Walking away from a lucrative sales job

Published: Wed, 10/20/21

October 20, 2021

Good afternoon and welcome back. In this week’s Quota, we take a look at how Google is beating their competition by incentivizing their sales reps, help a stressed-out Account Executive in Michigan figure out what to do with his life, and share a Sales Fail that we probably wouldn’t be able to publish if we had advertisers. Let’s do this.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

The percentage of salespeople who majored in business. The second most popular major? None. Nearly 20% of salespeople never attended college/university.

Source: HubSpot Sales Survey

SALES ROUNDUP

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

If you thought people were judging you for working in sales, you’ve got nothing on this 21-year-old bone salesman (!) from New York. It’s a dark, and, as some point out, potentially unethical career choice, but he appears to be thriving, with over 500,000 TikTok followers and a seemingly successful business. If you’re not easily grossed out, you can read more here.
According to a recent feature in the Wall Street Journal, the way people buy and sell cars is changing as more and more business is conducted online. The shift was already underway before the Covid-19 pandemic, but over the past 20 months, things have sped up. Read what it means for car sellers (and buyers) here.
A saleswoman who has apparently never seen a dog before was left running for her life after a friendly canine tried to say hello to her in Cartersville, Georgia. Thankfully, a pastor who was outside grilling came to the woman’s rescue, otherwise she would have had to face the fluffy, wagging beast head-on. A video of the incident was posted to TikTok where it’s been watched almost eight million times.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Facebook - Sales Humor

BUSINESS

"Sundar Pichai - SVP, Android, Chrome and Apps, Google" by pestoverde is licensed under CC BY 2.0

How Google Cloud Is Using Sales Incentives to Beat The Competition

According to Business Insider, Google Cloud, a product that’s on track to bring in over $18.5 billion in revenue for the tech giant, is gaining ground on their competitors, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, by doing one very simple thing: actually paying their sales reps the same commission for selling a partner’s product as they do for Google’s own offerings.

Here's how it works:

Google’s “partners” sell software that runs on its platform
Google wants to keep their partners happy because these partners are critical to Google’s ability to take on Amazon and Microsoft in the $250 billion cloud computing market
The partners are happy when their software is selling
So Google gives their own (Google) salespeople the same commissions for selling their partner’s software as they do for their own in-house Google products
The sales reps can sell products that are a better fit for their customers without worrying about getting paid less
Neither Amazon nor Microsoft appear to be doing this
It seems to be working

So paying sales reps the same commission on a partner product incentivizes the sales rep to pick the option that’s best for the customer? Who knew!

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 was working for a medium-sized software company a few years back, and we were pitching another medium-sized company in person. My sales engineer was running late, but while we were waiting, I joined the four prospects in the conference room. They were joking around and talking about milking cows in Vermont, and I thought we had a good rapport, so I said that line from the movie Meet the Parents: 'I have nipples Greg. Can you milk me?' I have no clue why I said it but as soon as it came out, everybody just went silent. Needless to say, the rest of the presentation was super awkward, and my poor sales engineer was probably wondering why there was so much tension, but we actually ended up closing the deal, and they kept it professional even though I was super embarrassed."

- Anonymous, 37 Phoenix, AZ

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- May 2021

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 feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, even though I’m making more money than I’ve ever made before in my life. Here’s the deal: I’m about four years out of college and working for a financial services firm in the Midwest. The job has a great base of 80k, with OTE of about 158k, which have been extremely attainable over the last few years. Pretty much everyone here is hitting quota, and if they’re not, they probably don’t belong in sales.

Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the problem: my manager is beyond awful. Like, possibly a psychopath. He’s an old-school guy who is probably just a few years away from retirement, but he runs the place like he’s a headmaster at a boarding school. He monitors when we log into our systems, how long our lunch breaks are, and, if anyone is late or takes too long, he’ll send a team-wide email explaining that the person has been written up and why. He’s also not shy about screaming at somebody in front of the team, and basically has everybody terrified to question anything he does.

I know it’s a terrible environment, but given my work experience, there’s almost no way I’ll be able to find a sales job with comparable pay. Everything else in my industry has a much lower base and a much longer ramp up period, so I would 100% have to take a huge pay cut if I wanted to leave. There’s also not a ton of job opportunities where I live, so finding this role was a bit of a godsend (I grew up fairly poor), and I feel like I might be walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Switching managers isn’t an option (we’re the only sales team) and there’s nowhere else to move within the company. What should I do?

Conflicted in Michigan.

Dear Conflicted,

It’s clear that you want to leave, but you’re afraid to walk away from a great money-making opportunity because you think another one might never come your way. This is the real problem.

Here’s what you should understand: there’s always another opportunity. It’s the same thing as going through a difficult breakup: at first, we think we’ll never find somebody like our ex again. But eventually, we meet someone, and usually, (at least in some ways), they’re better than the person we were with before. The same goes for jobs, especially for sales jobs! There’s never a shortage of companies looking for talented salespeople, and now is a better time than ever to find great opportunities.

According to Ryan Walsh, CEO of RepVue (a platform with 1000s of peer rated sales orgs) “We are currently in the most candidate friendly market for sales professionals in history, and my recommendation is to look for remote sales roles in some of the hottest sectors, particularly technology... Many sales professionals don't believe their sales skills will translate to other industries. They will, and many sales orgs are more and more open to it.”

The truth is that you have nothing to fear. You’re young, you know how to sell, and if you put in some effort, you’ll find something that’s a better fit. And if you want to play it safe, stay where you are until you get an offer you’re comfortable with. But don’t sell yourself short -- because unless that manager quits, gets fired, or dies, it’s probably not going to get better.

How did you like today's story?

Today's email was written by Ken K., Steve R., and Emily H.

Got a tip or an idea for something you'd like us to cover? Send us a message at [email protected]

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