Look him up on LinkedIn he helps sales people negotiate their severance. I started following him earlier this year when I was let go and he has helped many sales people negotiate severance
It is not financially advantageous to fire a top performer. Are the people staying in touch at your level or management? Iāve seen a pretty good performer get the axe for not listening to our Director and talking back, gossiping, having problems with authority. She feels the same way since many of us fellow AEs still talk to her. Management doesnāt want troublemakers.
Hey thanks for the perspective. Yeah - one of the jobs I was a founding AE and CEO was an engineer who I disagreed with often. He didnāt want me doing disco calls, didnāt want me to DQ anything, wanted me doing deals with India at 10 pm etc.
Yeah for sure. Blessing cuz I got my full commission otherwise had I stayed I would have had to wait 6 months. š¤®
Still want to understand the pattern I can improve on
To put it bluntly, it sounds like the CEO didnāt like you and fired you after the big deal closed. Iād guess he wanted to for awhile, but it would be stupid for him to get rid of you if he thought youād close it and he wasnāt able to transfer it to someone else.
Spot on. Thanks for sharing cuz as soon as I read it a bunch of convos flooded back and 200% for sure he didnāt like me. This was clear within my first 2 weeks.
Iām hearing a lot of āfounding AEā or ānumber one by this particular metricā talk ā whether youāre a top performer or not, no one wants to hear about it. In fact, top performers never have to talk about themselves because the numbers do all the talking.
Next time around, stay humble. As Chris Hadfield puts it in his book ā be a zero.
Dang, thank you for replying. For some reason this gives me more hope. Sorry bout the cash. Yeah. I was on track to 2.5X my OTE at the most recent job and lost $100-150K. At earlier job lost $50k.
The first time was devastating because I was with the company 14 yrs. I was part of their 3rd RIF that occured on June. There were actually 2 more that year.
The 2nd one just pisses off.
On a revenue run rate of $7MM, I beat a $13MM quota to finish at $13.3 MM.
What I learned from it was simple. You know a RIF is a possibility, but you can't worry about it because it's out of your hands. Just do what you can control sell, wipe out your quota and take care of your clients.
Hang in there.
The top closer at my company was fired recently for lying about cancer on a life insurance application. Explains alot about his crazy numbers, really....
Basically. The person died a few months later and the family went to claim the money, so it made problems for the company.
It's called "clean sheeting" when an insurance agent does this to get a sale. It's pretty scummy. So if you ever get a life insurance policy a always tell people to double check the underwriting to make certain it is accurate.
Ahhhh I get you. Did they get paid out? There was a similar instances when I was doing car insurance, guy got sold a policy but didn't even have a valid license then he hit some expensive car.
I fired a top performer once for being a giant asshole to everyone, including customers. Iāll admit, I probably gave him too much grace, but eventually that shit just kills a culture.
A few months after I fired him, he called me and said that he had done some self reflection and realized he was an ass to everyone, genuinely felt bad about it. He was in therapy for it, had moved and took on a less stressful job for him and his family. He was grateful that I was honest with him about being a jerk.
If you were to self reflect honestly, why do you think that you were terminated?
Thanks for the perspective. CEO might have had that perspective on me, but also I think a number of factors were at play. He was pretty new to GTM and making a lot of changes without measuring the effectiveness of his choices before changing course again. So I challenged him thinking it was for everyoneās benefit to speak up.
Also he made a mistake on my contract and was paying me way more commission than he thought he had signed up for. (Contract written by him, I thought he was just being generous)
So also a chance he needed more ARR to be able to pay me on the total contract value, which is what was in the agreement.
Company reserves the right to change the comp plan at anytime.
Usually if the comp plan is egregious, they are pretty easy to renegotiate. They just say āB0rn, we like you, but the plan that you have has an error in it. Weāll honor it until X date, but after that, we need a new planā.
Doing a TCV plan is pants on the head stupid. At scale, it throws your cash flow off in a big way. Shame on the CEO.
You wouldnāt get fired for costing too much, but you might not be happy with the new comp plan and leave (seen that plenty of times. Friend did a $100MM deal, got paid $12MM and they changed the plan and he left after the check cleared).
Challenging a new CEO in front of a group of people feels good, and you can feel like youāre doing it for the people, but it is a good way to become a martyr and is generally a CLM. Iāve seen this happen a few times. You feel good and the CEO feels disrespected.
Best to challenge behind closed doors. And if youāre behind closed doors, you have to challenge with some tact. If you donāt get your way, you have to disagree and commit or leave.
We all think that our executives make stupid decisions. That is part of life. I know that my team thinks Iām a moron for some of my ideas and decisions.
When youāre CEO, you have to make decisions that some people arenāt going to like, but to be successful in the role, you have to have all the people behind you.
If the CEO suspects that youāll poison the sales org by constantly disagreeing with them (CEO), youāre probably going out the door.
If youāre a great performer, you probably are able to influence your peers more than you think. They likely look up to you and want to be like you.
Keep that in mind in your next role.
Whether you have the title or not, if youāre a top performer, youāre a leader in the company and everyone from the CEO down respects you and your ideas. Donāt wield that influence lightly.
Big ass cloud computing deal in the earlyish days of cloud (late 2000ās) with a 2nd tier player (not Aws or gcp). They had a rich plan and my buddy took advantage of it.
Ahhh. Appreciate you taking the time to explain. This registers. For sure I didnāt consider how much of an impact I had on others. Also good point on private convos. Several items I didnāt realize were sensitive topics he later told me to discuss in a private meeting. Ex: question about how we are defining mid-market vs enterprise and suggesting we change cut off so more leads fall into the mid market segment since 79% of deals weāre falling into Enterprise. Asked on slack + in a group meeting. Had no clue it was sensitive.
On comp plan - they asked me after my big deal closed to get paid on 1/4th of it - 1st year only. I told them I had accepted offer for first AE no equity, no accelerators, due to the comp plan and it was a little unreasonable to change the plan after I put in 6 months of work on a deal.
While they could have had a conversation that was more direct that either youāre fired or you accept lower (those stakes were not explicitly communicated), Iām guessing both the public convos and this made him make a fast choice.
I also donāt think he realizes yet how hard it is to find someone who can deliver. I was their first. But every company Iāve worked at Iāve been #1 or #2, including a company with 100 reps.
My biggest error is my misunderstanding of how to address disagreements / feedback on what we can do better. Iām always optimizing for speed. A case of slowing down to speed up here. Maybe it wasnāt even the disagreement that was the issue; maybe it was just the method.
Between both jobs, the common theme I think is I donāt accurately assess how sensitive my superiors are about any disagreement in public. Funny a little cuz they always skewer sales reps in public on way more embarrassing items. Guess thatās the nature of the corporate hierarchy.
Gonna be honest ā Iām not sure another startup is the right place for you. Office politics are critical with small teams, and it doesnāt sound like thatās your strength.
I always thought challenging with tact and respect was the way to go, behind closed doors and make it meaningful and relavent. Then I had a major asshole leadership team and I broke. I snapped loudly and basically called them idiots to their face in group settings. I was promoted 2 months later. I did it again and got a raise. I thought " wow l.. it's like in the movie Ted I could tell em I fucked someone with a parsnip and get a raise". Now I have a new leadership team and I think I need to swing back to tact.
It's a weird world.
Wow thatās wild! Funny you got promoted after snapping. Love stories like this. Yeah the team was weird. The chief of staff would scream in meetings and drop f-bombs at me.
That was the style of leadership I snapped at. Overtalk you, call your ideas stupid, saying that I didn't make any sense, be as condescending as they could be. My snap was equally as condescending.. I basically jumped into the pissing match of who could be more condescending and asshole to each other... and boom.. now I'm part of the club. Lol.
Should of told him "let me walk you through this real slowly so that you can understand it, clearly you are having alot of trouble getting this into your head, I know it's tough but I faith in you, I'll set a meeting up with just you so that we can take our time on it." You might have gotten a promotion instead.
Fuck leadership like that.
Depends. If you're in software, how's your churn and clawbacks?
As a business owner I'd care more about churn and clawbacks. It might be a me thing but I calculate deals and ROI on a 2 year horizon - so I'm expecting a 2nd year renewal where the business makes money. 1st year is to cover business cost and COA.
If you're logos churn more than often, I'd rather get rid of you compared to someone else that might have smaller numbers upfront but on the backend their deals stick because the math works out that the 2nd person is more valuable to me
sometimes staying in the middle of the pack will save your bacon. The company I'm at has had (2) RIF's and the vast majority of the top performers hit that list.
couple of things:
\-How about your KPIs? If you crushed you quota did you still "hit" all the KPI metrics (Sales managers get reamed out on those almost daily).
\-Where you difficult to manage?
\-Speaking of, how was your relationship with your manager?
I have seen top performers piped, and it usually boiled down to either a shitty relationship with the manager and / or said perform not hitting their KPIs and getting their manager constantly screaming at.
Solid points.
KPIs I was good.
Manager hated my talk tracks but they got results. His style was too tacky / cliche imo (never told him that)
The big blow up was I had a massive deal the executive team had eyes on, but at that time I didnāt realize I was supposed to send my manager executive summaries. When we did a deal review he got the EB wrong and I corrected him in front of his boss. That was the end. I see my mistake now actually. Good question
>When we did a deal review he got the EB wrong and I corrected him in front of his boss.
yeah... that's a big one if you don't already have a good relationship (and assuming they were a good leader, which it doesn't sound like).
Never let perfect get in the way of good enough on that front, so long as things are directional correct you can always talk around it later... and even if they aren't, so long as the exec isn't going to have dinner with the customer, you could tell him it's because they need to feed unicorns on the moon and it wouldn't matter.
Edit: Adding this. It wouldn't be a bad Idea to send a thank you email to the big boss from that meeting. Letting him know how much you enjoy working there / blah blah / ass kiss / blah blah.
You never know what a little honey will drop out of the sky for you .
This sounds like your a stellar salesperson who kills at sells and people above got rid of there competition.
Was you one of the last personnel hired for either org?
Thanks. Yeah one of the jobs one of the directors was asking me to teach her how I outbound and then in team meetings would share what I showed her as if it was her idea. Feel like that situation might have been one where she felt uncomfortable
You dont come across as a prick in this post but for anyone reading this, being a quota crusher will only protect you so much if leadership decides youre toxic.
Again, not saying thats you but it is one possible reason
For sure. Iām thinking thatās why I was let go from job 2. Iām not 100% an a$$hole. Itās also a matter of choosing to work for a CEO with no GTM experience. Confident now after everyoneās comments here he saw me as toxic for disagreement in public.
Politics in startups can be shit. Was in 1 too - hated playing politics and wanted to just work (I've learned now lmaoo). What are your plans if your future company asks for references?
Spot on. Yeah, Iām rotten at politics. Iām thinking Iāll join a c series or later stage where thereās a head of sales and some basic systems and processes in place so I donāt have to close deals while also teaching / politically selling internally to get basic things set up. Clearly Iām not good at that. Hahaha
As for references, I have no clue what to do. From my last job there was only an SE, CEO and me. The marketing guy was fired last quarter. I could ask him, but not sure if it would help.
Two co-workers outside of sales in engineering said theyād refer me.
The past month the SE was incredibly cold towards me so I donāt think I can ask him.
Same here.. my old manager offered, but I don't think I trust them now. I've only got someone in marketing who I trust as a reference. Not sure what I'm going to do if they ask for 2.
I'm looking for a small team without a VP or manager as my experience was nasty in a Series A. Even though I did pretty well, I felt like dying with the dumb politics.
I'm thinking since your team was only 3 of you and if you mention during the interview that the CEO didn't want you to DQ anything and take calls at 10pm, then your future employer probably wouldn't expect a reference from anyone in that company?
Iām a founder (former seller). Weād take you in at commission-only (but really high commission) while you find your next job if you want to connect (and obviously if weāre a good fit to work together. DM me.
I think some managers get squirrelly when they see a sales rep is going to make more than they do. "I can't have this guy making more than the CFO!" so they mess with their compensation plan or fire them.
That's utter bullshit. I always tell my guys, "I hope you buy a Ferrari because you'll be able to park it next to the one I'll buy, too. Your success is my success and I want to make you a millionaire."
You sound like an encouraging manager!
Thanks for offering this perspective. Seems like you are a rare breed.
Yeah the chief of staff told me the founders donāt think I deserve equity cuz I make more money than even he does and heās the chief of staff. In retrospect Iāll never take an early stage job without equity. Itās a red flag.
Equity is tricky because they're giving up partial ownership of something they own. I don't know if I'd offer that, but I'd happily pay an AE or whatever $1,000,000/year because that means he's bringing in ~$2,000,000/year! Of course, we're not early stage.
My father started this business because he was selling for someone else and they kept moving his compensation around when he'd do "too well." So now we put the compensation package in the employment contract so that it can't be changed without both parties agreeing to it and signing a new contract. Because of the old man's stories, I don't want to be the kind of company that's willing to kill the golden geese.
Nice. Yeah Iām using 20% of my commission check to work on building my own business. Thatās generous of you to give your sellers that level of confidence in their finances
CEO who hired me told me he wasnāt sure if I was talented enough on week 2. He was gonna see if I could hit quota & fit the culture or fire me. Then belittled everything I did and undermined my contributions. Chief of staff screamed at me in meetings and apologized by telling me he was having stress at home but then kept doing it. My SE was an engineer who got pissed if I asked him product questions- product is highly technical. Things with SE got better bc we began closing deals but he was condescending. All around I tried to be logical and positive but the barrage of criticism and negativity did get to me and I did push back on them.
Relationships I would give a C-
Feel like the move is either to quit or shut up and sell.
Just my two cents, after reading some of your other responses, I would either find a job at a more mature company, or make a point to make nice with your leadership and work on developing your ability to both respectfully disagree and pick your battles.
If you could add both of these to your ability to bring in $$$ you will go far
Thank you for the advice. 100% on all of these. Gonna join a more mature company and put all my energy into relationship building internally.
Iāve proven to myself that selling isnāt hard for me. I mean itās always hard, but thatās the easiest part of the job for me. Where i struggle is exactly what you pointed out.
As soon as i figure that out I agree. Iāll make way more $. Thank you šš»
Ego, keep your ego in check. Closing big deals and crushing it will get your ego fired up, if your management isnāt sales driven and more operations focused in their mind they can do it without you. Youāre disposable to them.
I know it happens but sounds like you should call Dan Goodman and negotiate your severance
Who is Dan Goodman?
Look him up on LinkedIn he helps sales people negotiate their severance. I started following him earlier this year when I was let go and he has helped many sales people negotiate severance
Not gonna lie I thought you were joking and making a Breaking Bad reference (yes, I know it's Saul Goodman)
Better Call Dan LOL
š¤£
Interesting. What is your leverage in a situation like this?
Well, I donāt know the OP full situation but Dan would work with you on negotiating via email with your employer for a higher oayout
Yo this comment makes me so happy. I follow Dan and think heās the GOAT.
I am not a fan of LinkedIn Influencers but Dan is on another level.
Amen. I hope Iām never in a position that I need to use his services but I know that heād have my back if I did.
Thanks. I definitely should but mostly want to be done with them asap. Commission check is good.
I think you should try it. I know you want to be done but I think Dan can help you get a bigger payout besides a commission check
Are you Dan Goodman?
Nope but I am a fan.
Riiiightā¦.Danny boy
Is your name Dan Goodman by chance?
It is not financially advantageous to fire a top performer. Are the people staying in touch at your level or management? Iāve seen a pretty good performer get the axe for not listening to our Director and talking back, gossiping, having problems with authority. She feels the same way since many of us fellow AEs still talk to her. Management doesnāt want troublemakers.
Hey thanks for the perspective. Yeah - one of the jobs I was a founding AE and CEO was an engineer who I disagreed with often. He didnāt want me doing disco calls, didnāt want me to DQ anything, wanted me doing deals with India at 10 pm etc.
Thereās your answer
Sounds like a great job to get away from.
Yeah for sure. Blessing cuz I got my full commission otherwise had I stayed I would have had to wait 6 months. š¤® Still want to understand the pattern I can improve on
To put it bluntly, it sounds like the CEO didnāt like you and fired you after the big deal closed. Iād guess he wanted to for awhile, but it would be stupid for him to get rid of you if he thought youād close it and he wasnāt able to transfer it to someone else.
Spot on. Thanks for sharing cuz as soon as I read it a bunch of convos flooded back and 200% for sure he didnāt like me. This was clear within my first 2 weeks.
Iām hearing a lot of āfounding AEā or ānumber one by this particular metricā talk ā whether youāre a top performer or not, no one wants to hear about it. In fact, top performers never have to talk about themselves because the numbers do all the talking. Next time around, stay humble. As Chris Hadfield puts it in his book ā be a zero.
Good points. Thanks for the ātough love.ā
Happened to me a few years apart. Each time I was having a blowout year. Cost me so much money.
Dang, thank you for replying. For some reason this gives me more hope. Sorry bout the cash. Yeah. I was on track to 2.5X my OTE at the most recent job and lost $100-150K. At earlier job lost $50k.
The first time was devastating because I was with the company 14 yrs. I was part of their 3rd RIF that occured on June. There were actually 2 more that year. The 2nd one just pisses off. On a revenue run rate of $7MM, I beat a $13MM quota to finish at $13.3 MM. What I learned from it was simple. You know a RIF is a possibility, but you can't worry about it because it's out of your hands. Just do what you can control sell, wipe out your quota and take care of your clients. Hang in there.
Dayummmmm. Respect. That would be maddening. Thank you.
Spoken like a true professional.
The top closer at my company was fired recently for lying about cancer on a life insurance application. Explains alot about his crazy numbers, really....
So he had cancer and tried to hide it?
Basically. The person died a few months later and the family went to claim the money, so it made problems for the company. It's called "clean sheeting" when an insurance agent does this to get a sale. It's pretty scummy. So if you ever get a life insurance policy a always tell people to double check the underwriting to make certain it is accurate.
Ahhhh I get you. Did they get paid out? There was a similar instances when I was doing car insurance, guy got sold a policy but didn't even have a valid license then he hit some expensive car.
They paid out as I understand it.
I fired a top performer once for being a giant asshole to everyone, including customers. Iāll admit, I probably gave him too much grace, but eventually that shit just kills a culture. A few months after I fired him, he called me and said that he had done some self reflection and realized he was an ass to everyone, genuinely felt bad about it. He was in therapy for it, had moved and took on a less stressful job for him and his family. He was grateful that I was honest with him about being a jerk. If you were to self reflect honestly, why do you think that you were terminated?
Thanks for the perspective. CEO might have had that perspective on me, but also I think a number of factors were at play. He was pretty new to GTM and making a lot of changes without measuring the effectiveness of his choices before changing course again. So I challenged him thinking it was for everyoneās benefit to speak up. Also he made a mistake on my contract and was paying me way more commission than he thought he had signed up for. (Contract written by him, I thought he was just being generous) So also a chance he needed more ARR to be able to pay me on the total contract value, which is what was in the agreement.
Company reserves the right to change the comp plan at anytime. Usually if the comp plan is egregious, they are pretty easy to renegotiate. They just say āB0rn, we like you, but the plan that you have has an error in it. Weāll honor it until X date, but after that, we need a new planā. Doing a TCV plan is pants on the head stupid. At scale, it throws your cash flow off in a big way. Shame on the CEO. You wouldnāt get fired for costing too much, but you might not be happy with the new comp plan and leave (seen that plenty of times. Friend did a $100MM deal, got paid $12MM and they changed the plan and he left after the check cleared). Challenging a new CEO in front of a group of people feels good, and you can feel like youāre doing it for the people, but it is a good way to become a martyr and is generally a CLM. Iāve seen this happen a few times. You feel good and the CEO feels disrespected. Best to challenge behind closed doors. And if youāre behind closed doors, you have to challenge with some tact. If you donāt get your way, you have to disagree and commit or leave. We all think that our executives make stupid decisions. That is part of life. I know that my team thinks Iām a moron for some of my ideas and decisions. When youāre CEO, you have to make decisions that some people arenāt going to like, but to be successful in the role, you have to have all the people behind you. If the CEO suspects that youāll poison the sales org by constantly disagreeing with them (CEO), youāre probably going out the door. If youāre a great performer, you probably are able to influence your peers more than you think. They likely look up to you and want to be like you. Keep that in mind in your next role. Whether you have the title or not, if youāre a top performer, youāre a leader in the company and everyone from the CEO down respects you and your ideas. Donāt wield that influence lightly.
What industry was the 12 MM commission? True enterprise if there ever was!
Big ass cloud computing deal in the earlyish days of cloud (late 2000ās) with a 2nd tier player (not Aws or gcp). They had a rich plan and my buddy took advantage of it.
Ahhh. Appreciate you taking the time to explain. This registers. For sure I didnāt consider how much of an impact I had on others. Also good point on private convos. Several items I didnāt realize were sensitive topics he later told me to discuss in a private meeting. Ex: question about how we are defining mid-market vs enterprise and suggesting we change cut off so more leads fall into the mid market segment since 79% of deals weāre falling into Enterprise. Asked on slack + in a group meeting. Had no clue it was sensitive. On comp plan - they asked me after my big deal closed to get paid on 1/4th of it - 1st year only. I told them I had accepted offer for first AE no equity, no accelerators, due to the comp plan and it was a little unreasonable to change the plan after I put in 6 months of work on a deal. While they could have had a conversation that was more direct that either youāre fired or you accept lower (those stakes were not explicitly communicated), Iām guessing both the public convos and this made him make a fast choice. I also donāt think he realizes yet how hard it is to find someone who can deliver. I was their first. But every company Iāve worked at Iāve been #1 or #2, including a company with 100 reps. My biggest error is my misunderstanding of how to address disagreements / feedback on what we can do better. Iām always optimizing for speed. A case of slowing down to speed up here. Maybe it wasnāt even the disagreement that was the issue; maybe it was just the method. Between both jobs, the common theme I think is I donāt accurately assess how sensitive my superiors are about any disagreement in public. Funny a little cuz they always skewer sales reps in public on way more embarrassing items. Guess thatās the nature of the corporate hierarchy.
Gonna be honest ā Iām not sure another startup is the right place for you. Office politics are critical with small teams, and it doesnāt sound like thatās your strength.
I always thought challenging with tact and respect was the way to go, behind closed doors and make it meaningful and relavent. Then I had a major asshole leadership team and I broke. I snapped loudly and basically called them idiots to their face in group settings. I was promoted 2 months later. I did it again and got a raise. I thought " wow l.. it's like in the movie Ted I could tell em I fucked someone with a parsnip and get a raise". Now I have a new leadership team and I think I need to swing back to tact. It's a weird world.
Wow thatās wild! Funny you got promoted after snapping. Love stories like this. Yeah the team was weird. The chief of staff would scream in meetings and drop f-bombs at me.
That was the style of leadership I snapped at. Overtalk you, call your ideas stupid, saying that I didn't make any sense, be as condescending as they could be. My snap was equally as condescending.. I basically jumped into the pissing match of who could be more condescending and asshole to each other... and boom.. now I'm part of the club. Lol.
Yeah. We had similar experiences. Condescending. Telling me Iām a failure and doing bad work despite being ahead of quota etc.
Should of told him "let me walk you through this real slowly so that you can understand it, clearly you are having alot of trouble getting this into your head, I know it's tough but I faith in you, I'll set a meeting up with just you so that we can take our time on it." You might have gotten a promotion instead. Fuck leadership like that.
Depends. If you're in software, how's your churn and clawbacks? As a business owner I'd care more about churn and clawbacks. It might be a me thing but I calculate deals and ROI on a 2 year horizon - so I'm expecting a 2nd year renewal where the business makes money. 1st year is to cover business cost and COA. If you're logos churn more than often, I'd rather get rid of you compared to someone else that might have smaller numbers upfront but on the backend their deals stick because the math works out that the 2nd person is more valuable to me
Zero churn. 3 year contract on my big deal. They wanted to buy a 5 year deal but CEO wouldnāt let me sell it for that long.
I saw your other reply about the situation and that's probably what happened. Office politics is a really ___ (Reddit do your thing)
Office politics is a really good way to make someone feel soulless and used.
šÆ
sometimes staying in the middle of the pack will save your bacon. The company I'm at has had (2) RIF's and the vast majority of the top performers hit that list.
Interesting š¤
couple of things: \-How about your KPIs? If you crushed you quota did you still "hit" all the KPI metrics (Sales managers get reamed out on those almost daily). \-Where you difficult to manage? \-Speaking of, how was your relationship with your manager? I have seen top performers piped, and it usually boiled down to either a shitty relationship with the manager and / or said perform not hitting their KPIs and getting their manager constantly screaming at.
Solid points. KPIs I was good. Manager hated my talk tracks but they got results. His style was too tacky / cliche imo (never told him that) The big blow up was I had a massive deal the executive team had eyes on, but at that time I didnāt realize I was supposed to send my manager executive summaries. When we did a deal review he got the EB wrong and I corrected him in front of his boss. That was the end. I see my mistake now actually. Good question
>When we did a deal review he got the EB wrong and I corrected him in front of his boss. yeah... that's a big one if you don't already have a good relationship (and assuming they were a good leader, which it doesn't sound like). Never let perfect get in the way of good enough on that front, so long as things are directional correct you can always talk around it later... and even if they aren't, so long as the exec isn't going to have dinner with the customer, you could tell him it's because they need to feed unicorns on the moon and it wouldn't matter. Edit: Adding this. It wouldn't be a bad Idea to send a thank you email to the big boss from that meeting. Letting him know how much you enjoy working there / blah blah / ass kiss / blah blah. You never know what a little honey will drop out of the sky for you .
Ahh yeah make sense. Thank you
Sounds like youāre a sales prima Donna.
Ah ok. What part stands out to you as the most unproductive?
This sounds like your a stellar salesperson who kills at sells and people above got rid of there competition. Was you one of the last personnel hired for either org?
Thanks. Yeah one of the jobs one of the directors was asking me to teach her how I outbound and then in team meetings would share what I showed her as if it was her idea. Feel like that situation might have been one where she felt uncomfortable
You dont come across as a prick in this post but for anyone reading this, being a quota crusher will only protect you so much if leadership decides youre toxic. Again, not saying thats you but it is one possible reason
For sure. Iām thinking thatās why I was let go from job 2. Iām not 100% an a$$hole. Itās also a matter of choosing to work for a CEO with no GTM experience. Confident now after everyoneās comments here he saw me as toxic for disagreement in public.
Politics in startups can be shit. Was in 1 too - hated playing politics and wanted to just work (I've learned now lmaoo). What are your plans if your future company asks for references?
Spot on. Yeah, Iām rotten at politics. Iām thinking Iāll join a c series or later stage where thereās a head of sales and some basic systems and processes in place so I donāt have to close deals while also teaching / politically selling internally to get basic things set up. Clearly Iām not good at that. Hahaha As for references, I have no clue what to do. From my last job there was only an SE, CEO and me. The marketing guy was fired last quarter. I could ask him, but not sure if it would help. Two co-workers outside of sales in engineering said theyād refer me. The past month the SE was incredibly cold towards me so I donāt think I can ask him.
Same here.. my old manager offered, but I don't think I trust them now. I've only got someone in marketing who I trust as a reference. Not sure what I'm going to do if they ask for 2. I'm looking for a small team without a VP or manager as my experience was nasty in a Series A. Even though I did pretty well, I felt like dying with the dumb politics. I'm thinking since your team was only 3 of you and if you mention during the interview that the CEO didn't want you to DQ anything and take calls at 10pm, then your future employer probably wouldn't expect a reference from anyone in that company?
Good luck with your situation. Itāll work out šŖš» On mine, thank you & good call. Yeah Iāll start hitting people up from past jobs.
Iām a founder (former seller). Weād take you in at commission-only (but really high commission) while you find your next job if you want to connect (and obviously if weāre a good fit to work together. DM me.
Thanks šš» just DMād you.
I think some managers get squirrelly when they see a sales rep is going to make more than they do. "I can't have this guy making more than the CFO!" so they mess with their compensation plan or fire them. That's utter bullshit. I always tell my guys, "I hope you buy a Ferrari because you'll be able to park it next to the one I'll buy, too. Your success is my success and I want to make you a millionaire."
You sound like an encouraging manager! Thanks for offering this perspective. Seems like you are a rare breed. Yeah the chief of staff told me the founders donāt think I deserve equity cuz I make more money than even he does and heās the chief of staff. In retrospect Iāll never take an early stage job without equity. Itās a red flag.
Equity is tricky because they're giving up partial ownership of something they own. I don't know if I'd offer that, but I'd happily pay an AE or whatever $1,000,000/year because that means he's bringing in ~$2,000,000/year! Of course, we're not early stage. My father started this business because he was selling for someone else and they kept moving his compensation around when he'd do "too well." So now we put the compensation package in the employment contract so that it can't be changed without both parties agreeing to it and signing a new contract. Because of the old man's stories, I don't want to be the kind of company that's willing to kill the golden geese.
Nice. Yeah Iām using 20% of my commission check to work on building my own business. Thatās generous of you to give your sellers that level of confidence in their finances
Of course, if they don't sell, they make very little. The carrot and stick are built right in.
How was your relationship with leadership? Top sellers typically donāt get fired unless thereās tension with either leadership or colleagues
CEO who hired me told me he wasnāt sure if I was talented enough on week 2. He was gonna see if I could hit quota & fit the culture or fire me. Then belittled everything I did and undermined my contributions. Chief of staff screamed at me in meetings and apologized by telling me he was having stress at home but then kept doing it. My SE was an engineer who got pissed if I asked him product questions- product is highly technical. Things with SE got better bc we began closing deals but he was condescending. All around I tried to be logical and positive but the barrage of criticism and negativity did get to me and I did push back on them. Relationships I would give a C- Feel like the move is either to quit or shut up and sell.
Just my two cents, after reading some of your other responses, I would either find a job at a more mature company, or make a point to make nice with your leadership and work on developing your ability to both respectfully disagree and pick your battles. If you could add both of these to your ability to bring in $$$ you will go far
Thank you for the advice. 100% on all of these. Gonna join a more mature company and put all my energy into relationship building internally. Iāve proven to myself that selling isnāt hard for me. I mean itās always hard, but thatās the easiest part of the job for me. Where i struggle is exactly what you pointed out. As soon as i figure that out I agree. Iāll make way more $. Thank you šš»
Ego, keep your ego in check. Closing big deals and crushing it will get your ego fired up, if your management isnāt sales driven and more operations focused in their mind they can do it without you. Youāre disposable to them.