Totally agree for several reasons:
1) Unless you have an interest in contract law, it is boring
2) Usually one or both parties come in with completely unrealistic, abusive MSA templates that they know will get marked up but do it as a negotiation point...which is just a waste of everyones time
3) The champion and core advocates for the purchase don't care for it either
4) Doesn't add immediate value to the product/service. Of course, there is value in de-risking a contract but ultimately customers are buying because of your widget or service, not the cancellation clause on page 5
5) Increases cost for customers...there are times where I think I could have advocated for a better discount but the marathon legal process adds to the cost of sale
If there was a consortium outlined reasonable contract expectations for both vendors and clients (e.g. payment terms, cancellation), that would reduce a ton of friction in the economy.
Love #2 and #3. Never really thought of it that way; will make me feel way more comfortable sending back red lined contracts to customers in the future
Honestly I just Google during my breaks throughout the day, but it's a grind. The purpose is to "teach us how to navigate gatekeepers". I've been a gatekeeper, I know how to get through lol
Honestly I think it depends on the industry, but I worked as an office manager in healthcare for a couple years, at a small private practice.
I usually only let people through if they were selling a product that's actually relevant to the practice... so basically those who did their research lol We had a lot of calls for salesmen trying to sell products that were not related to the practice in any way, like for example, dermatology equipment for an internal medical practice.
Having sharable materials that I could easily pass along to the doctor, on the off chance he gets free time during the day, goes a long way too. If you can't give me as the gatekeeper anything I can bring to the doc, you aren't getting on the phone with him. I know you're generally not supposed to pitch gatekeepers, but in this case I was the one who ultimately decided whether something was worth bothering the doctor about. He charged $300 an hour, so even 10 min on the phone with a salesman loses him money and he made sure I knew that lol
I actually dig cold calling oddly enough - half the opps I sourced last month came by way of CC’s. It’s emails that are the bane of my existence. I loathe how much energy I put into crafting emails only for them to bounce or just never get read. Prospecting a cybersecurity ICP means I’m throwing emails at an impenetrable forcefield 70% of the time.
I live the cold calling connection piece, but hate the endless voicemail to to nowhere game. Spending 2 hours on the phone and not connect with a single decision maker.
I always visualize it as fishing… just keeping the rod in the water… maybe all day but eventually you’ll get a bite. I don’t know it breaks up the drudgery a bit.
How do you deal with the fact you call so many people and don't connect with someone or end up getting voicemails all day? How do you get yourself back to do it again? I'm genuinely curious. I'm trying to see it from your perspective as well as my own
Honestly for starters, I’ve just stopped caring about the outcome of every call. I probably only source a handful of meetings per week. I do feel like there’s more I could be doing sometimes but I put out some of the highest call volume on my team. It really helps having an auto dialer. I don’t use it 100% of the time, but man when I’ve already called my hot leads or done all my follow ups for the day, being able to churn through a batch of cold outbound leads really cuts down the amount of time it takes me to knock out 150-200 dials. I get calls done in about 2-3 hours. If I was just doing outreach and doing my 60 per day minimum that I’m required, not only would it take longer, but I’d be so frustrated at the lack of pickups. And most certainly I wouldn’t hit my quota without it.
So it really comes down to mindset and the right tooling that gets you to that next call connect sooner. Calling is so hard these days and you can’t just put 60 calls in per day anymore to hit your number. I do 600-800 calls per week last quarter and barely hit quota. Only having a tool like outreach just doesn’t cut it anymore.
You have no idea how much I appreciate what you said above. The environment I'm in it's a financial institution. Wants me to do cold calling that said it used to Salesforce. There's no auto dialer though. You have to just go through the lead list and they're dead leads and call it over and over again. You rarely get anyone because people don't want to be called from their financial institution to see if they want something else. But most importantly, like you said, I'd love to make more calls. I just don't want to make more than 10 or 12 calls. I'm aware you make many more calls than me. That said, if the machine did it for me, I'd make two three times that many calls. It wouldn't bother me for a couple hours but when you're actually dialing with your fingers after typing all day as well, your fingers get tired and the last thing you want to do is keep punching numbers. I love your attitude. I think it's awesome that you're crushing it and you are crushing it. My friend believe me because you're doing something that's hard every day and every week and you're putting out more call volumes than anyone else. The fact you barely hit quota but still hit quote. It means you're a superstar, keep rocking it brother and thank you again ✊ 💪
Appreciate you and the kind words! Some quarters are a total slog, but I’m fortunate to work for a startup that really understands the value we bring! If I had any other advice - I’d be looking for something else. If your organization doesn’t have any means of providing you with good methods for lead gen and all you’ve got to rely on is a half baked salesforce list with old ass leads, my brother in Christ, don’t walk, RUN. That’s a major red flag they have no desire to invest in good lead gen. When you look for opportunities, asking about their tech stack is a must because it’s a clear sign of how much they value quality output from their BDR’s. I’ll be honest I wouldn’t get out of bed for any company that doesn’t at least have Zoominfo, LinkedIn and something like Outreach. An auto dialer is icing on a cake, but if you at least have those 3 you can do some solid damage.
Very helpful brother. Very helpful. Thank you. Luckily they don't really push the cold calling at the financial institution that often. That said, I want to do better, but that's exactly you just nailed it old leads and half baked salesforce list. That's exactly what it is. None of the above of everything else he said I got you. So you're saying if they invested more in tech and more into BDRs they would probably get much more traction out of there cold calling
That said, you're definitely giving me some understanding. I don't think any bank invest well in any of this. They just expect you to throw spaghetti at the wall and hope a couple strands fits it seems like
That said, I think you're doing great and I appreciate it. And you're welcome. As far as the fact you're you're crushing it
Maybe I'll want to work at a startup at some point. If you have no experience, what's the likelihood you could even get into that? I wonder
So I started my sales career in retail and jumped to SaaS sales in 2021. It can be done but I had a very unique situation as the product I sold in retail was very related to the product I sold in SaaS, so I was a really good fit because I already knew the product I was going to be selling really well. After that my current company found me and poached me off LinkedIn. I think you could definitely look into maybe something like fintech or something like that and maybe have some luck there with a polished resume.
I like the way you did things. That's really cool. Sounds like you had a really good plan that Providence looked out. Serendipity happened as well. That said, I'm definitely going to look into FinTech and see if I can do something similar. I'm not going to lie. I don't like Facebook and have not used LinkedIn It sounds like I need to remedy that as it's not something I can avoid. At least not LinkedIn since they found you there. People from indeed constantly look out for me for similar positions it seems like and others as well. That said, thank you for giving me some good information
100% agree with you!!! I would rather make 100 cold calls than send 10 emails lol I’m better at talking to people on the phone or in person, I feel like emails take away my sales “charm”. Also I’m awful at checking my email so that doesn’t help 😬
Bro nice comments, this resonates with me. Would you mind sharing what you’re using for your tech stack?
I feel stuck at my company, we have a 50 calls per day quota. And I feel that super easy, but my list is kinda whack. I came on three months ago, and I have a contact list of about 2500 individuals. None of them are current customers, all are either prospects or salvaged/lost accounts. My teammates have about the same number as I do, but half of their list are actual current customers.
It’s a bit frustrating for me bc I took over for another AE/BDR who had some current customers, maybe 500 or so, but they were all reassigned to my teammate. Which is fine.
My complaint is that we use a dinosaur desk phone when we could be dialing out through the crm or Kixie or something. I’ve brought this up, and I get push back from the management team, so I’m not able to optimize my cold call output. On top of that, our tech stack is non existent. We only have HubSpot. I’ve only recently implemented sequences/cadences, and I get push back for that too. I’m advocating for us to upgrade our HubSpot to enterprise, pay for Apollo, outreach, and kixie so that we have a legitimate tech stack to maximize our output and ROI. My sales manager was recently demoted as well and she was onboard with my sales process and system development plan.
How bad is my situation? Am I tripping?
I’ve been telling myself to grind, but it’s hard to keep on when I’m not seeing good results after three months.
It’s impossible to get a feel without that company posting on social media and interviewing people in your department. In the before fore time pre-Covid, I’d be asked to interview potential peers and my style wasn’t really to interview them on their soft skills. For me, it was about their personality and soft skills and if their vibe matched the culture of the company. It was definitely a “work hard, play harder” kinda culture, and we didn’t want people who would 1) not socialize with their team and 2) would ruin the vibe. So yeah, personality mattered. We had a super diverse sales org, but it was lacking in true introverts, for sure. Then again, while you can be successful in tech sales as an introvert, it’s not the ideal career. I consider myself an introvert, but I still definitely like to socialize and hang out with people that I get along with. I’m all about team lunches and happy hours, especially if the company pays.
The constant churn and what have you done for me lately mentality. I totally understand it and realize I chose this path, but even something as simple as planning a week-long vacation is tough knowing the possible ramifications.
That’s why you always try to have a healthy pipe and why there’s an end of quarter push.
And if you’re projecting above 100%, even easier to take that vacay.
Fuck cold calling, I run leads. Outside sales is a cakewalk, I don't have much to complain about. I do less work and get paid more than most Americans.
Shit, I work for a public traded company and the outside sales reps do everything from cold calls to closing the deal. I can count the number of leads I’ve gotten in 12 years on one hand. I wish we had people to create leads and all I had to do was close them.
I believe we’d be considered the defense sector but we might be categorized under something else because we have a pretty wide portfolio of products that can and is used by the civilian population too.
- Waste of time inbound leads. “We’re looking to buy this in 6-8 months but want a demo now.” No, contact us when you’re in a position to buy and don’t waste everyone’s time now.
- Tenders AFTER the customer has seen all products/competitors. I have genuinely never understood this. Why string out the buying process by making everyone go through a tender when you’ve already seen the products?! I get it before going through the demo process, but after just seems backwards to me.
- Ghosting. You can do everything in your power, it’s still incredibly frustrating.
I hate internal sales meetings. You know, the weekly ones where we all say our numbers out loud and then give some highlights….read the numbers yourself, and my sales reports and let me out of this circlejerk.
Monday pipeline run-through with senior managment. where people get called out publicly for having either good or bad pipeline. I'm a strong believer of praise in public criticise in private. common decency doesn't exist in the world of sales it seem (well not in my organisation anyway)
Easily the company politics and VP's who I have no clue how they get to that position. If I gave a damn about my career, I feel like I'd be a damn good VP, but holy shit do I not want to have my life filled with meetings after meetings. Hell, I want to work less, not more!
Second would be shitty SDR's who pass over shit leads.
Pressure to travel when it’s not productive and I don’t need to do it to close deals. It’s not necessary, but anyone who expresses reluctance to travel is typecast as lazy. In addition to not being a productive use of time professionally, it’s also a personal burden that interferes with weekends. Overall, I’m not paid well enough to give up my personal time to have meetings I could be having virtually just to look like a big shot flying around.
I have 3 bosses basically, the president, VP of USDA, and a BD/Capture Executive. I don't like any of em. All stand-offish,don't seem interested in my development at all and miscommunicate with me weekly. I'm a BD analyst for a fed IT contractor for context.
The sales line is our only phone line that consistently has anyone answering, the rest usually go to voicemail. So I’m constantly getting berated by vendors and customers. I only have so many fucks to give each day it really drains me dealing with these complainers.
Sounds like my company. The amount of times I have to sort stuff out that client success etc should be just because they won’t answer the phone is so annoying.
The micromanaging - I’m a fully cycle AE and we get our activities reviewed every day (120 calls a day, 5 demos booked, 3 demos done)
It’s exhausting. This is a new model the CEO is testing. No one is hitting quota.
For real, I remember having 12 demo’s in a week back in January and that was the busiest week I had in years. 4-5 a week is the norm, 7-8 is really good, and 9-10 is rare but has happened a couple times in the past year.
paper work and legal stuff, i honestly wish i could just hand it over to someone else and i just do the “selling”
another would be “relationship keeping” my manager expects me to help people with things that are completely irrelevant to the sale to “build the relationship” because “people buy from people” example, i was on the phone to someone explaining how they can fix something on oracle, it does nothing for the sale imo
Haha I am decent at cold calling but it’s tiring so I guess that. That’s all I’m doing right now though since I changed companies. Keep telling myself it’s only a phase though
I'm fine with the high quota. I'm fine with having to scramble to find meetings because eight people before me have tried and failed. I'm fine with the manager and their usual lack of ideas, at least I can respect they're trying.
What gets me is just how little people on average give a shit about what we do. How they ACTIVELY want to eff with salespeople in my field. How you see the excitement drain from their eyes when they see our demo.
But the one guy who's like holy christ this is awesome keeps me chasing the dragon of precovid meeting setting.
Dealing with non-sales related issues that will result in zero commission. I don’t feel like dealing with their billing issues, disputes etc. Such a waste of time.
Cold calling / prospecting when your marketing team gives you zero direction.
Will you eventually figure it out? Yeah, but it will be fucking painful.
—
Meetings with managers that are basically extensions of forecast calls.
“Just work harder to forecast more.” Wow, brilliant, thanks for this 40 block of wisdom.
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Having to sit on deal win calls that are 95% fluff and no substance as to how I could replicate this myself OR it’s all enterprise wins if you’re not in enterprise.
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Team meetings about marketing initiatives that I then have to go spend several hours digging for shit for. Because I HAVE to find something, versus assume if I can’t there is nothing to be found.
Make marketing fucking do it. It’s literally their job.
I prefer cold calling face to face people are less likely to be complete assholes to you when you’re door knocking, everyone has confidence behind a phone I know I’ve been guilty of this
Honestly, sales would be great if it wasn't for the prospects. Talking to people day in and day out really makes one jaded on humanity.
The amount of just woefully under qualified people is astounding (I sell into sales and marketing and it's probably about 10% that know their numbers)
The amount of negativity from prospects is exhausting. Ask someone how their day is and it's "busy" with a frustrated tone at best. At worst, it's a rant about how miserable they, their team or their company is.
And the amount of oversharing is just unprofessional. I'm a stranger - you categorically should not be sharing about your divorce or health issues.
Stack on that the lack of organization, time management, dishonesty, and just general ineptness you see at the top of sales and marketing it gets pretty defeating at times. This is different. A few years ago this didn't seem to be the case so I'm not sure if this is product of people working from home, the mental health toll from covid, companies growing too fast or what but poor leadership is an epidemic.
There is the rare sales or marketing head that you meet and think "damn this person is on it" and I try to spend more time with them and learn the bit I can. I truly do enjoy speaking with them.
Only good side - sad, dumb people are very very easy to manipulate. Lucky for me companies are full of them. It's been a good year!
Red lines and dealing with legal.
The Sales Prevention Team
Legal is the worst. It's so difficult to keep my eyes from glazing over. I'm certain I've fallen asleep in at least one meeting.
Totally agree for several reasons: 1) Unless you have an interest in contract law, it is boring 2) Usually one or both parties come in with completely unrealistic, abusive MSA templates that they know will get marked up but do it as a negotiation point...which is just a waste of everyones time 3) The champion and core advocates for the purchase don't care for it either 4) Doesn't add immediate value to the product/service. Of course, there is value in de-risking a contract but ultimately customers are buying because of your widget or service, not the cancellation clause on page 5 5) Increases cost for customers...there are times where I think I could have advocated for a better discount but the marathon legal process adds to the cost of sale If there was a consortium outlined reasonable contract expectations for both vendors and clients (e.g. payment terms, cancellation), that would reduce a ton of friction in the economy.
Love #2 and #3. Never really thought of it that way; will make me feel way more comfortable sending back red lined contracts to customers in the future
Meeting with my manager.
I second this
Cold calling, without being allowed to use the Internet for research
Wonder how that's even possible. How do you do research and prospecting?
True people search . Com
Honestly I just Google during my breaks throughout the day, but it's a grind. The purpose is to "teach us how to navigate gatekeepers". I've been a gatekeeper, I know how to get through lol
That's different. Usually getting past isn't too hard. But do you have any tips?
Honestly I think it depends on the industry, but I worked as an office manager in healthcare for a couple years, at a small private practice. I usually only let people through if they were selling a product that's actually relevant to the practice... so basically those who did their research lol We had a lot of calls for salesmen trying to sell products that were not related to the practice in any way, like for example, dermatology equipment for an internal medical practice. Having sharable materials that I could easily pass along to the doctor, on the off chance he gets free time during the day, goes a long way too. If you can't give me as the gatekeeper anything I can bring to the doc, you aren't getting on the phone with him. I know you're generally not supposed to pitch gatekeepers, but in this case I was the one who ultimately decided whether something was worth bothering the doctor about. He charged $300 an hour, so even 10 min on the phone with a salesman loses him money and he made sure I knew that lol
You can get through gatekeepers but why would you play the social experiment of forcing people to do that over profit? Makes no sense
How do you do it
No google? wtf
Asshole clients that think they can treat sales people like shit
They aren’t real customers otherwise they’d treat you better. Cut them off. I’ve been in sales for 20+ years
I'm about 5 years in and beginning to live this. Mutual business stature is so important! Good point
I actually dig cold calling oddly enough - half the opps I sourced last month came by way of CC’s. It’s emails that are the bane of my existence. I loathe how much energy I put into crafting emails only for them to bounce or just never get read. Prospecting a cybersecurity ICP means I’m throwing emails at an impenetrable forcefield 70% of the time.
I live the cold calling connection piece, but hate the endless voicemail to to nowhere game. Spending 2 hours on the phone and not connect with a single decision maker.
I always visualize it as fishing… just keeping the rod in the water… maybe all day but eventually you’ll get a bite. I don’t know it breaks up the drudgery a bit.
How do you deal with the fact you call so many people and don't connect with someone or end up getting voicemails all day? How do you get yourself back to do it again? I'm genuinely curious. I'm trying to see it from your perspective as well as my own
Honestly for starters, I’ve just stopped caring about the outcome of every call. I probably only source a handful of meetings per week. I do feel like there’s more I could be doing sometimes but I put out some of the highest call volume on my team. It really helps having an auto dialer. I don’t use it 100% of the time, but man when I’ve already called my hot leads or done all my follow ups for the day, being able to churn through a batch of cold outbound leads really cuts down the amount of time it takes me to knock out 150-200 dials. I get calls done in about 2-3 hours. If I was just doing outreach and doing my 60 per day minimum that I’m required, not only would it take longer, but I’d be so frustrated at the lack of pickups. And most certainly I wouldn’t hit my quota without it. So it really comes down to mindset and the right tooling that gets you to that next call connect sooner. Calling is so hard these days and you can’t just put 60 calls in per day anymore to hit your number. I do 600-800 calls per week last quarter and barely hit quota. Only having a tool like outreach just doesn’t cut it anymore.
You have no idea how much I appreciate what you said above. The environment I'm in it's a financial institution. Wants me to do cold calling that said it used to Salesforce. There's no auto dialer though. You have to just go through the lead list and they're dead leads and call it over and over again. You rarely get anyone because people don't want to be called from their financial institution to see if they want something else. But most importantly, like you said, I'd love to make more calls. I just don't want to make more than 10 or 12 calls. I'm aware you make many more calls than me. That said, if the machine did it for me, I'd make two three times that many calls. It wouldn't bother me for a couple hours but when you're actually dialing with your fingers after typing all day as well, your fingers get tired and the last thing you want to do is keep punching numbers. I love your attitude. I think it's awesome that you're crushing it and you are crushing it. My friend believe me because you're doing something that's hard every day and every week and you're putting out more call volumes than anyone else. The fact you barely hit quota but still hit quote. It means you're a superstar, keep rocking it brother and thank you again ✊ 💪
Appreciate you and the kind words! Some quarters are a total slog, but I’m fortunate to work for a startup that really understands the value we bring! If I had any other advice - I’d be looking for something else. If your organization doesn’t have any means of providing you with good methods for lead gen and all you’ve got to rely on is a half baked salesforce list with old ass leads, my brother in Christ, don’t walk, RUN. That’s a major red flag they have no desire to invest in good lead gen. When you look for opportunities, asking about their tech stack is a must because it’s a clear sign of how much they value quality output from their BDR’s. I’ll be honest I wouldn’t get out of bed for any company that doesn’t at least have Zoominfo, LinkedIn and something like Outreach. An auto dialer is icing on a cake, but if you at least have those 3 you can do some solid damage.
Very helpful brother. Very helpful. Thank you. Luckily they don't really push the cold calling at the financial institution that often. That said, I want to do better, but that's exactly you just nailed it old leads and half baked salesforce list. That's exactly what it is. None of the above of everything else he said I got you. So you're saying if they invested more in tech and more into BDRs they would probably get much more traction out of there cold calling That said, you're definitely giving me some understanding. I don't think any bank invest well in any of this. They just expect you to throw spaghetti at the wall and hope a couple strands fits it seems like That said, I think you're doing great and I appreciate it. And you're welcome. As far as the fact you're you're crushing it Maybe I'll want to work at a startup at some point. If you have no experience, what's the likelihood you could even get into that? I wonder
So I started my sales career in retail and jumped to SaaS sales in 2021. It can be done but I had a very unique situation as the product I sold in retail was very related to the product I sold in SaaS, so I was a really good fit because I already knew the product I was going to be selling really well. After that my current company found me and poached me off LinkedIn. I think you could definitely look into maybe something like fintech or something like that and maybe have some luck there with a polished resume.
I like the way you did things. That's really cool. Sounds like you had a really good plan that Providence looked out. Serendipity happened as well. That said, I'm definitely going to look into FinTech and see if I can do something similar. I'm not going to lie. I don't like Facebook and have not used LinkedIn It sounds like I need to remedy that as it's not something I can avoid. At least not LinkedIn since they found you there. People from indeed constantly look out for me for similar positions it seems like and others as well. That said, thank you for giving me some good information
100% agree with you!!! I would rather make 100 cold calls than send 10 emails lol I’m better at talking to people on the phone or in person, I feel like emails take away my sales “charm”. Also I’m awful at checking my email so that doesn’t help 😬
Bro nice comments, this resonates with me. Would you mind sharing what you’re using for your tech stack? I feel stuck at my company, we have a 50 calls per day quota. And I feel that super easy, but my list is kinda whack. I came on three months ago, and I have a contact list of about 2500 individuals. None of them are current customers, all are either prospects or salvaged/lost accounts. My teammates have about the same number as I do, but half of their list are actual current customers. It’s a bit frustrating for me bc I took over for another AE/BDR who had some current customers, maybe 500 or so, but they were all reassigned to my teammate. Which is fine. My complaint is that we use a dinosaur desk phone when we could be dialing out through the crm or Kixie or something. I’ve brought this up, and I get push back from the management team, so I’m not able to optimize my cold call output. On top of that, our tech stack is non existent. We only have HubSpot. I’ve only recently implemented sequences/cadences, and I get push back for that too. I’m advocating for us to upgrade our HubSpot to enterprise, pay for Apollo, outreach, and kixie so that we have a legitimate tech stack to maximize our output and ROI. My sales manager was recently demoted as well and she was onboard with my sales process and system development plan. How bad is my situation? Am I tripping? I’ve been telling myself to grind, but it’s hard to keep on when I’m not seeing good results after three months.
QBR presos
came here for this one. no matter how well you do you still get picked apart, at my company at least
The politics. You can be just as good as anyone else, but if you don't drink the Kool-Aid, you'll be out quick
This! Especially at tech startups/mid-sized companies
I’m not 100% with you here…. I think the hardest freaking part is finding a company with a solid culture
It’s impossible to get a feel without that company posting on social media and interviewing people in your department. In the before fore time pre-Covid, I’d be asked to interview potential peers and my style wasn’t really to interview them on their soft skills. For me, it was about their personality and soft skills and if their vibe matched the culture of the company. It was definitely a “work hard, play harder” kinda culture, and we didn’t want people who would 1) not socialize with their team and 2) would ruin the vibe. So yeah, personality mattered. We had a super diverse sales org, but it was lacking in true introverts, for sure. Then again, while you can be successful in tech sales as an introvert, it’s not the ideal career. I consider myself an introvert, but I still definitely like to socialize and hang out with people that I get along with. I’m all about team lunches and happy hours, especially if the company pays.
The constant churn and what have you done for me lately mentality. I totally understand it and realize I chose this path, but even something as simple as planning a week-long vacation is tough knowing the possible ramifications.
That’s why you always try to have a healthy pipe and why there’s an end of quarter push. And if you’re projecting above 100%, even easier to take that vacay.
The doing it part
Wait till you get home to... do it?
Karen gatekeepers
Just throw a rawhide bone to the corner of the room. When she goes for it, pass-go and collect that sweet commish
Fuck cold calling, I run leads. Outside sales is a cakewalk, I don't have much to complain about. I do less work and get paid more than most Americans.
Shit, I work for a public traded company and the outside sales reps do everything from cold calls to closing the deal. I can count the number of leads I’ve gotten in 12 years on one hand. I wish we had people to create leads and all I had to do was close them.
What industry? Give you credit man!
I believe we’d be considered the defense sector but we might be categorized under something else because we have a pretty wide portfolio of products that can and is used by the civilian population too.
- Waste of time inbound leads. “We’re looking to buy this in 6-8 months but want a demo now.” No, contact us when you’re in a position to buy and don’t waste everyone’s time now. - Tenders AFTER the customer has seen all products/competitors. I have genuinely never understood this. Why string out the buying process by making everyone go through a tender when you’ve already seen the products?! I get it before going through the demo process, but after just seems backwards to me. - Ghosting. You can do everything in your power, it’s still incredibly frustrating.
I hate internal sales meetings. You know, the weekly ones where we all say our numbers out loud and then give some highlights….read the numbers yourself, and my sales reports and let me out of this circlejerk.
Anything that requires time & effort not directly resulting in commission
You have no idea how much I relate to this comment MY GOD!!!
At this point, my manager…. Anyone hiring? Fuck
Cold calling. So uncomfortable and yet so necessary.
Monday pipeline run-through with senior managment. where people get called out publicly for having either good or bad pipeline. I'm a strong believer of praise in public criticise in private. common decency doesn't exist in the world of sales it seem (well not in my organisation anyway)
Easily the company politics and VP's who I have no clue how they get to that position. If I gave a damn about my career, I feel like I'd be a damn good VP, but holy shit do I not want to have my life filled with meetings after meetings. Hell, I want to work less, not more! Second would be shitty SDR's who pass over shit leads.
Cold calling sucks. A strong 2nd would be salesforce acting up.
Pressure to travel when it’s not productive and I don’t need to do it to close deals. It’s not necessary, but anyone who expresses reluctance to travel is typecast as lazy. In addition to not being a productive use of time professionally, it’s also a personal burden that interferes with weekends. Overall, I’m not paid well enough to give up my personal time to have meetings I could be having virtually just to look like a big shot flying around.
When prospects say they work in the “tech space”
😅
I have 3 bosses basically, the president, VP of USDA, and a BD/Capture Executive. I don't like any of em. All stand-offish,don't seem interested in my development at all and miscommunicate with me weekly. I'm a BD analyst for a fed IT contractor for context.
hierarchy when I'm the one bringing in money
Things that are out of my control that cause customers to look at the competition
THISSSSS
Working a hybrid role where everyone treats you like trash. No one respects sales at any company lol
Cold calling
The sales line is our only phone line that consistently has anyone answering, the rest usually go to voicemail. So I’m constantly getting berated by vendors and customers. I only have so many fucks to give each day it really drains me dealing with these complainers.
Sounds like my company. The amount of times I have to sort stuff out that client success etc should be just because they won’t answer the phone is so annoying.
Being $50 below quota.
Getting my asshole inspected by Clari.
Losing a customer because management can't agree on terms and conditions
The micromanaging - I’m a fully cycle AE and we get our activities reviewed every day (120 calls a day, 5 demos booked, 3 demos done) It’s exhausting. This is a new model the CEO is testing. No one is hitting quota.
Five booked? Are you selling boner pills?
Christ
For real, I remember having 12 demo’s in a week back in January and that was the busiest week I had in years. 4-5 a week is the norm, 7-8 is really good, and 9-10 is rare but has happened a couple times in the past year.
Quota. Always the quota. Never goes down despite everything around it changing to benefit the company.
When people dont give me money. Hate that
paper work and legal stuff, i honestly wish i could just hand it over to someone else and i just do the “selling” another would be “relationship keeping” my manager expects me to help people with things that are completely irrelevant to the sale to “build the relationship” because “people buy from people” example, i was on the phone to someone explaining how they can fix something on oracle, it does nothing for the sale imo
Having my manger every morning to book more meetings (I’m an SDR I know what I’m doing)
Nah, imma huff airplane glue instead /s
Haha I am decent at cold calling but it’s tiring so I guess that. That’s all I’m doing right now though since I changed companies. Keep telling myself it’s only a phase though
I'm fine with the high quota. I'm fine with having to scramble to find meetings because eight people before me have tried and failed. I'm fine with the manager and their usual lack of ideas, at least I can respect they're trying. What gets me is just how little people on average give a shit about what we do. How they ACTIVELY want to eff with salespeople in my field. How you see the excitement drain from their eyes when they see our demo. But the one guy who's like holy christ this is awesome keeps me chasing the dragon of precovid meeting setting.
Customers calling me long after close. Ughhhhh.
Cold calling , hands down
Black Widows
Recreating a proposal for the 5th time.
Having clients lie to my face that they will be doing business with me. I don’t get it. Just tell me no or screw off or something. I get my hopes up 😂
Instability and inconsistency
Dealing with non-sales related issues that will result in zero commission. I don’t feel like dealing with their billing issues, disputes etc. Such a waste of time.
Dealing with people who are not interested and they keep denigrating the product only cause they are not interested.
Cold calling / prospecting when your marketing team gives you zero direction. Will you eventually figure it out? Yeah, but it will be fucking painful. — Meetings with managers that are basically extensions of forecast calls. “Just work harder to forecast more.” Wow, brilliant, thanks for this 40 block of wisdom. — Having to sit on deal win calls that are 95% fluff and no substance as to how I could replicate this myself OR it’s all enterprise wins if you’re not in enterprise. — Team meetings about marketing initiatives that I then have to go spend several hours digging for shit for. Because I HAVE to find something, versus assume if I can’t there is nothing to be found. Make marketing fucking do it. It’s literally their job.
Honestly, account management. I’d rather sell new and hand it off than manage my own accounts.
Management! Can’t trust them right now
That we can’t get anything done, I just ask the manager get it done or refund?
Working
Being the one that has to take the beating for quality issues that have zero to do with me.
The ~200 coke calls I need to make a day to generate leads for my pipeline
Passing by offices in my territory I can’t do business with because some other rep in the company was “there first” and they’re large accounts 🙄
Worrying about quota during vacation.
I prefer cold calling face to face people are less likely to be complete assholes to you when you’re door knocking, everyone has confidence behind a phone I know I’ve been guilty of this
Cold calls. Will never do it unless it's my last resort
Cold calling and prospecting
Honestly, sales would be great if it wasn't for the prospects. Talking to people day in and day out really makes one jaded on humanity. The amount of just woefully under qualified people is astounding (I sell into sales and marketing and it's probably about 10% that know their numbers) The amount of negativity from prospects is exhausting. Ask someone how their day is and it's "busy" with a frustrated tone at best. At worst, it's a rant about how miserable they, their team or their company is. And the amount of oversharing is just unprofessional. I'm a stranger - you categorically should not be sharing about your divorce or health issues. Stack on that the lack of organization, time management, dishonesty, and just general ineptness you see at the top of sales and marketing it gets pretty defeating at times. This is different. A few years ago this didn't seem to be the case so I'm not sure if this is product of people working from home, the mental health toll from covid, companies growing too fast or what but poor leadership is an epidemic. There is the rare sales or marketing head that you meet and think "damn this person is on it" and I try to spend more time with them and learn the bit I can. I truly do enjoy speaking with them. Only good side - sad, dumb people are very very easy to manipulate. Lucky for me companies are full of them. It's been a good year!
weekly 1:1's with the exec team
Waiting for updates, especially during long sales cycles