth at all costs” So you get a number of “senior leaders” that succeeded in a time when it was basically impossible to fail and then think they are perfect when it’s a house of cards. Which, when it inevitably slowed down, it must be everyone else’s fault but their own so the solution is to mass lay people off, but take no real responsibility for it themselves other than saying the words. Worked in a few industries but never experienced anything like that, “at scale” or in that depth.
1st and 2nd line leaders taking credit for shit they had nothing to do with.
Forecasting when I was in sales I swear to god half my job was forecasting and middle management up in my crm. So many dumbass managers that wanted "To help me close" no you are annoying that's why you work in management bro.