The scariest door-to-door sales story yet

Published: Wed, 06/01/22

June 1, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. We hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend, but since everyone had Monday off, today feels more like a Tuesday than a Wednesday, which means Friday will feel more like a Thursday, and Saturday — well, uhhh, this is getting confusing. In this week’s newsletter, we interviewed the founder of RepVue to find out which trends are taking place in the sales world, found out the truth about those “free” MLM cars, and gave some advice to a rep who can’t seem to close any deals at their new startup. Let’s go.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

50-125

The ideal length of a sales email is between 50 and 125 words.

Source: Copper

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

Have you ever wondered about the real story behind those “free” MLM cars? A recent article in MotorBiscuit dives into the truth about the supposed four-wheeled rewards given to top-sellers. And as you can imagine, (like most other things in the MLM world), not everything is as it seems. You can read the article here.
Think you’ve walked a lot of steps in the past few weeks? A car salesman from Bristol, England, recently completed a 170-mile trek to Everest Base Camp through the Himalayan Mountains. The trip took 12 grueling days and raised almost $15k for charity. You can read the whole story here.

FEATURE

An interview with Ryan Walsh, CEO of RepVue, the world’s largest sales organization ratings platform

There are millions of people who make a living in sales, but until recently, there’s been little transparency in terms of compensation and selling environment. RepVue has been leading the charge to change that, offering insights into thousands of B2B sales organizations, and allowing salespeople to get a peek into a company’s sales culture before making a decision on whether or not to join.

We wanted to understand the big picture and get a better idea of what’s happening with sales organizations at large, so we reached out to Ryan Walsh, founder and CEO of RepVue, to pick his brain. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us your story. How did you come to start RepVue? What was your journey?

When sales professionals are evaluating their career decisions, the cards are stacked against them. The hiring organization has tons and tons of information about the candidate, but the candidate has minimal insight into the true selling environment of the organization. You're relying on information the organization is willing to provide, and sometimes, that's minimal, and even worse, sometimes it can be purposely misleading. After 20 years of selling and leading sales organizations, everything from an IC to the CRO of a public SaaS company, I wanted to dedicate the next phase of my career to helping uplevel as many sales professionals' careers as possible by balancing this information flow. With RepVue, a sales professional can access everything they need to make an informed career decision, and never have to worry that they're being 'sold' during the process.

What are the best industries for sales reps to get into if they want to make a lot of money? What are the barriers to entry to some of these industries? (Are they difficult to break into)?

Obviously software has been really hot the past few years, and despite the current market conditions, that is going to continue into the future. While that's not a surprise to folks, let's go a bit deeper. First, it's really important to note that as you advance in your sales career, it's important to purposely look for sales roles where your average deal size is growing. Average deal size is very much tied to the top end of compensation. You're not going to be able to break the $1M barrier closing a bunch of $3k annual deals. But that's also a gradual thing – if you're doing $3k deals now, look to parlay that into your next role where you're selling $15k deals, then $65k deals, etc. Another consideration is the sub-industry. We've seen some meaningful increases in compensation in the cybersecurity space over the past year+. First of all, many of these opportunities do come with big deal sizes, (selling to the enterprise), and second, you just need to watch the news. A data breach or similar issue has huge consequences, and I think it's been prioritized for many large enterprises. Prioritization = budget. Budget = spend. Spend = commissions.

Much has been made about so-called “Great Resignation.” Are companies with aggressive comp plans seeing less turnover than those whose comp plans fall short, or is there just massive turnover in every sector and company?

There certainly is a lot of turnover in sales and across sectors and it's been that way for years. I think the great resignation is more likely causing other job functions to 'catch up' with sales. Over the past few years the supply of sales professionals has been badly outpaced by the demand for sales professionals, and we're seeing HEAVY recruiting. The downstream impact there is that with the competitive recruiting, new hires are brought on board at higher compensation than existing team members. This then leads to dissatisfaction and those team members are more likely to 'keep their DMs open’ to recruiters. So there's been this kind of endless cycle that's gotten worse, causing not only attrition to increase, but also pushing the compensation increases to rates that we've not seen in recent history.

What advice would you give to sales reps who want to maximize their income? What should they be doing, both in the short term, and in the long term?

The organization, product, and addressable market that you're selling into will have a much bigger impact on someone's earnings than they might anticipate. The days of "I can sell anything and get to P-club" are no more. This means that it's more important than ever to do meaningful research on an organization before you get in the seat. Talk to customers, listen to recorded sales calls, ask to see performance dashboards, talk to former reps. Evaluate the market, ask deep questions about the value proposition. Remember, throw a great team at a bad market and the market wins every time.

What trends are you seeing in terms of sales compensation? Are companies becoming more or less “generous” in terms of how much they’re paying reps, or are things staying about the same?

Other than increases in total compensation, I don't think there's been much if any innovation on compensation structure over the past 5 to 10 years. We're still seeing, for account execs, mostly a 50-50 split, we're seeing accelerators over 100%. Things to watch for though, particularly when looking into new roles are: what is the ramp period - how long is it, and how does it work? What are the mechanics of the compensation plan (monthly, quarterly, annual), how do the accelerators work and are the decelerators; what are the clawback provisions, if any; is there any compensation for out year business you've signed? I typically would recommend A) getting a copy of the compensation plan for the current year, as well as a copy of the compensation plan from the prior year period, so you can not only evaluate the mechanics, but also understand how big of a change there was in the plan.

TOGETHER WITH LEADIQ

The number one reason most sales reps shy away from writing personalized emails is that it takes too much time.

But what if you could send 30 or more emails a day, have a positive response rate above 10%, and leave plenty of time to hit your other KPIs?

The team at LeadIQ has been able to hit these numbers or better, consistently, even with the average email reply rates steadily dropping to below 1%.

Let’s take a look at how they do this in 5 easy steps.

P.S. LeadIQ's chrome extension is free to use for as long as you’d like! Pair it together with their personalization tips, and prospecting has never been easier.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

When was the first (digital) CRM created?

A. 1978
B. 1901
C. 1987
D. 1982

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

"The weirdest thing that's ever happened to me in sales happened when I spent a summer out west selling solar and security door-to-door. I went to these people’s house on a super hot day, and most of the people’s homes had a/c, but when these people opened the door and invited me in, it was swelteringly hot, and there was a super weird smell that was almost dirt-like in the house.

So the woman (who was very nice) invited me in and I walked in and and all of the shades were drawn, and she told me to sit on the couch and that they were definitely thinking about doing solar at some point, but that money was tight and they didn’t know if they could swing it. Her husband (or whoever he was) also came in and I remember that he had a super long ponytail, down to his waist.

So I’m hanging out on the couch talking to her, and she keeps looking from my face to something that’s above my left shoulder. So after she does this a few times, I turn to look and there is this monstrous-looking lizard staring me in the face. The thing looked huge, like at least 3 feet long. And as soon as I see this thing, I let out this absolutely primal scream and hopped off the couch, and started brushing myself off. And the lizard is just looking at me, and the man and woman are both looking at me like I was crazy.

I quickly apologized, and they started apologizing too, then I caught a glimpse of the kitchen behind the guy’s head and saw that there was another lizard just hanging out on the counter. I excused myself and said I was really sorry but I had to go, and basically ran out the door. They called out to me and said there was nothing to be afraid of but I just couldn’t handle it. As soon as I got outside, I ran to meet up with the rest of my team. That was my only summer doing door-to-door sales.

Anonymous, 28 Texas

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- May 2022

WORTH A PEEK

If you like Sales Humor, you should check out Sales Feed, a new media network (and newsletter) for B2B reps that’s educational, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. They produce TikToks, memes, and original series such as Sales Tech Talks, Sales Stuff Explained, and more. You can follow them on YouTube and your favorite social channels, and sign up for their newsletter which comes out once a week. It’s (almost) as good as The Quota! Check it out here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

A few months ago, I left a position at a big company to join a small startup. Part of the appeal for me was the stock options (if the company blows up I can get a big payout), and the fact that I thought I could have a bigger impact on the company rather than just being a cog inside a giant wheel.

Since I’ve started here, I’ve been hit with a harsh reality: our customers aren’t interested in paying for the software. We book meetings and everyone is friendly, but when it comes time to commit, no one has the budget. I am getting the impression that customers see what we’re offering as a “nice-to-have,” and not a “need-to-have.”

I am getting a solid base, and we have enough funding to last us at least a few years, but I’m getting nervous that I joined a company that has no future as a paid product (we have a free version, and a lot of our leads are from our free user pool). Obviously, I am not an executive, so I am not part of the decision making process, but I feel like things are just going to get worse if we don’t do something.

Should I stay here and see what happens or go work somewhere where there’s actually a salable product being made? I just don’t want to waste my time if there’s no future here. What are your thoughts?

Unsure in Washington State

Dear Unsure,

It sounds like your company hasn’t yet found product-market-fit. Many startups pivot, changing their approach, and looking for that irresistible offering, until they do.

The way we see it, you have three options, which we’ve ranked from worst to best:

Option 1: Stay where you are and keep doing what you’re doing – hitting the phones, trying to sell a product that customers don’t want, and living off your base pay, while hoping that eventually something changes.

Option 2: Find a different job selling a product that has a proven customer base. You’ll have wasted a few months of your life, but learned a valuable lesson about doing more research on a company before accepting a new role.

Option 3: Set up a meeting with the CEO of your company and the head of product. You are the best point of contact between the company and its (potential) customers, so you’re in a great position to inform the people who make product decisions about what customers do and don’t want. This is the only way your company will get to product-market-fit – if they just poke around aimlessly without listening to their customers, they’re likely to run out of funding before anything clicks.

Option 3 is the best place to start, and if it doesn’t work out, you can always move on. But if you actively try to make a difference instead of just sitting back and assuming you can’t impact the trajectory of the company, then not only will you decrease the chances of making your stock options worth something some day, but you’ll also be ignoring one of your own stated reasons for joining a startup. Good luck!