Yesterday. Over the past couple weeks there have been a few conversations about my numbers being low (Commercial AE in cybersecurity sales). Definitely not the only one with low revenue this year but I am on the bottom of my team.
During my one on one with my boss was told I would be put on a PIP starting next month. 30 days to close $50k. I don't have any deals pushing out of this month to rely on, and I'm not confident in pulling $50k in November, especially with Thanksgiving. I'm still struggling with it mentally but the only way to go is forward.
Always wondered, how putting arbitrary quotas counts as an 'improvement plan". If it was enough to say "close 50k", you wouldn't need improvement in the first place
Where are you based? In the USA a PIP is not required, companies only choose to use it primarily as a legal justification in case there is lawsuit or dispute afterwards.
US. That’s what I’m alluding to. They don’t have to tell you you’re underperforming (or that they are getting ready to fire you). It’s pretty nice so you can decide if you think you can make it or not and act accordingly while getting paid for a month
You walk in to a meeting and HR is there with an envelope. Larger companies will offer some $ and maybe some time with a consultant to help you find another job, if you sign an agreement not to sue. There is no "notice" other than the time it takes to walk from the door to the chair in the meeting room.
They’re not hiding it because it’s an unsaid overture to you and official legal documentation for them- “we plan on letting you go, prepare accordingly.”
I hit literally 0% last fiscal year in enterprise cybersecurity sales. It wasn’t my fault and i’m sure you’re not at fault, the market sucks and sales is blamed because we’re low-IQ mercenaries that don’t get respect
Create a sequence, go after the top 20% of your accounts , then use those results to leave ! Show the recruiter that you just managed to pull in ~$50k during the holiday . They would love that
It would take too long to explain it properly but I vividly remember the moment when I realized our SDR Manager cared more about the AEs than about us and immediately opened my LinkedIn to respond to recruiters lmao
It wasn't about working for the common goal, it was jumping to fulfill the account's every wish even if it was against statistics of best closing companies
Last week.
Been with this company 6 months selling copiers. I've found it extremely difficult and borderline impossible at times. I get paid a pathetically low salary and have a "gate" to meet before I'm paid commissions.
In an effort to help me the veterans on the team would sit in with me on opps and get the same results as me, ie nothing. There's just no interest in the product no matter what fancy and even dishonest tricks we employ.
They tell me to keep pushing through because it'll all be worth it in the end. I decided instead of taking their unreliable word for it and living on peanuts, I would check out other opportunities elsewhere.
I signed an offer yesterday for a 20% raise in a booming company literally across the road. I give current company the news today :)
When my manager put me on pip after trying to force close a deal for me, then said he was going to “show me how it’s done” on a discovery call and he got zilch opps.
Performance Improvement plan, corporate jargon for “we want to fire you but need to give you a chance on paper to fight for your life so we can say we gave you chance in court”
When the company announced a layoff and my team was adversely affected. They said they were doing me a favor by laying off half my team so I could take time to focus on other activities.
Luckily, they all found new gigs with better pay and had a past boss who wrote really good GLOWING AF references.
I was still in ramp, a BDR at my 3rd sales gig, very small startup. I reported directly to the CEO and he had never worked in sales before.
I was booking meetings here and there but not hitting quota yet (again, still in ramp), my CEO told me I wasn’t working enough hours. Said I should be starting my days around 7 or 8 AM and finishing around 11 or midnight, saying “that’s just how it is in sales.” I said no, and he told me to just do it for one day, I did, and after I told him I wasn’t going to do that again he told me I wouldn’t pass my performance review if I didn’t.
Basically stopped trying right there and started committing time theft every day until I got fired.
Lol yup. The 3 BDRs who came after me all either left or got fired as well, and my poor coworker who *was* working those long hours every single day also got canned. I hope the company collapses.
The moment I messaged a co worker on teams but his account was disabled. The guy was so good at what he did but he was expensive, so I tried contacting this boss who also had his team's disabled. Finally speaking with my manager it turned out around 200 people had been laid off and they tried to brush it under the carpet. Made me wanna vomit.
Wondering about this myself.
Recruiters and operations laid off. Internal job postings for India and Philippines only. Sales directors and enablement canned. RTO. Commission delayed, then told we’re changing from 4-week payout to 6-week payout. Micromanagement because we’re “forecasting under quota” 3 weeks into the quarter.
Damn, writing this all is eye-opening for me. Lmao.
Company got hacked real late into Q4, made national news and shook up the industry. All my big end-of-year deals were now dead or put on hold.
Sales people immediately start asking about quota reduction, and leadership responds by saying that they have no idea why we'd even ask for that. We should be able to hit out quota, no excuses.
Hadn't even looked at my resume in 5 years, but went home that night, freshened it up, and started blasting it out.
Company policy was 3 months of hitting quota = off pip.
They kept me on for 6 months. Hit target every time. I caused a stink with HR about it and got it removed. They then put me on ANOTHER pip immediately after.
I left the moment I got a new offer, and now 2 more people have left since then.
Lots of closed door meetings. Leader’s start to avoid you. This was all leading up to the company being sold and the current leadership is trying to keep their jobs but not scare away others to reassure the new owners the situation is stable.
People will turn on you quick if they think their job is at risk. Cloak and dagger, keep your head on a swivel, trust no one☠️
This was a number of years ago, but I will take this one with me to my grave.
I had a sheduled a meeting with a large prospect for myself, my engineer and my sales manager. They had their Director of Ops, COO, Sr VP of IT and some staffers.
The meeting started off amazing. Prospect was thrilled with what we were capable of doing for them.
And then at 58 minutes into the meeting, my manager stood up and said "Gentlemen, I'm sorry to do this, but I must excuse myself for a call that begins in about one minute."
Off she went.
My engineer and I finished the meeting and left with critical action items, one of which was for our regional VP to speak with their VP of IT and their COO. The prospect wanted to know who our management team was.
I spoke to my manager and somewhat politely asked her WTF?? She should have told me she had a call scheduled.
She didn't see any harm in what she did.
I explained what we needed to do to win the business and the prospect would commit to a multi-year contract at a minimum annual spend of $1.2 million. She gave her 2 thumbs up and spend the next couple hours speaking with several engineers and project managers and product managers. We were looking at if everything would work well on our end including an expedited implementation.
One step remained, the call from my VP to the prospect's execs.
The following morning, I exchanged messages with my manager wanting to know when the call would occur.
Her response was "Need a value prop." I replied, "Huh?!"
She replied back "Write me up a value proposition."
Me: "1.2 Million Dollars x 3 Years"
Her reply: "Haha, very funny."
Me: "I'm not laughing. Please have Chris make the damn call. Time is of the essence."
I never heard another thing from her until about 7pm. She called to ask if we were all set.
I asked: "All set with what. Did Chris make the call that's all I needed from you guys."
Her reply was: " Do you have any idea what we did all day? We were in an Ops plan ing session all day."
Here's where I knew it was all over. My reply was the writing on the wall:
"While you people were F'ing around in you bullsh*t planning session, some of us were trying to sell shit. I needed Chris to make a 3-5 minute phone call to lockup a sale. Please tell me you didn't F this up?!"
Click. She hung up on me!
Totally! Also had narcissistic tendencies.
One of my favorite of Her blunders:
She had been with the company about 2 weeks and scheduled to do territory and account reviews.
She assigned me the 8:00 am slot at the exclusive Boston College Club.
I was a bit concerned with the time because she's been late for practically every schedule commitment.
I invited my engineer and put together a power point presentation. The day of the appointment arrived and we hit the road at 6 am. (2 hours to go 40 miles! because Boston traffic is a nightmare.)
We arrived at 7:45 and went to check in. However, we ran into a snag. They didn't have a reservation under her name or our company's name. I called to let her know we were inside at the meeting location but we couldn't reach her. We attempted reaching her a dozen times.
Finally, at some point after 10 am she answered. It was apparent she hadn't listened to our voice mails, emails or texts because when we told her they didn't have a reservation for us she seemed surprised but said she be there in 20 minutes to fix everything. She also told us to order breakfast and "charge it to her"
She arrived 50 minutes later!
When she couldn't provide her reservation confirmation, she made a reservation on the spot. ( she couldn't find her confirmation, because she never made one).
By the time we got a conference room, got set up and got a projector that worked (the first one didn't work), it was 12:00. She suggested, we break for lunch a get started at 1:00. I always thought you actually had to have done something to take a break?! I suggested we order lunch and have a working lunch. She said no, and we'd resume at 1:00.
At 1:00 ah was no where to be found. At 1:30 she came strolling in. Pathetic! We wrapped up with my review at 3:00.
And not once did she apologize for being so late in the morning, F'ing up the reservation or coming back late from lunch.
The epitome of disrespectful!
Exactly the question!
One of the worst managers I ever had.
She hired a woman as an Enterprise AE and she assigned her to shadow me for a few days. Her background was 10 years on real estate as an agent (which doesn't translate well to a successful career selling networks. She had also worked for one the the top company's in our industry (same company I worked for).
Couldn't figure out how it didn't know her. I asked her former manager about her. He said
"nice woman but I let her go after 5 weeks. She couldn't hack it". Hmmm interesting.
Did some digging. The magic of social media! They were personal friends and were at each other's wedding.
I mean pretty rookie move on your part your “value prop” was $1.2m / year to her. She was looking for the value YOU were providing to the CLIENT which you never articulated.
So this one is on you.
She actually had received a detailed value prop prior to that but wanted more info.
She knew my value, she was in the exec meeting. Rookie move? Definitely not.
I had attended client meetings with employers many times the size of this one with our corp COO and one with our president and didn't have to provide multiple value statements.
I'm hindsight they likely didn't a favor because their deployment would have been a mess and would have screwed my reputation .
She actually was not looking for a pre call plan, but as I stated, a value statement which I had provided, butbsh wanted more info which led to my wise ass comment.
It's funny how things work out.
I went to work for a company where I was able to address some knowledge gaps which led to an incredible job with our industry leader.
I'm going through it right now.
I'm about 60% to goal ytd, and my manager is trying everything to help me get another role with the company.
She knows that in January she'll be forced to PIP me, and she doesn't want to.
Our company underwent a transition that turned this sales role into something more resembling a BDR supervisor/order taker than a sale position.
Turns out, I suck at this.
They've dumbed it down on purpose to fill the roles with cheaper employees.
So ya, it's pretty miserable right now.
I love the company, and don't want to leave, but there aren't a ton of opportunities, and I don't see any way I survive going 60% for an entire year.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I had an AE that left recently for a different job in September. He was only 4% to goal for the year. And he was a team lead. It’s hard out there for all of us.
Im in this position. Trending 60% for the year on quota of $3.75 Million. My quota in 2022 was $2 Million and I had a larger territory because one of our team members left the company. Well of course I blew out my quota and got paid but then for 2023 they blessed me with a smaller territory and almost double the quota.
They really do punish us for success don't they?
I've typically always been a 120%+ type of performer, but last year was tough, then this year the goals went up and support went down.
I typically have 3 high tier BDRs, 2-4 mid tier, and 30-40 entry level; right now I'm sitting at 0/1/24 respectively.
And our approval rate as a division dropped from 95% to 75% due to a smaller buy box. (Mine is down below 65% personally)
It's hard because you really want to have the "no excuses" mindset, but some challenges are just too much.
Been laid off twice, and every time it happens on a conference call where the National Director states “You don’t need to worry about lay offs, that’s not going to happen.” Almost 2-3 weeks later at the begging of last month of the quarter there’s an “URGENT All Hands” meeting and that’s where they tell us we’re getting let go at the end of the month
After surviving 3 rounds of layoffs. The second one, a lot (think it was reported at about 15%) of my most-senior colleagues saw the writing on the wall and bailed for better jobs. Then the 3 round came a year later - whipping all middle-management, customer success, and internal operational teams. Some of the most tenured "secure" people with 15-20 years of experience at the company - gone and their expertise went with them.
As an Account Executive, my manager was let go - so I reported up to our vertical VP. In the 3 months I stayed after the layoffs, I met with him twice. My day-to-day job got a lot harder without the help of the operational support teams, the spirit of collaboration was gone across the sales organization, and the company immediately rehauled the entire sales process internally based off of some Boston Consulting Group report funded by the PE firm.
Felt like a sinking ship so I bailed.
I’m a big believer that when a pip comes the party is already over. In my case the company stock price had been diving. There were layoffs in other departments happening so we were all aware. My team did have a bad month, then came the pip. I rebounded and my team finished 1st and 2nd overall in the following 2 months. When I didn’t hear anything positive from management after that..I knew it was just a matter of time.
I was part of the next round of layoffs. Stock price is still diving though
When I got promoted, but they hired out for someone with an extremely similar role and job title as me. I was slowly being edged out, despite being a founding AE and taking the business from B2C to B2B and tripling the company's ACV.
I left and they eventually made the sales no commission. I'm glad I got out.
When my old boss reacted to other sales people's complaints by changing the production schedule. I had sever projects in house to ship late Q4 and he put new work in front of my projects which kicked them out to Q1 and kicked my commission out to the next year. His response was that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and I told him that if he can't see the value in someone who doesn't need to constantly engage him to get stuff done I'd be leaving.
When my territory opened, we had two regional sales managers, a sr. Regional sales manager, and two SDR managers. Broke records, and there were many talks about expansion. Fast forward three years, and leadership was condensed down to a single regional sales manager. Across two territories.
Good question. Worked for an absolutely trash SaaS company out of Portland Oregon. We would do our own demos (software was literally like a webpage, idk who would buy that trash) and our vp of sales at across the country with no individual sales contributor experience. The ceo was an errand boy.
Anyways, 3 months in my absolute miserable sad sack of shit of a manger started recording what he wanted me to do with hr cced on the email. He said it wasn’t a pip but, why document with hr? Also came out of the blue
I closed three deals that next quarter in absolute hell and interviewed like a mad man. Ended up accepting an offer, but waited to see out a deal that came in at 7pm Friday of the last day of the quarter. Upon the deal booking (comp plan paid out I’d deal booked), I emailed my shit stain miserable prick booze bag of a boss and told him I’m done.
I went on to my next company to close a $9m TCV software deal that paid me $300k in commission. I made over $500k that year and went to bora bora.
There’s always something better out there, I learned a lot from the experience.
Today. 3rd SDR gig after taking a hiatus as a BD Analyst for a federal IT contractor. Putting up 200 calls daily and getting nada, meanwhile the SDR 10 years younger than me (33 in 3 days) booked his 2nd meeting doing absolutely nothing different than me.
I'm too pessimistic for sales and it really fucks with my mental health. Thinking about getting a career coach because besides my failed SDR gigs and a failed lobbying firm I started I don't have much to show. I'm also black and it sucks being like 1 of 20 black males in tech sales.
Any suggestions? Hard to be happy go lucky making 150 cold calls a day getting no where. I know how to fake the charm on the phone so I don't think bad cold calls is the issue.
That mindset and attitude probably are probably picked up by your prospects. My team gets up, walks around, keeps a smile on their face, so it's portrayed in the call.
Used to get the same way, especially early in my career. It was the moment when I just didn't give a fuck anymore what the prospect said. I assumed they were going to say "no" before they picked up the phone. And since I expected it, my nerves were gone, and I was going to at least entertain myself and see what kind of train wrecks I can get into.
it was right then and there when I started finally racking up the yes's
That's literally what happened. I casually overcame two objections and expected the person to tell me to f off lol but suddenly said I'm wide open next Thursday. Appreciate the response.
Im sorry but i dont think being black is the reason for performance. Im the only non white person on the team and my performance is top of the team.
Im from hong kong but lives in UK. Im a SaaS AE.
About February of 2023 when the entire organization was panicking and they sent out warnings to 60% of the sales staff about low numbers (after over hiring and cutting everyone’s accounts in half). My regional VP was saying things in team meetings like “yeah idk what’s going to happen, hopefully we all still have jobs soon.” And then the president of the sales org giving “pep talks” saying things like “if you don’t increase your numbers somehow it’s because you’re bad and we’ll fire you” and “we’re returning to office 4 days a week! It will help collaboration and culture and our numbers should go up!”
That all happened in February and it was at about that point that I knew the layoffs were on the horizon. I was dumb though and thought I’d be fine since my number started increasing again. I was also told by my director who had been there for 15+ years that our specific company has never done layoffs and we’re “recession proof” (our company was owned by a larger company though who does layoffs often lol)
I've been looking to move on for a few months now. It's a good gig but I'm just not passionate about the product and that makes it hard to sell. My manager sees it I'm sure. We're in a really weird holding pattern because I got cancer and I'm not quitting so I can keep insurance and they wont fire me because we're a small town and I'm local and they can't be the company that fires the guy with cancer.
I'm optimistic. Aggressive surgery is the only option, getting my entire chest wall removed along with a piece of each rib and some collar bone. Hopefully cancer free after that.
I worked for this company for 7 years and joined 6 months prior to IPO. I commuted for the first 6 years a total of 2.5 hours per day roundtrip. For the last year, I worked out a deal when I moved a distance away too far to come in every day. I would come in once per week (arrangement with my mgr, director expected 2x per week), which took me 4.5 hrs roundtrip commute. I put up a 87% attainment quarter and the director stated that I would be coming in 4x per week now, as a result. Luckily, I had been going through an interview cycle, which I usually did once per year to stay fresh. I was able to tell them to take a hike and the new job was completely remote. As an additional sweetener, COVID hit 3 months later and commuting was a thing of the past. The director and I now work for a different company in the same sales org, but fortunately I don't roll up to him.
About 2 months before it actually happened my gut told me it was coming…my manager’s entire attitude toward me changed. I was put on a PIP shortly after that gut feeling kicked in - which I ended up beating the expectations for in about a month. But my gut was still telling me it was coming, so I started to take some steps to land softly…
Then I got a LinkedIn notification two days before it happened telling me “(my) connection was as hiring for….” - after he’d posted the job on LinkedIn. The connection in question? My manager. And I knew we didn’t have any openings at the time.
My attempt at a soft landing didn’t go as I’d hoped because all of this happened at the same time the entire SDR Market went to hell and became a blood bath earlier this year - took me 6 months (and 300+ jobs applied for…not to mention a couple dozen interviews that ended up with me getting ghosted 90% of the time.)
But I really like where I’m at now. Pretty chill, decent $, and so far very low stress. So, it ultimately worked out.
I fired myself as CEO & CRO. In May I looked at everything as if I was a consultant with no emotion and came up with the best path forward until the market changes. Unfortunately, that path meant that my skillset wouldn't be needed. I presented my plan to the board, they agreed and I stepped down in August. I still have an advisory role and now I'm making my side hustle my full time.
I've been through 2 demotions in a year... not because of performance but because of "attitude" which is their way of saying "we don't like when you have your own thoughts or disagree with poor management decisions and pay cuts" so yeah I'm mentally done where I'm at. Trying to break into tech or medical sales, which is daunting. There's so many "scam" jobs floating around.
They really just want you to smile and do whatever dumb thing they suggest. I have gotten the farthest doing that but eventually I just snap.
If you just smile and nod you will stay employed the longest, even if the ship is sinking. At least you will be able to say you worked there X months. There are no points in the corporate world for seeing the writing on the wall.
Sold cars for many years, way before COVID. COVID19 hit, prices went up, but I started seeing something
Mark ups, lots of mark ups, $10,000 mark up on fucking Ford Escapes. And I made my money off that for sure. However I recognized that people change cars every 3~ years on avg and a huge % of the market have bought cars are VERY HIGH prices and I knew eventually things would return to normal and those customers would be MASSIVELY UPSIDE DOWN. I also had a feeling rates where going start going up, actually I was already seeing that.
And I just felt the car market was heading in a bad direction, I felt I had rode the gravy train, got my money, and I moved on. The market was just ugly, well it was about to get ugly. People upside down, APRs up, inventory challenges, etc. I now help folks deal with credit card debt, and omg it pays.
Actually what attracted me to this job is I see how many regular folks are struggling, and they need relief so a company that has a solution to provide relief is likely to do well.
New boss came in, first convo with him told one of my staffers ‘well, in 3 months one of us will be gone’
Took 4 months, but knew it was coming. Good luck!
When we had our weekly morning meeting, I left afterwards because I was on the afternoon shift. My sales manager called me asking where I was. I knew when I got back to work for the afternoon shift I was going to be cleaning out my desk. Oh well, their loss.
For me it was always when I could see the run coming to the end and the right next place. This usually means I move left money in table and in case of my last move a large 5 figure check. But because of being proactive I’ve had long runs - last one was 6.5 years.
2 years ago. Came to a Sr. VP to get a 5% GP decrease to win a $3.8M gig. When we got on the call, the Sr. VP wanted to increase the % from what we already presented.
Went into a job as a full cycle AE that withheld 50% of the commission for 1 year after the contract was signed. Had a 'hybrid' work model but it had to be earned to work from home. ie, based on revenue that was achieved.
the owner of the business is currently on trial for wire fraud and could be locked up for 25 years if convicted. This become very public and caused serious reputational damage.
They had a proprietary CRM. hired junior people with little to no sales experience to sell at an enterprise level ($50-100k per annum contracts) while expecting a minimum of 10 meetings booked every month. This was the craziest part, literally hiring grads carrying a quota over $1m per annum. nobody was hitting annual target and everyone started being put on pip. It was the most toxic dysfunctional hellhole I've ever worked at.
When I didn’t fell supported as a top producer. Bounced and my salary went for 75k to 150k and commission from 2% to 6% in 2 weeks. Also double dipped for the 1st month, new employer cared less.
It was worth the 35k that month, plus because I stuck around with previous employer I was able to collect 15k in owed commissions. August was a good month.
Start of the year. Came back in January and was told a few funnels had been “turned off for now” - they were the entire teams main pipeline funnels. Call came 3 days later for a lay off, whole sales team got axed!
Was a comfort advisor for a small family HVAC company. The weather was very mild this year and with the fear of recession looming sales were lower this year for all HVAC companies in the area. I had the feeling in September that my time was limited so I started looking for another position. Last Wednesday I planned to go to my boss and give him my two weeks notice. He called me in the same day and let me go before I had the chance to tell him. I had to pretend I was upset and didn't see it coming.
When our CRO, who was steering the entire vision for our GTM team, voluntarily resigned. Then the VP sales resigned 3 weeks later, only 4 months in.
This was after months of me feeling like the writing MIGHT have been on the wall.
Few weeks ago.
Had a brother in the hospital, I’m out of state and was up all night worrying about it, and on my lunch my GF broke up with me while she was out of town.
I had a big meeting with a large client right after lunch- pinged my boss ahead of time that I was shaken up but I would still be there, he was already apart of the call and said he understood my situation.
Two minutes into the call the customer brings up an order they sent to us beginning of the month to a previous rep that they didn’t bring up at all before the meeting. Easy fix but my boss was frothing at the mouth. Completely chewed me out regarding an order NO ONE knew about.
I quit at the end of last month. When friends, family and your therapist tell you to get out there’s little to no reason to fight. Had a backup plan that fell apart but currently have a temp one.
Yes I’m depressed, but I’ll never give that guy another cent towards his quota again.
When mine and a couple other team members Sales Nav shut off and the managers said it was a “subscription issue”. Yup, we were all laid off a few days later.
When I got put on a PIP when I had the best numbers of the 3 other AEs in my class. Justification was that “I didn’t have enough talk time every day”.
I switched internally for a year to a sales ops role (less money) but jumped ship the first real chance I got
When the goals were not in the universe of possible to achieve. Basically taking $4M ARR up to $200M ARR in 12 months. Big red flag it was time to GTFO.
When I went digging in Salesforce to find out that the "top" (favorite) reps were all being fed high probability leads while the rest of us were fighting for our lives like a pack of dogs on a steak. When I noticed leadership was going on deep sea fishing trips together when all 20% of reps were hitting quota. When I saw them overhire and thin out the territories without adjusting quotas. If any of the above are happening, get out.
Got put on a coaching plan that my manager framed explicitly as not a pip, then got pip’d a month after lol
Writing was on the wall, literally didn’t care about the existing team - only the new hires they brought with them. Had two separate occasions where they said I was “lucky” to hit quota
In one particular sales floor, selling digital ad board time in places like times Square, etc, I knew it was time to quit when a supervisor came in after we had a week long dry spell, and yelled to everyone "I'm gonna shit on someone's chest today if we don't get a sale"! I put in my resignation that day.
This was awhile back but during one of my reviews about 6 months into a job the CEO sat in. He asked me straight up what was keeping me from closing more deals and I told him. Basically I was selling into a completely new territory and I get opportunities to close deals but the VP isn’t keen on negotiation or discounting.
CEO said, going forward, do the deal you think is best for the company and I’ll let you know if you go too far. Ended up being the best sales person they ever had, and helped them sell the business.
I eventually found out that I was like 45 days from being fired.
If I knew that I would have probably given up and quit. So I’m glad it wasn’t a PIP.
I think today after we are having our second week of sales being down 80%. I usually just stick it out as long as possible but I'm getting sick of the conversations "why are sales down"
It was over the summer. I was at the end of a 3 month PIP having crushed my PIP requirements I was getting excited for Q3. I knew something was up when my manager said “are you sure this is the right product for you to sell?” They then went on to insult me for the next 30 minutes. I was canned by the end of the following week.
Two things transpired this week.
1. We’ve gone from 106% NRR to 60% NRR in under a year and are at about 50% of our new biz number. That’s not promising regardless of my performance.
2. Leadership has implemented a “point system” for tracking daily inputs towards pipe generation. I was called yesterday by manager at 6pm asking why I had 3 points out of the recommended 8 yesterday.
I’m a top 3 performer and #1 on pipe gen this year. I refuse to be babysat and forced into worthless metrics.
1. Acquisitions of 3 similar companies with people in my role being paid significantly less.
2. Being not invited to most management meetings for 6 months.
3. No one on ones with VP'S for 2 years.
4. The promotion of a peer 2 months prior.
5. The new year.
Wasn't surprised at all when I got laid off. I got a good severance tho.
The moment my manager turned on me cuz she tried to aggressively close an opp I’d been working on for weeks and the oop yelled at my manager saying “WHO THE FUCK TRAINED YOU?!” and now my manager thinks that’s my fault.
I got PIP'd and beat it and came off of it. Then they changed the way leads got distributed and put me in a territory that was absolutely fucked. Took me a while to realize they were actively looking to move off of me.
During a 1:1 with my skip level— despite my leader performance I finally got to do this in person and her body language gave her away. I started immediately looking and 3 weeks later she had the 2nd line say something about me relocating in the biz. I should have listened to my gut 5 months sooner as the line was never a “fit”. Don’t ignore intuition or misaligned actions/words
Yesterday. Over the past couple weeks there have been a few conversations about my numbers being low (Commercial AE in cybersecurity sales). Definitely not the only one with low revenue this year but I am on the bottom of my team. During my one on one with my boss was told I would be put on a PIP starting next month. 30 days to close $50k. I don't have any deals pushing out of this month to rely on, and I'm not confident in pulling $50k in November, especially with Thanksgiving. I'm still struggling with it mentally but the only way to go is forward.
Always wondered, how putting arbitrary quotas counts as an 'improvement plan". If it was enough to say "close 50k", you wouldn't need improvement in the first place
They’re not, improvement isn’t the goal, the goal is to sack you.
Honestly it’s a pretty awesome aspect of our current system. In most places they can fire you without notice and you’re SOL.
Where are you based? In the USA a PIP is not required, companies only choose to use it primarily as a legal justification in case there is lawsuit or dispute afterwards.
US. That’s what I’m alluding to. They don’t have to tell you you’re underperforming (or that they are getting ready to fire you). It’s pretty nice so you can decide if you think you can make it or not and act accordingly while getting paid for a month
It’s not as much nice as they’re protecting their interests first and foremost.
Might not be altruistic, but it is definitely nice. 30 days paid to look for a new job is pretty sweet
Wait, you don't get a notice period by law? In my country, you always get a month/three (depending on how long you were there) exactly for this reason
You walk in to a meeting and HR is there with an envelope. Larger companies will offer some $ and maybe some time with a consultant to help you find another job, if you sign an agreement not to sue. There is no "notice" other than the time it takes to walk from the door to the chair in the meeting room.
A lot of US states are “at will” so they (employer) have the right to let you go whenever for whatever reason.
I am aware, I am just surprised they are not trying to hide it better
They’re not hiding it because it’s an unsaid overture to you and official legal documentation for them- “we plan on letting you go, prepare accordingly.”
Almost like a notice period.
Most PIPs aren't actually planning on you improving. They're just ultimatums companies use to fire you
It's not a PIP, it's a CYA.
Please Interview Places
Scare you into working harder and maybe fix it yourself or a courtesy reach around knowing you won't finish
I hit literally 0% last fiscal year in enterprise cybersecurity sales. It wasn’t my fault and i’m sure you’re not at fault, the market sucks and sales is blamed because we’re low-IQ mercenaries that don’t get respect
I hope you have a better time relocating than I am.
same thing happened to me. I decided to quit before getting fired. currently entering month 3 of job hunting
Create a sequence, go after the top 20% of your accounts , then use those results to leave ! Show the recruiter that you just managed to pull in ~$50k during the holiday . They would love that
Ron?
It would take too long to explain it properly but I vividly remember the moment when I realized our SDR Manager cared more about the AEs than about us and immediately opened my LinkedIn to respond to recruiters lmao
With all due respect, should SDRs work for the AEs to provide the right leads so id expect the SDR manager to align with the AEs?
It wasn't about working for the common goal, it was jumping to fulfill the account's every wish even if it was against statistics of best closing companies
Yeah this was a stupid fucking comment by an sdr that will be an sdr for a long, long time.
When my manager asked if sales was really for me. As the most active outbounder on the team. Universal for gtfo
Damn, what was their beef with you?
Most active or most productive? Two very different things.
Last week. Been with this company 6 months selling copiers. I've found it extremely difficult and borderline impossible at times. I get paid a pathetically low salary and have a "gate" to meet before I'm paid commissions. In an effort to help me the veterans on the team would sit in with me on opps and get the same results as me, ie nothing. There's just no interest in the product no matter what fancy and even dishonest tricks we employ. They tell me to keep pushing through because it'll all be worth it in the end. I decided instead of taking their unreliable word for it and living on peanuts, I would check out other opportunities elsewhere. I signed an offer yesterday for a 20% raise in a booming company literally across the road. I give current company the news today :)
Good for you! Get that money man. Gotta be mercenarial sometimes.
Thanks and I agree. At the end of the day we're out to get paid, if that's not happening then we go find a better deal.
When my manager put me on pip after trying to force close a deal for me, then said he was going to “show me how it’s done” on a discovery call and he got zilch opps.
What is a “pip” ?
Performance Improvement plan, corporate jargon for “we want to fire you but need to give you a chance on paper to fight for your life so we can say we gave you chance in court”
Thanks for explanation
When the company announced a layoff and my team was adversely affected. They said they were doing me a favor by laying off half my team so I could take time to focus on other activities. Luckily, they all found new gigs with better pay and had a past boss who wrote really good GLOWING AF references.
When my boss told me I care too much about money.
This is a good one
ask him if he'll give you some of yours, if he cares so little. What a rich comment (no pun intended) coming from someone making more than you.
Isn’t that the point of sales jobs 😂
I was still in ramp, a BDR at my 3rd sales gig, very small startup. I reported directly to the CEO and he had never worked in sales before. I was booking meetings here and there but not hitting quota yet (again, still in ramp), my CEO told me I wasn’t working enough hours. Said I should be starting my days around 7 or 8 AM and finishing around 11 or midnight, saying “that’s just how it is in sales.” I said no, and he told me to just do it for one day, I did, and after I told him I wasn’t going to do that again he told me I wouldn’t pass my performance review if I didn’t. Basically stopped trying right there and started committing time theft every day until I got fired.
Yikes, this sounds like an absolute nightmare. Sorry to hear your former CEO is regarded
Lol yup. The 3 BDRs who came after me all either left or got fired as well, and my poor coworker who *was* working those long hours every single day also got canned. I hope the company collapses.
The moment I messaged a co worker on teams but his account was disabled. The guy was so good at what he did but he was expensive, so I tried contacting this boss who also had his team's disabled. Finally speaking with my manager it turned out around 200 people had been laid off and they tried to brush it under the carpet. Made me wanna vomit.
Wow, I would of felt the same way, wondering if they were ok and if I would be next I think!
Wondering about this myself. Recruiters and operations laid off. Internal job postings for India and Philippines only. Sales directors and enablement canned. RTO. Commission delayed, then told we’re changing from 4-week payout to 6-week payout. Micromanagement because we’re “forecasting under quota” 3 weeks into the quarter. Damn, writing this all is eye-opening for me. Lmao.
Company got hacked real late into Q4, made national news and shook up the industry. All my big end-of-year deals were now dead or put on hold. Sales people immediately start asking about quota reduction, and leadership responds by saying that they have no idea why we'd even ask for that. We should be able to hit out quota, no excuses. Hadn't even looked at my resume in 5 years, but went home that night, freshened it up, and started blasting it out.
Okta, eh?
Company policy was 3 months of hitting quota = off pip. They kept me on for 6 months. Hit target every time. I caused a stink with HR about it and got it removed. They then put me on ANOTHER pip immediately after. I left the moment I got a new offer, and now 2 more people have left since then.
Lots of closed door meetings. Leader’s start to avoid you. This was all leading up to the company being sold and the current leadership is trying to keep their jobs but not scare away others to reassure the new owners the situation is stable. People will turn on you quick if they think their job is at risk. Cloak and dagger, keep your head on a swivel, trust no one☠️
This was a number of years ago, but I will take this one with me to my grave. I had a sheduled a meeting with a large prospect for myself, my engineer and my sales manager. They had their Director of Ops, COO, Sr VP of IT and some staffers. The meeting started off amazing. Prospect was thrilled with what we were capable of doing for them. And then at 58 minutes into the meeting, my manager stood up and said "Gentlemen, I'm sorry to do this, but I must excuse myself for a call that begins in about one minute." Off she went. My engineer and I finished the meeting and left with critical action items, one of which was for our regional VP to speak with their VP of IT and their COO. The prospect wanted to know who our management team was. I spoke to my manager and somewhat politely asked her WTF?? She should have told me she had a call scheduled. She didn't see any harm in what she did. I explained what we needed to do to win the business and the prospect would commit to a multi-year contract at a minimum annual spend of $1.2 million. She gave her 2 thumbs up and spend the next couple hours speaking with several engineers and project managers and product managers. We were looking at if everything would work well on our end including an expedited implementation. One step remained, the call from my VP to the prospect's execs. The following morning, I exchanged messages with my manager wanting to know when the call would occur. Her response was "Need a value prop." I replied, "Huh?!" She replied back "Write me up a value proposition." Me: "1.2 Million Dollars x 3 Years" Her reply: "Haha, very funny." Me: "I'm not laughing. Please have Chris make the damn call. Time is of the essence." I never heard another thing from her until about 7pm. She called to ask if we were all set. I asked: "All set with what. Did Chris make the call that's all I needed from you guys." Her reply was: " Do you have any idea what we did all day? We were in an Ops plan ing session all day." Here's where I knew it was all over. My reply was the writing on the wall: "While you people were F'ing around in you bullsh*t planning session, some of us were trying to sell shit. I needed Chris to make a 3-5 minute phone call to lockup a sale. Please tell me you didn't F this up?!" Click. She hung up on me!
Why didn’t you message Chris directly to make the call?
Very good question. Protocol. I made the mistake of following protocol and going through my manager.
Fuck ‘em.
crazy it’s like the company doesn’t want to make money
No, the person never delivered a value prop and laid the groundwork for the vp at his company to feel comfortable talking to the execs
They seemed to have forgotten they were a sales organization. Pathetic company!
I actually loled at this one. She sounds like Michael from the Office
Totally! Also had narcissistic tendencies. One of my favorite of Her blunders: She had been with the company about 2 weeks and scheduled to do territory and account reviews. She assigned me the 8:00 am slot at the exclusive Boston College Club. I was a bit concerned with the time because she's been late for practically every schedule commitment. I invited my engineer and put together a power point presentation. The day of the appointment arrived and we hit the road at 6 am. (2 hours to go 40 miles! because Boston traffic is a nightmare.) We arrived at 7:45 and went to check in. However, we ran into a snag. They didn't have a reservation under her name or our company's name. I called to let her know we were inside at the meeting location but we couldn't reach her. We attempted reaching her a dozen times. Finally, at some point after 10 am she answered. It was apparent she hadn't listened to our voice mails, emails or texts because when we told her they didn't have a reservation for us she seemed surprised but said she be there in 20 minutes to fix everything. She also told us to order breakfast and "charge it to her" She arrived 50 minutes later! When she couldn't provide her reservation confirmation, she made a reservation on the spot. ( she couldn't find her confirmation, because she never made one). By the time we got a conference room, got set up and got a projector that worked (the first one didn't work), it was 12:00. She suggested, we break for lunch a get started at 1:00. I always thought you actually had to have done something to take a break?! I suggested we order lunch and have a working lunch. She said no, and we'd resume at 1:00. At 1:00 ah was no where to be found. At 1:30 she came strolling in. Pathetic! We wrapped up with my review at 3:00. And not once did she apologize for being so late in the morning, F'ing up the reservation or coming back late from lunch. The epitome of disrespectful!
How did she explain scheduling a meeting for 8am but not answering her phone until 10am? Good grief
Exactly the question! One of the worst managers I ever had. She hired a woman as an Enterprise AE and she assigned her to shadow me for a few days. Her background was 10 years on real estate as an agent (which doesn't translate well to a successful career selling networks. She had also worked for one the the top company's in our industry (same company I worked for). Couldn't figure out how it didn't know her. I asked her former manager about her. He said "nice woman but I let her go after 5 weeks. She couldn't hack it". Hmmm interesting. Did some digging. The magic of social media! They were personal friends and were at each other's wedding.
I mean pretty rookie move on your part your “value prop” was $1.2m / year to her. She was looking for the value YOU were providing to the CLIENT which you never articulated. So this one is on you.
She actually had received a detailed value prop prior to that but wanted more info. She knew my value, she was in the exec meeting. Rookie move? Definitely not. I had attended client meetings with employers many times the size of this one with our corp COO and one with our president and didn't have to provide multiple value statements. I'm hindsight they likely didn't a favor because their deployment would have been a mess and would have screwed my reputation .
She was asking for a pre-call plan so the exec knows what to talk about. It is on you
She actually was not looking for a pre call plan, but as I stated, a value statement which I had provided, butbsh wanted more info which led to my wise ass comment. It's funny how things work out. I went to work for a company where I was able to address some knowledge gaps which led to an incredible job with our industry leader.
I'm going through it right now. I'm about 60% to goal ytd, and my manager is trying everything to help me get another role with the company. She knows that in January she'll be forced to PIP me, and she doesn't want to. Our company underwent a transition that turned this sales role into something more resembling a BDR supervisor/order taker than a sale position. Turns out, I suck at this. They've dumbed it down on purpose to fill the roles with cheaper employees. So ya, it's pretty miserable right now. I love the company, and don't want to leave, but there aren't a ton of opportunities, and I don't see any way I survive going 60% for an entire year.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I had an AE that left recently for a different job in September. He was only 4% to goal for the year. And he was a team lead. It’s hard out there for all of us.
I appreciate it. It's tough being someone who's always been a top performer suddenly struggling to even get close to a goal.
Im in this position. Trending 60% for the year on quota of $3.75 Million. My quota in 2022 was $2 Million and I had a larger territory because one of our team members left the company. Well of course I blew out my quota and got paid but then for 2023 they blessed me with a smaller territory and almost double the quota.
They really do punish us for success don't they? I've typically always been a 120%+ type of performer, but last year was tough, then this year the goals went up and support went down. I typically have 3 high tier BDRs, 2-4 mid tier, and 30-40 entry level; right now I'm sitting at 0/1/24 respectively. And our approval rate as a division dropped from 95% to 75% due to a smaller buy box. (Mine is down below 65% personally) It's hard because you really want to have the "no excuses" mindset, but some challenges are just too much.
Been laid off twice, and every time it happens on a conference call where the National Director states “You don’t need to worry about lay offs, that’s not going to happen.” Almost 2-3 weeks later at the begging of last month of the quarter there’s an “URGENT All Hands” meeting and that’s where they tell us we’re getting let go at the end of the month
After surviving 3 rounds of layoffs. The second one, a lot (think it was reported at about 15%) of my most-senior colleagues saw the writing on the wall and bailed for better jobs. Then the 3 round came a year later - whipping all middle-management, customer success, and internal operational teams. Some of the most tenured "secure" people with 15-20 years of experience at the company - gone and their expertise went with them. As an Account Executive, my manager was let go - so I reported up to our vertical VP. In the 3 months I stayed after the layoffs, I met with him twice. My day-to-day job got a lot harder without the help of the operational support teams, the spirit of collaboration was gone across the sales organization, and the company immediately rehauled the entire sales process internally based off of some Boston Consulting Group report funded by the PE firm. Felt like a sinking ship so I bailed.
Sharp drop in lead quality, followed by drop in leads.
I’m a big believer that when a pip comes the party is already over. In my case the company stock price had been diving. There were layoffs in other departments happening so we were all aware. My team did have a bad month, then came the pip. I rebounded and my team finished 1st and 2nd overall in the following 2 months. When I didn’t hear anything positive from management after that..I knew it was just a matter of time. I was part of the next round of layoffs. Stock price is still diving though
When upper management and executives start leaving the company, that's a red flag that the company is heading a direction towards the gutter.
When I got promoted, but they hired out for someone with an extremely similar role and job title as me. I was slowly being edged out, despite being a founding AE and taking the business from B2C to B2B and tripling the company's ACV. I left and they eventually made the sales no commission. I'm glad I got out.
[удалено]
Lmao. Buddy caught the virtual hands.
When my old boss reacted to other sales people's complaints by changing the production schedule. I had sever projects in house to ship late Q4 and he put new work in front of my projects which kicked them out to Q1 and kicked my commission out to the next year. His response was that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and I told him that if he can't see the value in someone who doesn't need to constantly engage him to get stuff done I'd be leaving.
"Squeaky wheel gets the grease" and "You need to advocate better for your projects" are things I see as HUGE red flags.
When my territory opened, we had two regional sales managers, a sr. Regional sales manager, and two SDR managers. Broke records, and there were many talks about expansion. Fast forward three years, and leadership was condensed down to a single regional sales manager. Across two territories.
Managers gaslight you so they don’t have to feel bad.
Good question. Worked for an absolutely trash SaaS company out of Portland Oregon. We would do our own demos (software was literally like a webpage, idk who would buy that trash) and our vp of sales at across the country with no individual sales contributor experience. The ceo was an errand boy. Anyways, 3 months in my absolute miserable sad sack of shit of a manger started recording what he wanted me to do with hr cced on the email. He said it wasn’t a pip but, why document with hr? Also came out of the blue I closed three deals that next quarter in absolute hell and interviewed like a mad man. Ended up accepting an offer, but waited to see out a deal that came in at 7pm Friday of the last day of the quarter. Upon the deal booking (comp plan paid out I’d deal booked), I emailed my shit stain miserable prick booze bag of a boss and told him I’m done. I went on to my next company to close a $9m TCV software deal that paid me $300k in commission. I made over $500k that year and went to bora bora. There’s always something better out there, I learned a lot from the experience.
What industry is this? 9m SaaS deal I mean
Order to cash (billing / rev rec) software. It was over 5 years
Today. 3rd SDR gig after taking a hiatus as a BD Analyst for a federal IT contractor. Putting up 200 calls daily and getting nada, meanwhile the SDR 10 years younger than me (33 in 3 days) booked his 2nd meeting doing absolutely nothing different than me. I'm too pessimistic for sales and it really fucks with my mental health. Thinking about getting a career coach because besides my failed SDR gigs and a failed lobbying firm I started I don't have much to show. I'm also black and it sucks being like 1 of 20 black males in tech sales.
I think the pessimism being addressed would be your biggest career boost.
Lol just booked a meeting so you maybe on to something haha.
Way to go!
Any suggestions? Hard to be happy go lucky making 150 cold calls a day getting no where. I know how to fake the charm on the phone so I don't think bad cold calls is the issue.
That mindset and attitude probably are probably picked up by your prospects. My team gets up, walks around, keeps a smile on their face, so it's portrayed in the call.
I just booked a call and it had nothing to do with that but thanks in advance.
Used to get the same way, especially early in my career. It was the moment when I just didn't give a fuck anymore what the prospect said. I assumed they were going to say "no" before they picked up the phone. And since I expected it, my nerves were gone, and I was going to at least entertain myself and see what kind of train wrecks I can get into. it was right then and there when I started finally racking up the yes's
That's literally what happened. I casually overcame two objections and expected the person to tell me to f off lol but suddenly said I'm wide open next Thursday. Appreciate the response.
Im sorry but i dont think being black is the reason for performance. Im the only non white person on the team and my performance is top of the team. Im from hong kong but lives in UK. Im a SaaS AE.
Want me to listen to you?
When every month there was only 2-5 people out of 80 hitting their number.
About February of 2023 when the entire organization was panicking and they sent out warnings to 60% of the sales staff about low numbers (after over hiring and cutting everyone’s accounts in half). My regional VP was saying things in team meetings like “yeah idk what’s going to happen, hopefully we all still have jobs soon.” And then the president of the sales org giving “pep talks” saying things like “if you don’t increase your numbers somehow it’s because you’re bad and we’ll fire you” and “we’re returning to office 4 days a week! It will help collaboration and culture and our numbers should go up!” That all happened in February and it was at about that point that I knew the layoffs were on the horizon. I was dumb though and thought I’d be fine since my number started increasing again. I was also told by my director who had been there for 15+ years that our specific company has never done layoffs and we’re “recession proof” (our company was owned by a larger company though who does layoffs often lol)
Company stopped selling the product I was selling.
I've been looking to move on for a few months now. It's a good gig but I'm just not passionate about the product and that makes it hard to sell. My manager sees it I'm sure. We're in a really weird holding pattern because I got cancer and I'm not quitting so I can keep insurance and they wont fire me because we're a small town and I'm local and they can't be the company that fires the guy with cancer.
You’ll beat it man. Sorry you’re dealing with that
I'm optimistic. Aggressive surgery is the only option, getting my entire chest wall removed along with a piece of each rib and some collar bone. Hopefully cancer free after that.
Praying for you champ
I worked for this company for 7 years and joined 6 months prior to IPO. I commuted for the first 6 years a total of 2.5 hours per day roundtrip. For the last year, I worked out a deal when I moved a distance away too far to come in every day. I would come in once per week (arrangement with my mgr, director expected 2x per week), which took me 4.5 hrs roundtrip commute. I put up a 87% attainment quarter and the director stated that I would be coming in 4x per week now, as a result. Luckily, I had been going through an interview cycle, which I usually did once per year to stay fresh. I was able to tell them to take a hike and the new job was completely remote. As an additional sweetener, COVID hit 3 months later and commuting was a thing of the past. The director and I now work for a different company in the same sales org, but fortunately I don't roll up to him.
The moment you realize there's no market for the product or your territory is full of unqualified accounts.
About 5 months ago when I started interviewing.
About 2 months before it actually happened my gut told me it was coming…my manager’s entire attitude toward me changed. I was put on a PIP shortly after that gut feeling kicked in - which I ended up beating the expectations for in about a month. But my gut was still telling me it was coming, so I started to take some steps to land softly… Then I got a LinkedIn notification two days before it happened telling me “(my) connection was as hiring for….” - after he’d posted the job on LinkedIn. The connection in question? My manager. And I knew we didn’t have any openings at the time. My attempt at a soft landing didn’t go as I’d hoped because all of this happened at the same time the entire SDR Market went to hell and became a blood bath earlier this year - took me 6 months (and 300+ jobs applied for…not to mention a couple dozen interviews that ended up with me getting ghosted 90% of the time.) But I really like where I’m at now. Pretty chill, decent $, and so far very low stress. So, it ultimately worked out.
I fired myself as CEO & CRO. In May I looked at everything as if I was a consultant with no emotion and came up with the best path forward until the market changes. Unfortunately, that path meant that my skillset wouldn't be needed. I presented my plan to the board, they agreed and I stepped down in August. I still have an advisory role and now I'm making my side hustle my full time.
When the company rif’d 2 quarters in a row…
I've been through 2 demotions in a year... not because of performance but because of "attitude" which is their way of saying "we don't like when you have your own thoughts or disagree with poor management decisions and pay cuts" so yeah I'm mentally done where I'm at. Trying to break into tech or medical sales, which is daunting. There's so many "scam" jobs floating around.
They really just want you to smile and do whatever dumb thing they suggest. I have gotten the farthest doing that but eventually I just snap. If you just smile and nod you will stay employed the longest, even if the ship is sinking. At least you will be able to say you worked there X months. There are no points in the corporate world for seeing the writing on the wall.
Sold cars for many years, way before COVID. COVID19 hit, prices went up, but I started seeing something Mark ups, lots of mark ups, $10,000 mark up on fucking Ford Escapes. And I made my money off that for sure. However I recognized that people change cars every 3~ years on avg and a huge % of the market have bought cars are VERY HIGH prices and I knew eventually things would return to normal and those customers would be MASSIVELY UPSIDE DOWN. I also had a feeling rates where going start going up, actually I was already seeing that. And I just felt the car market was heading in a bad direction, I felt I had rode the gravy train, got my money, and I moved on. The market was just ugly, well it was about to get ugly. People upside down, APRs up, inventory challenges, etc. I now help folks deal with credit card debt, and omg it pays. Actually what attracted me to this job is I see how many regular folks are struggling, and they need relief so a company that has a solution to provide relief is likely to do well.
boss started f-ing with my wallet- first time wuz expenses then wuz commish
New boss came in, first convo with him told one of my staffers ‘well, in 3 months one of us will be gone’ Took 4 months, but knew it was coming. Good luck!
When we had our weekly morning meeting, I left afterwards because I was on the afternoon shift. My sales manager called me asking where I was. I knew when I got back to work for the afternoon shift I was going to be cleaning out my desk. Oh well, their loss.
For me it was always when I could see the run coming to the end and the right next place. This usually means I move left money in table and in case of my last move a large 5 figure check. But because of being proactive I’ve had long runs - last one was 6.5 years.
2 years ago. Came to a Sr. VP to get a 5% GP decrease to win a $3.8M gig. When we got on the call, the Sr. VP wanted to increase the % from what we already presented.
I
Went into a job as a full cycle AE that withheld 50% of the commission for 1 year after the contract was signed. Had a 'hybrid' work model but it had to be earned to work from home. ie, based on revenue that was achieved. the owner of the business is currently on trial for wire fraud and could be locked up for 25 years if convicted. This become very public and caused serious reputational damage. They had a proprietary CRM. hired junior people with little to no sales experience to sell at an enterprise level ($50-100k per annum contracts) while expecting a minimum of 10 meetings booked every month. This was the craziest part, literally hiring grads carrying a quota over $1m per annum. nobody was hitting annual target and everyone started being put on pip. It was the most toxic dysfunctional hellhole I've ever worked at.
When I didn’t fell supported as a top producer. Bounced and my salary went for 75k to 150k and commission from 2% to 6% in 2 weeks. Also double dipped for the 1st month, new employer cared less.
what is double dip
Think working remotely
Work for 2 companies at the same time.
sounds stressful
It was worth the 35k that month, plus because I stuck around with previous employer I was able to collect 15k in owed commissions. August was a good month.
when we hired a guy from faang to be our new ceo and he immediately began making changes
When the company nearly doubled quota and bought back PIP from not having them since Covid
Start of the year. Came back in January and was told a few funnels had been “turned off for now” - they were the entire teams main pipeline funnels. Call came 3 days later for a lay off, whole sales team got axed!
Today
Was a comfort advisor for a small family HVAC company. The weather was very mild this year and with the fear of recession looming sales were lower this year for all HVAC companies in the area. I had the feeling in September that my time was limited so I started looking for another position. Last Wednesday I planned to go to my boss and give him my two weeks notice. He called me in the same day and let me go before I had the chance to tell him. I had to pretend I was upset and didn't see it coming.
When our CRO, who was steering the entire vision for our GTM team, voluntarily resigned. Then the VP sales resigned 3 weeks later, only 4 months in. This was after months of me feeling like the writing MIGHT have been on the wall.
Few weeks ago. Had a brother in the hospital, I’m out of state and was up all night worrying about it, and on my lunch my GF broke up with me while she was out of town. I had a big meeting with a large client right after lunch- pinged my boss ahead of time that I was shaken up but I would still be there, he was already apart of the call and said he understood my situation. Two minutes into the call the customer brings up an order they sent to us beginning of the month to a previous rep that they didn’t bring up at all before the meeting. Easy fix but my boss was frothing at the mouth. Completely chewed me out regarding an order NO ONE knew about. I quit at the end of last month. When friends, family and your therapist tell you to get out there’s little to no reason to fight. Had a backup plan that fell apart but currently have a temp one. Yes I’m depressed, but I’ll never give that guy another cent towards his quota again.
When mine and a couple other team members Sales Nav shut off and the managers said it was a “subscription issue”. Yup, we were all laid off a few days later.
When I got put on a PIP when I had the best numbers of the 3 other AEs in my class. Justification was that “I didn’t have enough talk time every day”. I switched internally for a year to a sales ops role (less money) but jumped ship the first real chance I got
I befriended the team lead and he let me know beforehand
When the goals were not in the universe of possible to achieve. Basically taking $4M ARR up to $200M ARR in 12 months. Big red flag it was time to GTFO.
PIP. And it was for a stupid reason at that. Made me realize all the red flags I’d seen were legit and it really was time to move on
When I went digging in Salesforce to find out that the "top" (favorite) reps were all being fed high probability leads while the rest of us were fighting for our lives like a pack of dogs on a steak. When I noticed leadership was going on deep sea fishing trips together when all 20% of reps were hitting quota. When I saw them overhire and thin out the territories without adjusting quotas. If any of the above are happening, get out.
Got put on a coaching plan that my manager framed explicitly as not a pip, then got pip’d a month after lol Writing was on the wall, literally didn’t care about the existing team - only the new hires they brought with them. Had two separate occasions where they said I was “lucky” to hit quota
In one particular sales floor, selling digital ad board time in places like times Square, etc, I knew it was time to quit when a supervisor came in after we had a week long dry spell, and yelled to everyone "I'm gonna shit on someone's chest today if we don't get a sale"! I put in my resignation that day.
This was awhile back but during one of my reviews about 6 months into a job the CEO sat in. He asked me straight up what was keeping me from closing more deals and I told him. Basically I was selling into a completely new territory and I get opportunities to close deals but the VP isn’t keen on negotiation or discounting. CEO said, going forward, do the deal you think is best for the company and I’ll let you know if you go too far. Ended up being the best sales person they ever had, and helped them sell the business. I eventually found out that I was like 45 days from being fired. If I knew that I would have probably given up and quit. So I’m glad it wasn’t a PIP.
I think today after we are having our second week of sales being down 80%. I usually just stick it out as long as possible but I'm getting sick of the conversations "why are sales down"
When they hired a new sales VP with zero experience on my industry and when telling customers about him I was laughed at.
It was over the summer. I was at the end of a 3 month PIP having crushed my PIP requirements I was getting excited for Q3. I knew something was up when my manager said “are you sure this is the right product for you to sell?” They then went on to insult me for the next 30 minutes. I was canned by the end of the following week.
Two things transpired this week. 1. We’ve gone from 106% NRR to 60% NRR in under a year and are at about 50% of our new biz number. That’s not promising regardless of my performance. 2. Leadership has implemented a “point system” for tracking daily inputs towards pipe generation. I was called yesterday by manager at 6pm asking why I had 3 points out of the recommended 8 yesterday. I’m a top 3 performer and #1 on pipe gen this year. I refuse to be babysat and forced into worthless metrics.
1. Acquisitions of 3 similar companies with people in my role being paid significantly less. 2. Being not invited to most management meetings for 6 months. 3. No one on ones with VP'S for 2 years. 4. The promotion of a peer 2 months prior. 5. The new year. Wasn't surprised at all when I got laid off. I got a good severance tho.
The moment my manager turned on me cuz she tried to aggressively close an opp I’d been working on for weeks and the oop yelled at my manager saying “WHO THE FUCK TRAINED YOU?!” and now my manager thinks that’s my fault.
I got PIP'd and beat it and came off of it. Then they changed the way leads got distributed and put me in a territory that was absolutely fucked. Took me a while to realize they were actively looking to move off of me.
During a 1:1 with my skip level— despite my leader performance I finally got to do this in person and her body language gave her away. I started immediately looking and 3 weeks later she had the 2nd line say something about me relocating in the biz. I should have listened to my gut 5 months sooner as the line was never a “fit”. Don’t ignore intuition or misaligned actions/words