First thing i went on Indeed and holy shit were those some horrible jobs, usually 1099 commission only or 15-20$ per hr draw outbound boiler room. Like most jobs are insurance, MCA, D2D, or whatever BS. And it's always the same ad. like posting UNCAPPED COMMISION, LOOKING FOR HUNGRY CLOSERS HUNTERS or whatever. and this is 95% of jobs. This below is an actual posting.

HIGH-ENERGY SALES REPS WANTED – Warm Leads | $100K–$500K+ Earning Potential looking for hungry, competitive, money-motivated sales reps 

Now i understand that Indeed also isn't the best for finding a job so i hopped on linkedin and it's better but still most of the jobs are like that. Or a BDR/SDR Role that they want you to make 600 dials a day for 40k base.

So i was an AE im my past role. Had a decent base, decent product. VP was a 22yo insecure nepo baby. And at one point really started focusing on DIALING MORE BRO for no reason. Also told me at one point that they want to hire Grant Cardone's company to "Train" us. I got fired for not being positive enough? Like a bad culture fit. To be honest im glad i left. But looking at these jobs my previous job wasn't even bottom of the barrel. Like wtf.

Really curious to hear your guys experience and thoughts.

I have one tomorrow and have practiced it a few times but I’m just not good at presenting never have been, I’m new in toastmasters and even my icebreaker speech sucked lol.

I’ve been in sales for like 4 years 1 sdr 3.5 as AE. I’m good at interviews and discovery calls etc… , but for some reason just turn into a monotone robot on presentations.

I think they’re actually going to hit me with questions during the presentation which I’m looking forward to because guess I’m better at the back and forth.

Has anyone ever bombed one of these? Am
I the only person in sales that’s shit at presentations?

Curious how other experienced AEs approach this.

I was a consistent top performer for years, but over the past couple of years, my results have declined along with much of my team’s. My company has raised prices considerably, fallen behind competitors in product positioning, and introduced internal barriers that make selling harder.

I know there are always things I can improve, so I've tried doubling down on self-coaching: analyzing lost deals, scrutinizing my approach, and putting in more effort. At this point, though, I'm approaching burnout, and I'm questioning whether I'm holding myself accountable or just beating myself up over problems I can't fix.

Obviously, blaming the company for everything is a convenient excuse. But at what point does taking ownership of your number become counterproductive when the underlying business is becoming less competitive?

How do you distinguish between needing to become a better salesperson and simply operating in a worse environment? How do you maintain high standards for yourself without internalizing every bad quarter as a personal failure?

I'm interested in how people actually navigate this, not just the usual advice to find another job.

After 2.5 months of interviews, presentations and meetings I landed a director of North american wholesale role. Sent my boss my 2 weeks, reply was all good, we dont really have much luck with outside sales guys so you are probably the last one.

Taking November off before my Dec 1 start date.

Just joined a large distributor and will be selling power infrastructure equipment. We know this industry is in an insane boom right now. I was previously on the engineering side of power, worked at an engineering firm on design. Then I had a 6 mo stint as a mfgr rep prior to this, that unfortunately didn't work out (not performance related). Was essentially a crash course in sales so I am still learning. I got extremely lucky with this position as the first BDM on this new team but I am feeling out of my league in not having barely any industry connections or much knowledge of the business side of things, when there was a ton of demand for this role (I think hundreds of applicants). I was honest in my interviews about where I was at and what I brought to the table, but I fear I could have misrepresented myself still by just being a strong interviewer. I was clear I would need training, and my mngr was adament that they enjoyed developing talent. Well, no surprise but this team is extremely busy. Im only on day 10 but I havent done much besides a few trainings and discussions about where I will be starting while other team members are running around pulling 70 hr weeks. This is also a remote position. I have been using my time to research competitors, existing customers, potential customers, major manufacturers and thinking about a "loose script" for intros/pitching the company. I have offered to help the inside to learn their role in the business. I really want this to work out but I fear management will come to the realization they just dont have time for me and I will be absolutely crushed. Im also apprehensive to just start calling up customers because my supervisor mentioned wanting to go over that kind of stuff with me. Also apprehensive because at the last gig management would be offended if I took initiative on my work. Any advice? How can I make industry connections as quickly as possible? What should I be doing rn?

SaaS girly here who just got laid off along with the whole company :-( While I’m sad I don’t have a job, I am happy to have left a pretty toxic work culture. That being said, my entire company used AI for literally everything. My manager made a sales enablement website combining all his experience, I would make documents tailored to calls I had with prospects giving them proof packs on what our tool would look like on day 1, day 30, you get the point.

Now I’m applying for jobs, and using Claude to sharpen my resume. I haven’t looked for a job in 9 months due to getting promoted from SDR to AE to SAE very quickly at my old org. I’m wondering if anyone in this sub can tell me: 1) how are you successfully using AI to build your resume and apply for jobs 2) what is the general consensus from recruiters for SaaS companies on using AI to resume-build?

I’m trying to escape my current org. Have an interview with deel coming up but everything I’m reading screams churn and burn. What’s the situation over there? MM AE role

25 years old and confused on what I should do.

My first job out of college, I was working for a Series A startup, and the culture was very bad. I was never traveling, having to hit unrealistic numbers, and eventually got the option to quit and get a severance or try to hit the same number in the middle of the month. I took the first option.

I recently just worked at a medical software company, and I did very well, but my OTE was only $65,000. I noticed many of my peers who were Account Executives were not hitting their numbers, and everyone seemed miserable.

I was fed up with not getting promoted when I was originally told I was going to be an Account Executive in a very short period of time. They kept bringing in new salespeople who were over 40, but they all lasted a very short amount of time.

I had enough saved and kind of just thought that this wasn't what I wanted out of my life. I put my two weeks in, considering I had enough saved and wanted to travel for a bit. I also did not like the pay and not getting an advancement.

When I put my two weeks in, they told me I was about to get promoted to an Account Executive, and lo and behold, they were actually right. We had three SDRs at the time, and one got moved to a non-sales role, while the other got promoted. They discontinued the BDR thing going forward. Now they are doing it since they can get a lot more at a cheaper rate.

The AEs also had to make 40 calls a day, and I believe their number also went up.

My sales director was pretty sad when I told him and, while being confused, told me I had changed the culture.

Did I make a mistake? Should I try and get another tech sales job?

I am very concerned I made a poor decision to jump the gun, considering that I would not be at that company forever, and now I will have to start as an SDR again.

I truly believe I could be an AE somewhere and do fairly well at it.

How can I become an Account Executive without being an SDR again?

Please give me some advice.

Thinking of looking for a new role soon and realized how important this is to me.

Started my career selling a SMB SaaS to realtors which SUCKED. They’re ridiculously flakey, demanding, and largely struggling.

My favorite persona I’ve sold to is commercial real estate executives. Hugely relationship based, lots of golf, dinners, and very laid back.

Whether it's due to my current contacts leaving their positions, or just to an initiative on behalf of the customer to try to cut costs, or anything else, I usually get nervous when it comes to the end of the year.

Now, I was considering starting to lock my customers into contracts. It's very common in the lab supply world to do this, but my business coach told me that it's more effective and pleasant for both me and the customer too: offering them a loyalty rewards points system instead of locking them into contracts. I have that running right now, but I'm still getting nervous.

Anyone else deal with these feelings? How do you work through them or make yourself strong enough so that you stop having these year-end worries anymore?

I have just about exhausted the range of my personal references when it comes to a product oriented towards parks and rec departments. I am in a bit of an interesting position because while the distribution company I work for is new-ish, they have a distributorship license with a leader in the manufacturing space for these particular products.

As such, we have snagged a couple decent sized orders with prestigious municipal parks departments, but this was based on prior personal references that I had brought into the company. The people behind this company are brilliant, except they did not cut their teeth in the sales world, and they are sort of counting on me to build this from the ground up. They’ve run companies before, but more oriented towards private buyers, and had to use their own networks to grow rather than hammering outside sales.

It’s something I totally believe in, and when I showed and demonstrated this product to the professionals in the field that ended up buying it, they were very impressed, and so I know this is something legit. Not to mention, it is completely cost-effective and honestly somewhat revolutionary when it comes to the typical product offerings they have. One of these guys told me that meeting me was the first time a sales person actually brought them a product that worked. It’s a product line that’s been in the private space for a very long time, and also in municipalities in other states, but we have an opportunity to bring this to a multi state region and have to start somewhat from scratch.

My problem now is that I’m having a hard time conceiving how to get on the radar of these other municipalities and townships. I feel like if I can get in the door and have a conversation with a turf professional, then I can make it happen, but I’m wondering if there are some established best practices that have worked for others. I’m more of a cold call/cold drop in kind of guy, but that was also something that worked with private buyers, and I’ve never worked with municipalities until now.

Any insights you guys and gals have would be super appreciated, thank you so much.

I have my first work conference as a vendor happening next month. Been to plenty of SKOs etc but now im a vendor with a booth.

Why am I stressing? I have no clue why. Someone give me some tips lol

Have a mock discovery coming up as part of my Stripe interview process.

Anyone who has gone through it - or has strong opinions - care to share any tips?

How much product knowledge is expected?

What is being tested aside from discovery skills?

Would appreciate any tidbits.

Thank you!!!

I'm an industrial engineer and I've been working as a sales director for the last 4 years, and to be honest, it's getting boring and stressful. So I'm considering switching to sales engineering. I wanna go back to my roots and do some technical work.

All my friends say it's a terrible decision, but I don't know, man, I'm stressed. I want to worry about my own stuff, not other people's. I've already made the money I wanted to make and I just wanna chill. Right now I'm making 20 times the average salary in my country.

Is it the right call?

Are you guys honest if you got fired for not hitting goals? I’m torn between giving a non answer when asked why I left vs being brutally honest and saying the territory was not developed enough to handle the goals, they had 5 reps in 5 years and I was playing clean up, combined with a downward trend of the industry (wine)

I’d say I was up 15% on total sales while the industry was down though and increased accounts substantially

Hello everyone,

First, thank you. Three weeks ago I posted here after being let go from the company I'd been with for over five years, and the support from this community meant more than I can say.

I've taken some time to reset, and I'm ready to get back out there. One thing I keep hearing is that a resume alone won't land interviews in this market and that networking matters just as much. So I'm hoping to tap into the collective knowledge here.

A bit about me: I've spent about a decade in account management, most recently leading partner relationships. I built the account management function from scratch, scaled our retail partner network to 1,100+ convenience store and restaurant locations across Canada.

I'm now looking to move into fintech, payments, AI, or the startup space in roles like Enterprise Account Manager, Key Account Manager, or Partnerships. I'm open to the GTA, elsewhere in Canada, or remote, with a target of $130k+.
If you know of companies that are hiring, people worth connecting with, or have any advice on breaking into this space, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you

Interviewing with a sales manager for an MM AE role. I feel like I freeze up sometimes when they ask if I have any questions and usually just ask about culture and attainment haha

What can I ask to stand out

How did you navigate interviews after this?

This is personally, the biggest shift I have ever had in my sales career.

Simply shifting the “interview” on to the prospect. Asking genuinely relevant questions that help me figure out how we can help them, not in a “sales tactic” manner. Like the same way if your friend or family members wanted to buy from you, you’d immediately ask questions and likely wouldn’t let them pay immediately.

Qualify them, they will subconsciously drop their guard when all you’re trying to do is figure out why it wouldn’t be a good fit, and let them explain to you their situation and why it would be a good fit.

Overall, just having a real, authentic conversation.

Yes, there is a sales process, but it’s memorized, and it’s just the process that helps me understand how I can help them based on their circumstances.

This shift has caused even the most skeptical prospects to drop their guards completely and focus all their energy on explaining to me why it would be a good fit, while I give off energy like I genuinely don’t give a fuck if they sign up, and the only thing I care about is seeing how I could help them to the best of my abilities based on their circumstances.

Then, when I push extremely hard at the end, it’s because I care, I was never trying to sell the whole time, but now that I know how strong of a fit it is, and the only time spent was on trying to confirm that it would genuinely improve their circumstances, I just don’t give up, the same way I wouldn’t give up on a friend who felt like “life wasn’t a good fit”, if they were on the edge of a bridge and wanted to jump, and I tried to talk him out of it, and then he said “I need to think about it…” I would NOT schedule a follow up call…

This approach gives me all of the power in the call, and all the motivation to not take “no” for an answer, and at end of the day, attracts better clients, and results in bringing in more of the good clients and less of the bad ones.

A lot of sales tactics that only throw up the guard of the prospects, and is ingenuine, with bad intent, and doesn’t even result in more deals. I feel like more people need to hear this, more closed deals, more ethical sales, and a better motivation to crush it everyday.

Any thoughts?

Does anyone else strictly follow this guidance?

What would you say to the person who thinks all of this is bullshit?

For those who disagree with part or any of this, what’s your take?

I’ve been in commercial HVAC sales for 6 years. Landed a big industrial account 3 years ago for PMs and service. It’s the largest PM contract in our company, and the plan was to eventually replace a bunch of their old equipment over the next several years.
We’ve bent over backwards for these guys. Emergency calls, moving schedules around to get techs out there ASAP, basically treating them like a premium account because we figured it would pay off when the big projects came up.
Well, they’ve had 3 major capital projects since I landed them, and every time procurement either gives it to someone else based on lowest price or doesn’t even ask us to bid. The plant guys we work with say their hands are tied and it’s coming from management.
At this point, I feel like we’re investing a ton of time and resources into an account that sees us as their service company but not a partner. They want us when something breaks, but when it comes to big projects, it’s all about lowest first cost.
I’ve got a meeting with all the decision makers next week and honestly, I’m considering telling them we’re not interested in continuing the relationship under these circumstances.
Has anyone done this before? How did you handle it? Did you actually walk away, or were you able to turn things around?

Currently in the remodeling in-home sales space. Looking to fill my schedule with other opportunities. Is life insurance sales viable as an independent broker? Honest options, worth it?

What were the best and worst parts of your experience?

Who is hiring a CPG sales person, what are they selling, to who? I know it’s broad but it seems honestly very relationship based and not very cold outreach heavy which would be ideal I think

Also as a fun fact, when I first heard this sub talking about CPG sales I thought you were talking about the literal packaging, not the consumer goods lol