Salesforce is pressuring salespeople to quit

Published: Wed, 02/22/23

February 22, 2023

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back. On this day in 1997, British scientists announced they had successfully cloned their first mammal, a sheep named Dolly. Rest assured that if management could do the same to you, they would, so somebody could be prospecting 24 hours a day. In this week’s newsletter, we’ll cover more Salesforce news, share a Sales Fail about unpaid bills, and give some advice to a seller whose coworker is being mistreated. Let's do this!

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

70% of sales leaders say their company takes fewer risks now than before the pandemic.

Source: Salesforce

SALES ROUNDUP

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

Another big sales movie is set to be released, this one directed by Ben Affleck, featuring his Good Will Hunting co-star Matt Damon. Damon is set to play shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro as he works to sign Michael Jordan to Nike in what ends up being a landmark deal. The movie is called Air, and opens in April. Oh, and the first trailer was just released – you can check it out here.
Layoffs in the tech industry continue, with a new report showing that Microsoft has laid off 150 sales reps who were focused on selling Azure cloud services to medium-sized businesses. The cuts to the digital cloud acquisition team come as cloud sales slow, and are part of Microsoft’s plan to lay off 10,000 employees. You can read the report here.

FEATURE

Tada Images/shutterstock.com

Salesforce employees are being pressured to quit

As Salesforce continues reducing its workforce by 10% (possibly more – more on that later), some employees are being wedged between a rock and a hard place. According to Business Insider, salespeople are being forced to choose between a PEP – Prompt Exit Package – or a PIP – Performance Improvement Plan. If neither of those sound appetizing, it’s because they’re not. PIPs are common parlance in the tech industry – it’s usually a step taken before terminating someone. A PEP, on the other hand, amounts to voluntarily quitting, but with three months less severance than if you had been simply laid off, according to an email viewed by Business Insider.

So far, more than 4,000 people have been laid off from Salesforce, according to Insider, but the company has not confirmed that it’s finished with layoffs, so remaining employees are anxiously awaiting news of whether or not their job is safe.

While the economy is partly to blame, activist investors, who have been attaching themselves to Salesforce left and right, usually push for cost-cutting measures, focusing on profitable activities over pursuing growth no matter the cost. That was certainly the case with Starboard, an activist investor that approached Salesforce last summer. In November, Salesforce cut a few hundred salespeople for “accountability” reasons, according to Insider.

Attention from these activist investors is compounding the anxiety faced by current staff, as they are worried even more layoffs could be on the horizon. Salesforce insiders have said that the company is already contemplating this scenario, possibly laying off as many as an additional 10% of the workforce later this year.

Productivity (or supposed lack thereof) is clearly top of mind for Salesforce executives at the moment: "We don't have the same level of performance and productivity that we had in 2020 before the pandemic. We do not," said CEO Marc Benioff during an all-hands meeting in January. Employees who spoke to Insider are worried that all the recent focus on productivity will leave more people with the hard choice of taking a PEP or a PIP.

Laid-off workers will be offered a minimum severance of five month's pay and possibly more depending on tenure and other benefits, while those taking a PEP only receive eight weeks of severance and company-sponsored healthcare benefits.

According to an internal email viewed by Insider, once offered a PEP, employees have two business days to accept – otherwise, they have to start the 30-day PIP plan within 3 days of declining the PEP offer. In some cases, these PEP offers are happening concurrently with mass layoffs.

"It's a shady optics play," one Salesforce employee who was given this choice told Insider last month. "From an outside perspective, it looks like these people quit." This feeling of being driven out isn’t helped by the fact that many salespeople at the company felt set up to fail when they were asked to hit unachievable quotas based on previous performances artificially inflated by a pandemic boom in cloud software. "The markets we all work in are only so big," a recently laid-off Salesforce sales executive told Insider.

Though the PIP vs. PEP choice seems a bit nutty from the outside, apparently there’s a method to it. According to a former Salesforce executive who spoke to Insider, the acceleration of the company's PIP system, which began in the fall, was in response to a common complaint among Salesforce managers: that the system made it too difficult to fire underperforming workers, even legitimately “terrible” ones. "This is a classic enterprise performance improvement plan, but faster," this person told Insider, speaking of the new PIP system. However, sales employees told Insider that this system is in fact backfiring by pushing out strong performers along with the “terrible” ones.

IDENTIFY AND USE SALES TRIGGERS TO CLOSE MORE DEALS

Have you ever heard of sales triggers?

Sales triggers are signals that show you (or your sales team) there’s an opportunity to close a deal. Think of them like giant arrows, all pointing you in the direction of a signed contract.

Owler and leading sales trainer John Barrows just released a new eBook, "Harnessing the Power of Sales Triggers," and are offering it to The Quota audience for free!

Discover proven tactics and templates to engage your prospects and customers, close more deals, and boost your success. Don’t miss your chance for timely and relevant outreach. Grab your free eBook here!

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Sales Humor -- Instagram

QUIZ

How many independent consultants does Mary Kay Cosmetics have?

A. 750,000
B. 280,000
C. 910,000
D. 2.4 million

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).

Back in the early 2000s, I was part owner of a mobile electronics company. Basically, we installed all sorts of electronics into cars and trucks. Stereos, alarms, remote car starters, navigation systems, etc. Back then, it was a pretty good business before car manufacturers started putting in all that stuff standard.

One day, this young woman came in with an older guy. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, but he was well into his forties or older. He basically told her to pick out anything she wanted, and that he’d be the one paying for it. She was driving a new Honda Civic, but he talked her into the top of the line speakers, full navigation system, the works. It was obvious he was trying to impress her.

So he put down the deposit for all the work, which literally cost over 7k. It was way over-the-top, but we weren’t going to talk him out of it. We installed everything, and had the car for almost a week. When it came time to pick it up, she showed up at our shop and was in tears. She told us that she had gotten in a huge fight with the guy, and that he refused to pay for anything else.

My business partner, who owned the majority of the business, was super pissed, and he wouldn’t budge or give this girl a break. So we basically refused to give her her vehicle back until she could come up with some money. She ended up bringing us a few grand and we agreed to release the vehicle to her, but she still owed us another 3 or 4 thousand.

We spent the next two months basically hounding her to pay what she owed, and tried to get ahold of the guy too, who apparently ended up being some sort of scam artist. Finally, when my business partner threatened to have her car repossessed, she showed up at the shop with her father, who was (rightly) incredibly pissed off, and he paid off her balance. Still the wildest sale I’ve ever made.

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- February 2023

WORTH A PEEK

Do you ever freeze up when you’re on a call and get an objection? No? Well maybe it’s just us then… Even so, HubSpot put together a nice article with seven customizable rebuttals for handling objections over the phone. It's a quick read with some good advice. 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 a junior media seller and have had a great relationship with my senior sellers and managers. They treat me well and give me good projects to work on and help grow my skills.

I recently found out that the senior sellers treat a coworker in my position completely differently. They don’t make themselves available to talk to her, give her endless tasks with no help and get mad when she asks for a helping hand.

When I voice concerns about workload they always offer to help. More so, they treat her with the utmost disrespect verbally and over emails. When I heard this, I lost a lot of respect for them and my trust in them decreased. Short of going to HR, what else can I do? I hate seeing my coworker cry in the office because people don’t give her the respect she deserves.

Concerned in New York

Dear Concerned,

It sounds like you’re a kind and thoughtful coworker – a bit unusual in the cutthroat world of business (but definitely a good thing!).

Since this is something you feel strongly about, you should start by talking to your coworker directly to find out how she feels. You'll find out whether she’s comfortable with you bringing it up to management, or whether she prefers that you keep the conversation and your feelings to yourself.

However, if you do end up voicing your concerns to management, be ready for the very real possibility that you could lose your job.

But if you feel this way about your superiors and the company culture, you may want to consider looking for something that aligns better with your values – if this is an option that’s available to you.

The other option is to say nothing, swallow your pride/emotions and continue to advance your career at this company. It seems like they have high expectations for you, but based on your concerns, it doesn't sound like those expectations go both ways anymore.

Quiz Answer: D – 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.

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