The leaked Salesforce messages

Published: Wed, 02/01/23

February 1, 2023

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. Ahh, the first day of a new month, when sales reps can sit back, relax, and — oh, who are we kidding?! In sales, the grind never stops, but we do what we can to make it tolerable, like reading this week’s newsletter, where we'll show you how Salesforce responded to layoffs, share a Sales Fail about a low appraisal, and give some commission-based advice. Enjoy!

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

Offering (email) recipients a way out doubles the chance of them saying yes.

Source: Research Gate

SALES ROUNDUP

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

Honda recently announced that they’re dipping their toe into the 100% online sales model, with their Acura electric vehicles expected to be available ‘100 percent online’, starting with the ZDX. A senior VP at Honda said that Honda’s network of dealers will still be involved in the process, but that you will need to ‘input the information’ whether at the dealership or at home. You can read the report here.
A recent study conducted by sales enablement company Showpad found that an overwhelming majority of salespeople surveyed (80%) believe that virtual meetings make it harder to engage with buyers, and that 40% believe it’s costing them deals personally. The study goes deep into all aspects of virtual and hybrid sales and draws some interesting conclusions. You can read more about it here.

FEATURE

Jonathan Weiss/shutterstock.com

Leaked messages show how Salesforce responded to staff questions about layoffs

On January 4th, Salesforce announced that it was laying off 10% of its workers. In addition to the usual confusion and anger that comes with huge layoffs, there was a lot of murkiness surrounding not only the criteria for the layoffs but the reasons why so many managers were kept in the dark about the entire first round.

In response, Salesforce employees wrote a crowdsourced letter (accessed by more than 500 employees) with a long list of questions about the nature of the layoffs. According to Business Insider, which viewed the letter, Executive VP of Employee Communications and Engagement, Jill Unikel posted management’s response in an internal slack channel titled "Top Questions from Employees."

But employees were dissatisfied with these answers, which did not address all of their questions. "It throws around words like 'trust' but doesn't back them up with actions," one employee involved in the letter told Insider. He went on to say it “further cements the divide” between management and employees who are worried for their jobs.

One big question that employees had, (also not addressed in Salesforce management’s response), surrounded the role activist investors are playing in the company’s future. Both Starboard Value, which disclosed a significant stake in Salesforce last October, and Elliott Management, which disclosed its multibillion-dollar position in the company just last week, are pressing for cost-cutting measures within the company. Both employees and Wall Street analysts believe even bigger layoffs may lie ahead if these investors get their way.

Here is how Salesforce management responded to some of the questions posed by employees, as reported by Insider. (Note: question answers have been edited for length and clarity by The Quota. Read the full article here.)

LAYOFF APPROACH

Question: In Marc's #all-salesforce post, it says we will be seeing more layoffs over the next few weeks. How many rounds are we expecting? And why couldn't it be done in a single round?

Answer: "This is a process impacting about 10% of our employees, across different geographies and laws, and it will take us some time to fully get through all of it, and while I wish there was not ambiguity it is unavoidable,” wrote CEO Marc Benioff.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Question: What criteria was used to decide who was in the 10% of

employees affected?

Answer: In summary, the decisions were based on our business and financial priorities. They were made thoughtfully looking at the current and future scope of work required for important projects, as well as looking at the spans of control (size of a manager's team), management layers within teams, and work that could be deprioritized. At this time, we can't share the breakdown of roles affected.

As Marc shared in the All Hands Call: "In some cases, there was a job overlap. In some cases, we've acquired companies, so there's duplication of roles or job functions. We've bought three amazing companies just in the last five years and ended up with a number of duplicities that we needed to transform."

EQUALITY

Question: With Equality as one of our core values, How will the layoff impact our Equality & Talent initiatives?

Answer: On the call, Marc commented that "First and foremost, when we think about equality, it's one of our core values. When we think about equality, there is no finish line. I think that equality is something that's very important to me personally, but also it's something that is core to this company. We will report on our equality statistics, like we always have. We'll be transparent with it. We'll do this hopefully in a way that does not alter any of the tremendous advancements that we've made."

FINDING NEW ROLES INTERNALLY

Question: Will those employees being impacted be provided the opportunity to interview for a different role, perhaps in a different part of the company?

Answer: Yes, they are able to interview for open internal roles. If an affected employee finds a new role internally before their termination date, they will remain a Salesforce employee and not receive their communicated severance.

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MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Sales Humor -- Instagram

QUIZ

Approximately how many licensed real estate agents are there in the U.S.?

A. 1,400,000
B. 3,300,000
C. 24,000,000
D. 2,000,000

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’m in tech sales now but I got my start selling mortgages a few years before the big subprime mortgage collapse. When I went into it, we were just starting to see cracks emerge in the market in terms of people thinking their homes were valued much higher than they actually were (and many of them had already cashed out all of their equity multiple times).

One day I got a lead from a guy who worked for his town. I don’t remember exactly what he did but he had some sort of a management position. It was a pretty good deal on paper. His credit was decent, and he had a lot of equity in his house. He wanted to pull a little bit of cash out for some home improvements and lower his rate, which would have essentially kept his payment the same. In those days, many of my deals were a mess, so I was excited to work on a deal that looked pretty clean. We did the paperwork, ordered the appraisal, and the process was started.

Well, a few weeks later, we got his appraisal back, and it came back like 25% lower than what he’d estimated, which meant that the deal had completely changed, and he would no longer be able to pull out the full amount of cash that he wanted and wouldn’t have the same payment. I called him and told him what happened, expecting him to be frustrated or upset like most people, but to ultimately accept what happened.

Well, it went in another direction. He completely lost it on me, saying we were scammers and that his house was worth much more than the appraised value, despite the fact that the comps the appraiser used were literally on his street and very similar to his house. He said he was going to come to the office and “pay me a visit” and other vaguely threatening comments. I ended the call but he kept calling back and leaving angry voicemails. We considered calling the cops but the guy was careful to use coded language. Something told me he’d done this to other people before. Thankfully, after a few days of threats, I didn’t hear from him again. Who knew sales could be so dangerous!

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- January 2023

WORTH A PEEK

As we all know, subject lines can make the difference between a prospect reading your email and ignoring it (or worse, marking it as spam). Close.com recently put together a solid list of the best email subject lines to use in 2023. They won’t all be relevant to your target customers, but there are some good ideas on the list nonetheless. 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 have only been in sales for less than two years. Currently, I am on my second sales job. I got laid off from my first one along with hundreds of others, (through no fault of my own). I like my new job. My boss seems like a good person and we’re given leads and treated well.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to figure out my commission check. I was logged into our company’s commission tracking system, but I couldn’t really make sense of it. Our comp plan was never clearly explained to me, it was only explained in vague terms. I understand that I should have asked more questions before accepting the job, but I honestly really needed to get some income coming in.

I was confused by the commission software, so I asked one of my coworkers for help. He is extremely nice and has been helpful since I started working here. He pulled up his own commission screen to help explain how to interpret everything. What he said made sense, but as I looked at his payouts, I realized that he is being compensated for each deal at a higher rate than I am. Not only that, but I caught a glimpse of his base pay which is also higher than mine.

Seeing this made me pretty confused and upset. Is it normal for different reps within an organization to be compensated differently? He is a great guy, so I am not taking anything away from him, but it seems pretty unfair to me. Do you think I’m being taken advantage of, or is this par for the course? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Confused in South Carolina

Dear Confused,

To answer your question, it’s not “normal” for different reps to be compensated differently, but it’s also not impossible. In some cases, an aggressive and enterprising rep might have negotiated a higher base pay and different commission structure during their interview process. It’s not incredibly common, but it certainly happens.

This is why you should always advocate for yourself and ask questions during the interview process. Not only should you know what your comp plan is going to look like, you should also find out what percentage of reps are hitting their quota. You can use sites like RepVue to better understand what’s going on within a sales organization before you join.

The bigger point here is that while you are an employee, the relationship with the company needs to work both ways. A successful sales rep knows that if they don’t ask for something, they’ll never get it, so make sure you ask for as much as possible, even if it’s just a matter of transparency. And when it comes time for your next annual review, don’t be afraid to bring up a pay bump. Now you know it’s possible.

Quiz Answer: D – approximately 2,000,000 (you can view the source article here)

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

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