How to get your old sales job back (without sounding desperate)

Published: Wed, 05/04/22

May 4, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back. Some of you are gearing up to celebrate Cinco de Mayo tomorrow night, while others understand that working in sales gives you an automatic excuse to go out and let off some steam. In the meantime, take a break with this week’s edition of The Quota, where we’ll tell you which ten companies lead the pack for sales job satisfaction, explain why online car retailer Vroom is being sued, and give some advice to a rep who wants their old job back. Let’s get into it.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

The percentage of salespeople who say that selling is harder or much harder than it was five years ago.

Source: Sales Insights Lab

SALES ROUNDUP

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

A saleswoman from Spain recently went viral on TikTok after she learned sign language in order to better communicate with one of her customers, a deaf boy looking to buy candy. The woman, a saleswoman at a grocery store, shared the story on TikTok, where it has since amassed millions of views. You can read the short story here.
According to a recent report, the state of Texas is suing online car retailer Vroom over what they allege are title delays and misrepresented vehicle histories. According to the complaint, the Better Business Bureau and the Texas AG have received nearly 5,000 complaints in the last 5 five years, 4,000 of which came in just the last 12 months. You can read about the shady allegations, including claims that Vroom sold vehicles with accident histories that weren’t disclosed, here.

FEATURE

The Top 10 Companies for Sales Rep Job Satisfaction

Many people write to us asking for advice about job satisfaction, and which industry or role they can go into to make money while being happy with where they work. We wanted to give some answers using real data, so we reached out to our friends at CompGauge, a platform where you can check out compensation data for thousands of companies, and get insights from some of the biggest organizations in sales.

CompGauge surveyed roughly 10,000 salespeople from over 2,000 companies, and asked the following question: “Would you recommend your sales job?” They then divided the number of salespeople who responded “Yes, I would recommend this job” by the total number of respondents for each company to get the percentage of salespeople who would recommend a sales job at that company, with a required minimum of 15 respondents.

Here are the top ten companies for sales rep job satisfaction:

1. Dropbox
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 100%
HQ: San Francisco, California
About: Dropbox is a smart workspace company that provides secure file sharing, collaboration, and storage solutions.

2. Square
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 100%
HQ: San Francisco, California
About: Square is a merchant services aggregator and mobile payment company that aims to simplify commerce through technology.

3. Citrix
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 96.2%
HQ: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
About: Citrix offers a unified platform to secure, manage, and monitor diverse technologies in complex cloud environments.

4. ServiceNow
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 95.8%
HQ: Santa Clara, California
About: ServiceNow provides cloud-based solutions that define, structure, manage, and automate services for enterprise operations.

5. Rapid7
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 95.8%
HQ: Boston, Massachusetts
About: Rapid7 is a provider of security data and analytics solutions enabling organizations to implement an active approach to cybersecurity.

6. MuleSoft
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 95.8%
HQ: San Francisco, California
About: MuleSoft provides an integration and API platform that makes it easy to connect data from any system to create connected experiences.

7. LinkedIn
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 95.5%
HQ: Sunnyvale, California
About: LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows its members to create business connections, search jobs, and find potential clients.

8. SalesLoft
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 95%
HQ: Atlanta, Georgia
About: SalesLoft is a sales engagement platform that helps sales organizations deliver a better sales experience for their customers.

9. Zoom
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend this Job: 94.1%
HQ: San Jose, California
About: Zoom is a software company that offers a communications platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing.

10. Box
Percent of Salespeople Who’d Recommend their Job: 93.9%
HQ: Redwood City, California
About: Box is an online file sharing and cloud content management service offering unlimited storage, custom branding, and administrative controls.

TOGETHER WITH DOOLY

Top-performing salespeople just have the “X-Factor.”

They’ve developed habits that help them consistently crush quota, fill their pipeline, and build stronger customer relationships.

So what are those habits?

Our friends at Dooly and Sales Pavilion interviewed the top sales leaders at the world’s fastest-growing companies to find out.

Here are the 9 X-Factors of High-Performing Salespeople.

Many of these skills come naturally to the best reps, but they can also be taught.

So what’s stopping you? Read the top rep trends.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

What is the world record for length of time working at the same company?

A. 68 years
B. 71 years
C. 84 years
D. 76 years

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).

I’ve been in car sales for a long time and have seen almost everything. One story that sticks out in my mind is about a cosigner. This happened a few years after the 2008 crash, so it was probably around 2010 or something like that.

We had a customer come in, a younger guy who was super friendly. I think he worked as a bartender or something in the restaurant business. He picked out a car (I think it was a Honda Civic) but his credit was jacked up – really bad, and we couldn’t get him qualified for financing.

So he calls his good friend down, who is in law school in some other state but happens to be in town for summer break. I don’t think this guy knew his friend was going to ask him to cosign on the loan. At first he said no, but this guy begged, pleaded, charmed, joked, and kept pestering and pestering until finally, the law school guy made him swear on his mother’s life that he would make payments, and agreed to cosign (the law student had perfect credit).

So the guy drives off in his new car and everyone is happy. Fast forward about a year and I get a call transferred to me, and it’s this law student who is screaming and freaking out that he was trying to get a pre-qualification letter so he and his fiancé could start looking for a house, but now they can’t use his income from his new job because his credit is absolutely destroyed.

It turns out that the guy he cosigned for made like two payments on the car and then stopped paying until it got repoed. The law school guy was so upset, especially because he was such a buttoned-up guy and clearly would never have missed a payment on anything. It was one of the most uncomfortable calls I’ve ever been on, but in my defense, I never pushed the guy to cosign. His friend did all the pushing for him. The last thing he said to me on the phone was a swear – he screamed it and hung up.

Anonymous, 43 Louisiana

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram Poll -- April 2022

WORTH A PEEK

If you like sales content but hate having to sift through a bunch of boring and spammy garbage to get to the good stuff, you should check out The Juice. It’s a modern platform for sales (and marketing) pros that brings together the top podcasts, guides, toolkits, etc. from across the web into one platform. The best part: you can filter out the content types you can’t stand (webinars anyone?). Check them 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 job where I’d been working for just under two years. The reason I left is because a colleague from a previous sales job had reached out to me and wanted me to come work with him at his new company.

He talked the job up a lot, especially the pay and benefits, and made it seem like it was going to be a huge step up from where I was working, and talked about how much he loved it there, etc. I was only mildly interested at first, but he was pretty persistent and said all the right things. In any case, I breezed through the interviews and got an offer from the new company after two rounds.

After I put in my notice and joined this new company, I quickly figured out that it was different from the way it had been presented to me. The comp plan they showed me is a good plan, but only about three or four people out of forty are actually hitting their numbers, everyone else is struggling to get by. The base is comparable to what I had before, but unless I can somehow become one of the 10% who are hitting full bonus, I’ll probably make less than my previous role.

Everything else is fine, but I’m definitely not blown away by the culture here either. It’s kind of a low-morale place, and people treat it as a nine-to-five, without much enthusiasm.

My question is this: I’ve decided that I want to go back to my old job. I left on professional terms but I’m not sure if they’ll take me back. Do you have any advice for me? What’s the best way to reach out to an old employer and ask for my job back?

Unhappy in Florida

Dear Unhappy,

It sounds like you fell for the old grass is greener trap, which is not uncommon, especially in the high-turnover world of sales. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us.

As far as reaching out to your former employer to ask for your job back, we think the best way to go is to be honest. In this case, honesty will come with a bit of vulnerability: you made a mistake, you realize that it’s a mistake, and now you’re asking them to help you undo the mistake you made. It might take a few minutes of gritting your teeth, but you can handle it.

Put together an email explaining the situation. Admit that you thought it would be a career opportunity for you, and you made your decision based on that. Then, explain that in addition to the current role not being what you expected, the whole situation has made you realize how lucky you were in your previous role. Be honest and vulnerable, without sounding desperate.

In today’s tight labor market, companies are still fighting to hire good reps. Assuming your old company isn’t overstaffed (or petty), they’re likely to take you back, given that you can perform in the role from day 1, and don’t require thousands of dollars in training. But if they say no, there are still plenty of sales opportunities out there. So don’t fret. You made a mistake, but you’ve probably learned an even more valuable lesson.

Quiz Answer: C – You can read the source article here.

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How did you like today's story?

Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

Looking to hire for your sales team or looking for a new gig? Check out our jobs board here.

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