Agreeing with a prospect can sometimes backfire

Published: Wed, 06/15/22

June 15, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back to The Quota, where we try to remind salespeople that there are millions of us out there – prospecting, following-up, and muttering “what the @#%&” under our breath at least a dozen times a day. In this week’s issue, we’ll cover the discontent at Google Cloud, find out which daytime TV host did a stint in sales, and give some advice to a lawyer who’s thinking about taking the plunge into sales. Let’s go.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

The percentage of salespeople who say that budget is either the first or second most common reason why stronger opportunities fall apart.

Source: Sales Insights Lab

SALES ROUNDUP

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

Before Kevin Hart became one of the most successful comedians in the world, he worked as a shoe salesman. In fact, it was his manager who first convinced him to try stand-up comedy. Now, Hart is producing a comedy series called “True to Size,” about his time selling sneakers at Sneaker World. The show will be set in 1998, long before the Zappos of the world moved shoe sales online. You can read more about the show here.
Wharton psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant says there’s an unusual way that salespeople can close more deals: getting in touch with those within their professional networks with whom they have weak-ties. In one experiment, an organization matched two random salespeople for a weekly lunch with no particular agenda. Four months later, the average salesperson who took part in the experiment had 24% higher revenue. Bizarre. You can read the entire article here.

FEATURE

"Thomas Kurian" by Oracle PR is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Google Cloud reimagined its sales team. But it came at a price.

Cloud computing has redefined the way we do business, and few companies have had the resources to push the boundaries of cloud further than Google. Yet when it comes to their sales department, some members of the Google Cloud sales organization say that their employer hasn't innovated – it’s regressed.

According to Business Insider, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian set out to overhaul the tech giant’s sales team after he took the reins in 2019. In addition to a slew of new hires, Kurian cut base salaries across the board in order to add robust bonus incentives for employees who exceeded their quotas -- higher upside, lower downside. But while this compensation model for salespeople mirrors companies like Microsoft, it has left some current employees of Google Cloud unsettled.

“The majority of people got more money and a lot more anxiety,” one anonymous employee told Insider. “They don’t know the outcome until it’s over.”

One chief issue with this new pay structure is a newfound sense of cut-throat competition among the sales staff. Sales teams at Google Cloud are separated by the size of the corporate clients they deal with, but a “small” account one day could become a “medium” account the next. Before, a growing client could stick with the sales team they were already comfortable with, but now sales teams are pressured to poach clients from each other as soon as they are able to do so. Sales teams are given credit for moving a client along to another team, but many employees feel it’s unfair for one team to get rewarded for closing a deal when another team did the hard work of building the relationship with the client to begin with.

Exacerbating this issue are Google Cloud’s own internal sales tools. It may seem ironic that a tech company like Google can’t develop reliable software for its salespeople, but sure enough, less than 40% of Google’s North American sales staff viewed their software favorably in a survey last March. While these sales tools should help employees track sales quotas, the software is so bug-ridden that it’s hard to even interpret the data. One employee commented that an account could be labeled as high potential in the software’s analytics tool when it’s actually a small business with no potential for further growth.

According to Insider, all of this compounds the heart of the problem – employees are faced with perpetual uncertainty about their jobs, though one spokesperson for Google Cloud has debated these claims, stating their average payout is “higher than industry average.”

"Nearly 90 percent of Cloud employees say this is a great place to work,” the Spokesperson told Business Insider, “and we have one of the lowest attrition rates at the company. Last year, we received hundreds of thousands of resumes because we provide the culture, compensation and experience top talent are looking for."

While there’s no doubt that a Google Cloud sales job is, and will remain, a sought-after sales role, the changes made in recent years appear to have affected the company culture, and brought it more in line with some of the other legacy tech giants -- cut-throat competition, a focus on profits and growth above all else, and a siloed organization that doesn’t put much stock in employee feedback.

That being said, there are plenty of reps who thrive in that sort of environment, and as long as Google Cloud keeps paying out huge commissions, it’s unlikely there will ever be a shortage of reps clamoring to get their foot in the door.

TOGETHER WITH SALESROOM

It’s a rare occasion when you come across a piece of software that makes you say “wow.” This is especially true when it comes to business software.

But we did just that when we got early access to Salesroom, an interactive video-conferencing platform for sales professionals. It really is a special product.

Now we want to extend the same early access to you, The Quota audience.

Seriously... Salesroom is coming out of stealth mode next week, but we got permission to tell you first!

So what makes the product so great? Honestly, almost everything! Unlike Zoom or Google Meet, it’s designed specifically for salespeople, with features that sales reps will love:

Personalized lobby and virtual meeting rooms
Real-time transcription, recommendations, question detection, and next-step guidance
Sharable video clips from each meeting
Rich Reactions to keep the dialog more human
People insights and key traits of your buyers in real-time
Meeting agenda and goal-setting
'Off the record' room where recording and machine learnings are automatically off
Integration with calendars, Salesforce, Gong, Slack, and more

It’s a salesperson-first product that’s easy to love, and it’ll impress your prospects -- sort of like taking them out to a high-end steak dinner!

But don’t take our word for it, check out Salesroom here -- you’ll be hearing a lot about them in the future.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Which legendary daytime TV host did a stint as a vacuum salesperson?

A. Oprah
B. Dr. Phil
C. Ellen DeGeneres
D. Jerry Springer

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).

“When I was first starting out in sales, a little over ten years ago, I was trained by our company’s sales manager to always agree with the customer, no matter how absurd their position was. This was the mentality back then: no matter what they say, say yes, and then work your way back to closing the deal.

I was an outside sales rep, selling B2B telecom services. One day, during one of my first few weeks going out unsupervised, I was knocking doors at small businesses and came upon a local furniture store. When I went inside, the owner was talking to someone who appeared to be his friend – it wasn’t a customer conversation. I waited politely until he acknowledged me, then started asking questions about his phone and internet services.

After he answered a few questions, he interrupted my follow-up question and asked if I was from [name of my company at the time]. I said yes, and he said, “Well, did you know that you guys completely screwed me over last time we used you?” I didn’t say anything. Then he said, “Oh yeah, and the woman who owns the store next door had an even worse experience,” and then he launched into this long conversation about how we were incredibly unethical and what not.

Since I wasn't really sure what to do (I wanted to walk out but the guy was intent on talking to me), I went back to my training and started agreeing with him. He said something like, “Do you know how predatory your company is?” and I said, “I can see why you might feel that way, sir,” hoping that it would cool him down.

Instead, he got angrier, and said, “So you can see why I’d think your company was predatory but yet you’re still standing here trying to talk me into buying your services?” And the guy’s friend just started laughing, but the owner was getting more and more heated. Finally, he told me to leave and to note that no one from my company was allowed to ever step foot back there again.

I’ve since left that company, and no longer use the “agree with them about everything,” approach. Total sales fail.”

Anonymous Location Withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- June 2022

WORTH A PEEK

Do you love sales content but hate having to sift through a bunch of boring and spammy garbage? Then check out The Juice! It’s a platform for sales (and marketing) professionals that brings together the best content (podcasts, guides, toolkits, etc.) from across the web into one simple platform. The best part: you can filter out the content that you can’t stand (webinars anyone?). You can check them out here.

Looking for another underrated sales movie? Check out Thank You for Smoking, a 2005 flick featuring Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliot, Rob Lowe, and William H. Macy. Eckhart plays a lobbyist for big tobacco who is trying to balance the responsibilities of his job with being a good father to his son. While he’s not exactly a salesman, this movie most certainly falls into the category of sales flicks. You can 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,

I'm writing because I'm very curious about the world of sales. Currently, I work as an attorney at a technology company. I’ve been an attorney for most of my professional career, which has been about twelve years. My job now is mostly to review contracts, which puts me in close contact with salespeople (who are the ones who sell and negotiate them), along with some limited compliance work.

The truth of the matter is that I don’t like being a lawyer. I never have. It’s something I chose to do because there seemed to be good job opportunities, and I saw it as a way to ensure that I would always have a sought-after career. But I’m at the point where it’s mostly miserable, and I’m looking to make a switch.

What I don’t like about the job is that I have limited interactions with people, and when I do, they’re usually trying to hurry me up, or getting angry at me for asking questions (salespeople are not very patient). I’m a very outgoing person, and since the start of covid, I’ve been absolutely miserable working from home and staring at text on a screen for hours on end.

I also don’t like the tedium of the job – most contracts are essentially the same, so it’s a lot of repetitive work, with an occasional extremely complicated problem thrown in the mix for good measure.

I make good money in my current role, but I have also seen the payouts that our reps are making on their contracts, and many of them make more than me. I can get a raise every year, but we’re talking percentages, while the salespeople can increase their income by six figures if they close enough big deals.

Do you think I should make the switch into sales? I figure that if I’m going to change careers, it makes sense to transition into a field where I won’t have to take a pay cut – even if I will make less than I make now for the first few years. What do you think?

Curious in Massachusetts

Dear Curious,

If you’re at a point in your career where you describe it as “mostly miserable,” then it’s probably time to make a change. You’ve seen the types of paychecks that salespeople can make, and since you’re a person who thrives off socializing with others, it makes sense that you’re interested in finding out if sales is a good fit for you.

But let’s make one thing perfectly clear about those big paychecks: they don’t just hand them to you. You have to do a lot, and put up with a lot, to earn them.

Prospecting, getting rejected, being ignored, dealing with uncertainty, pitching, getting ghosted, negotiating, cutting prices (and sometimes, your own pay), doubting yourself, working when you don’t want to, being mistrusted, convincing skeptical decision-makers, dealing with demanding sales managers, having your time wasted, and dealing with multiple competing demands at the same time. It might be simple, but sales is not easy.

If reading that list doesn’t discourage you, then you should give it a try. And if you get a taste for sales and decide that you like it, it's very likely that you'll get addicted. There’s nothing quite like the rush of closing a deal, going on a hot streak, and chasing those big paychecks.

Sales is one of the only careers where you can see the fruits of your labor in your bank account every month. If you pushed yourself and did what you had to do, then you’ll see that reflected in your check. If not, then you won’t. It’s not for everyone, but for many of us, there’s nothing quite like it.

So now that we’ve given you the good and the bad, the ball is in your court. You probably won’t know for sure until you try it. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to what you’re doing. Good luck, and maybe we’ll hear from you again after you get hired.