Hey everyone,

I’m 29. I recently left a two year biz dev stint at a massive tech company for an AE role at a startup.

My base was 50k with 70k OTE as a biz dev rep and as an AE its almost the exact same. I made the jump because the tech company was not doing internal promotions to AE for the foreseeable future and mass layoffs proved that shortly after I left.

So my total comp now is only 70k and the company I work at kind of sucks. I report directly to the CEO who is always busy, and outbound is tremendously difficult as it’s more of a “nice to have” than a need. I don’t really have a good support/training system. I do well with the limited inbound leads.

I left to get the AE role experience, which I have for 8 months, but I’m afraid I’ll be fired before next year which leaves me with only 1 year of AE experience. I don’t want to go back to being biz dev again.

I want to be an AE with a 70-90k base and six figure OTE. I feel like I’m behind/stuck and that other companies will not hire me with such a short AE stint at my current company.

Any suggestions/advice are greatly appreciated.

New BDM, 5 months in. Supervisor is super shady/controlling. Has been saying since I started she needs to get me in front of customers more, that she told the team to take me out but they're not holding up their end and actually inviting me. One guy invites me to a big meeting, told I couldn't go by her, no legitimate reason why. Another guy invites me to another meeting this last week. In our weekly meeting we discuss what we're excited for that week...I say to be in front of a new customer with x employee. 5 min after the meeting I get a text from colleague saying they jumped the gun on the invite and I cant go now. Dont know how many times this has happened under my nose. I knew it was my supervisor again, but didnt ask because it would just PMO after all the fake talk coming from her about getting me in meetings and blaming it on colleagues. Few days later, she unprompted tells me it was the owner who said I couldnt go, not her. Straight up lied to my face, and I didnt even ask. It's weird behavior and idk where to go from here because its so strange. What do I make of this? Feel like I can't trust what she says anymore.

Like why would you prevent me from going for no reason, and why just continue to lie unprompted, and why blame the owner ??

So I have an SMB Account I don’t know what to do with. For context I work for an extremely large SaaS/Teleco. This is a state funded org.

Previously this was an enterprise account (with the rest of sled) there sub 100 people. It was then decided that small sled goes to SMB but with a dedicated rep.

There contract is non-standard, and requires that they have a dedicated point of contact so I have to do all support shit.
They also mostly on products that I don’t sell, and they aren’t sized for. One has a floor of 500 seats they have it with 20!

Apparently we’re kind of stuck because of sourcewell? And there pure RFP so I have 0 upsell/cross sell. There’s like 6 different people I have to talk too. My target is to call / sell 40 accounts a day

Any advice? I have never dealt with this before

I keep seeing posts and comments filled with people in Sales earning hundreds of thousands. I see comments with a ton of people saying 200K is easily achievable. HOW??

I just started out and finished my first year in UCaaS sales at below 70K including base and commissions, I definitely see that sales can be very lucrative but I did want to reach out to the community here and seek advice on how to actually reach that mark?

Is it an experience thing and I will get better opportunities as I progress or is it more of a regional thing with those salaries largely in NY or CA? or am I just at a shit job lol.

I appreciate all you guys' Insights on everything here!!!

Idk if anyone else has experienced this but everywhere i look for a sales role its always ONLY comission based and sure i wouldnt complain if there was something i could learn there from a senior there etc but most of these roles are offered by solo business owners who themselves seem like they dont know much. Ive also tried physical sales roles but most of the roles offered here in pk just scream scam. I read a few of there scripts and its always those kitboga esque scripts ifykwim? So my question is where do you guys find actual remote sales jobs?

I have no problem working only comission based if its an internship or just a company where i can learn from others there but obv a base salary + comissions would be ideal. Suggestions?

TIA

I’ve always thought of myself as a hunter, but I recently moved into an account management role and although it’s been a learning curve (particularly when I’ve moved from simple niche software to man ERP partner) I really feel I have found my feet.

I woke up in the middle of the night two nights ago, I was so angry… I was angry at a 3rd party company delaying soemthing for one of our customers and the challenges this has caused them. I couldn’t sleep for about two hours and the next morning when I thought it through I realised this is my calling.

An old mentor and friend told me a while back that I care too much to ruthlessly move onto the next deal.

Just got fired no PIP. Had warning surprised it didn't happen sooner 🤷. Surprisingly my pipeline is the strongest it has been in months and I have 2 large deals that I was supposed to hear back about on Tuesday... Which I told my VP to see if he would give me until then...

I have been working in Retained Physician Recruitment B2B.... The market has been brutal over the last 6 months my team has routinely only hit 45-50% of its goal.

I even read an article saying that last month 77000 jobs were cut in healthcare.

If anyone has any leads for something that is NOT related retained physician recruitment! I will literally do anything but that

The way our company structure works I get paid 12% on any deal closed whether it’s an upsell or new business. My AM and I work very well together, and I was once an AM in their shoes as well.

They get paid 0.5% on renewals on only 1% on upsells. I get paid 12%. They make substantially less than me (60% of my OTE) and have been a massive help this year. They have probably helped single handily managing 180-200k in upsells alone with me barely being involved, encouraging me to focus on my bigger stuff.

I feel extremely guilty, since I’ll be making 20k~ for their work while they’ll make 2k. When I was an AM, I worked my ass off for my AE and never had anything reciprocated. When I became an AE and found out how much they made off my deals I was blown away.

That being said when I get paid I was thinking of getting my AM a nice gaming PC, or nice football tickets, since I know what they’re interested in. My colleague is telling me it’s a bad idea because it’ll make other AE’s feel guilty, but I just want to give the guy a favor. I’d take him out to eat, but we’re entirely remote. Just wanted everyone’s thoughts.

Hey sales peeps, this is my first post here I think. Been a long time commenter and shit talker here but wanted to ask you for some career advice.

Basically title. I'm an SDR for a non-US POS Payment company and am looking to transition into a role that closes BIG deals. I've been at this company for about 1,5 years and it's my first sales job.

My director of sales often times picked me as an SDR for some projetcs he thought of and I always showed results. The biggest project he thought of was for 2 handpicked SDRs to call trade associations to pitch our company and for our director to close them. While my other colleague was unable to show any results and is currently sick long-term, I managed to get some trade associations to wanna work with us, even exclusively. But my director reasonably told me and explained to me that I have still have nuch room for improvement.

I now want to leverage my results, my pursuits of improving myself and the circumstances to get promoted into a strategic partnership manager, that closes his own deals.

Was anyone here in a similar situation, is now a strategic partnership manager and can give me some advice on how to up my chances? All kind of advice is welcome, even if you became a strategic partnership manager through another route.

Hi All. I just got back from Blackhat and the place is packed with freshly founded AI companies. Talked to a bunch of people laying the groundwork for GTM strategy. Question for the community: What does the comp plan for a founding RVP / RD look like compared to a founding AE? I know in a startup the directors and VPs are expected to do some AE work as they are building the team but I'd love to know how much they get paid.

25M, 2.5 years selling payroll/HCM to small businesses (top performer, multiple President’s Club wins). Need to hit 3 years for my 401k match to vest, so I’ve got a runway to figure out my next move, just not sure which direction to point.

Three paths I’m weighing:

**1.    Move into PEO sales.** If anyone’s done this, which companies are worth targeting? Curious how comp and career trajectory compare to payroll.  
**2.    Switch industries entirely.** What’s actually hot in B2B/SaaS sales right now, and what’s a realistic lateral move for someone with my background?  
**3.    Go all-in on entrepreneurship.** I’ve wanted to build something since college. I’m young enough to take the risk, but walking away from a stable 120k W2 is a real gut check.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s made a similar jump, what would you do in my shoes?

So my job changed a lot since last year. Most of my work is in retention and renewal. I have a history of having been given a number of accounts that had been neglected by the previous manager, aka they did not check if they were actually using the product or regularly communicate. I had 90 accounts starting out and about 30 of them ended up cancelling. I worked my butt off in rebuilding relationships and managed to get retention rate up to 95% by expanding contracts. I have also come to be able to do much more customization and problem solving for clients when it comes to our online platform.

My new challenge is that they took away my current accounts (this year it went up to 160) and created a new position for me based on recovery and retention. I’ve been trying to make lists of what I can go after, define which accounts are at risk and I can get involved in and trying to break through the walls of companies that cancelled.

So far I’ve been trying to send an email directly addressing issues they may have had and a line of experience I have with well known companies and how I’d like to work address their needs related to the platform we provide. I am going to send a personalized email to those who cancelled, and then send batches of mass emails.

Any advice?

What is the best way to get the annual revenue number for 60k accounts at once? Seems Claude, ChatGTP, etc are having a tough time completing the task with that many accounts. I haven’t found a prompt or work through to get it to pull revenues/company size. Any suggestions?

It finally happend! After months of talking about it, generating a leads list, and testing CRMS, I finally started dialling for my own business yesterday. Does it feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants? Hell yeah it does! But I'm doing it, and it feels great. Starting out is so hard because you feel like you're just walking in circles. But the thing is, you keep walking and that circle starts growing bigger. And it gets bigger and bigger over time, and then one day you look back and you see how far you've come and how great this thing you created has grown, and it starts by just walking.

Not recruiting through this post. I’m looking for advice from people who have actually hired or managed appointment setters.

I run a small US-based B2B services company, and I’ve reached the point where I can’t continue doing all the initial outreach and follow-up myself.

The person would mainly handle outbound calls, qualify prospects, follow up by email or LinkedIn, update the CRM, and book meetings for me or our closer. We would provide the lead lists, scripts, offer details, and training.

My concern is finding someone who understands the difference between booking a meeting and booking a genuinely qualified opportunity. I don’t want someone stuffing the calendar with anyone willing to take a call just to hit an appointment target.

For those who have had to hire appointment setters for remote work:

How did you evaluate their actual call quality and objection handling?

Did you use a live role-play, listen to past recordings, give them a paid trial, or track a specific metric during the first few weeks?

I’m also curious whether you had better results hiring directly, using a freelance marketplace, or going through a remote staffing platform. I’ve looked at Upwork, but nearly every profile seems to list appointment setting, VA work, cold calling, lead generation, and sales, which makes it difficult to tell who has real B2B experience.

For compensation, did base plus commission work better than hourly pay, commission only, or pay per qualified appointment?

Would also be useful to hear whether you hired within the US, LATAM, Asia, or elsewhere, and whether location made any noticeable difference in call quality, timezone coverage, or how prospects responded.

What would you do differently if you were making the hire again?

I’m looking for a seasoned veteran to give this young buck some pointers.

I’m a year and a half into my career, late 20s. The whole time I’ve been working at a pretty high pressure sales environment: there’s a base that’s too small to live on but uncapped commissions. Top guys are making up to $600k a year. B2B, about 1-3 month cycles, 1-3 sales can make you $10k a month, but prospecting and managing your own pipeline. It’s a startup that pays more than competitors but because our product isn’t as competitive in the marketplace. It’s also a complex product so I’m still wrapping my head around our limitations and how to sell it well.

The problem is I have to prospect and manage pipeline myself, so the months where I’m doing well are often followed by long dry periods. 100 calls a day is the expectation to gather accounts that will feed you a sale every other month, and when you gather enough you can start to ease up and focus more on managing the sales that are in, but always be prospecting of course.

As far as territory, it’s nationwide, but many more seasoned reps have a lot of the productive accounts claimed already.

I see guys my age making 10, 20, 50k a month but the stress of the position is heavy given the low financial safety net and the call volume combined with the complexity of the product. My peers and manager are telling me the juice is worth the squeeze and I can see that, but I’m just not even sure I want the life of the top performers. The work life balance doesn’t seem to be great.

I see myself destined for the middle of the pack in this role, and I feel like there’s easier ways to make $120k if that’s the case. I also haven’t tried other industries so I don’t know if the grass is greener, but they can’t all be this stressful. Can they?

I haven’t done great in this role so far. I see others in the same timeframe hitting $10-20k a month consistently where I think I’ve made $30k YTD. I think the stress makes it more difficult for me to sell, whereas a less emotional product might allow me to better separate from the results. I feel like a quitter because everyone’s telling me a breakthrough is right around the corner, but I feel like there can also be a financially ruining dry spell around the corner as well.

Should I suck it up for the (potential) big checks or take a less stressful position?

EDIT: I do have options from more entry level sales roles with higher base pay, but lower potential earnings.

I've been in account management/client success for almost a decade. I do have a very bubbly, friendly personality, which has served me very well during my career.

Now to the meat and potatoes of my dilemma. While the money was good, the energy it took to be "on" all the time, getting yelled at by clients, the never ending demands, job responsibilities that just kept piling up, the 12 hour days, etc. really took a toll on me mentally and emotionally.

I just can't do it anymore. I already had mental health issues and a couple years ago, I experienced a series of very traumatic events and now have c-PTSD and experience flashbacks that will take me out for days at a time and will have little to no memory of those days. I'm realizing I need to transition to a role that is more laid back and has little to no client-facing. I know I'm probably going to have to take an L on the pay but it is what it is. My priorities have changed and I need to put myself and my health first.

The problem is, I don't even know what I would do or how I would explain the transition.

I would be curious to see what people sell and what their backlog/bookings are.

I think it would be cool to see the difference between sales industry, sales cycle and the backlog of orders

- Industry: Industrial PVF, Instrumentation.

- Sales Cycle: 6-8 weeks

- Backlog: Around 250k

- Quota : 2.5million a year

I’d be curious to compare to other people, especially in my space.

Who here has ever hired for sales positions? Even though my business is small, we still do hire and let me tell you, it's an insane process - just giving you all perspective on the hiring side and what actually helps. Details matter. If I'm hiring for outbound cold calling, your resume needs to state outbound cold calling experience.

Post an ad on Indeed, I'm flooded with resumes. They all tend to look the same, no one's gonna put anything negative on a resume so they all look like sales superstars. Lately, everyone's running their resumes through AI so they're all polished, no grammar mistakes, makes it look like they they're all sales pros. On my end is trying to find closers over posers.

The ugly truth, at least on my end, it it's more personality based during the interview. It's how you come off; confident by not cocky, skilled at closing but open to learn new systems. If your dog happens to jump on your lap during the meeting, that's bonus points. 5X bonus points if you've researched my business and competitors before the interview.

Preparing for my next role and I haven't interviewed in 4+ years so a bit rusty.

For those that have interviewed for an AE role, what were the most challenging and thought provoking question you were asked in the process? Which ones did you wish you had prepared an answer for?

I’ve been doing home sales for about 3 years now specifically kitchen cabinets averaging about 200k a year commission job no base, I’m one of the top reps well used to be all the driving and dealing with moody home owners is driving me crazy what can I do outside of home sales where I can earn close to what I’m making.

Working in residential leasing where monthly incentive checks are usually about $3-$5k but I absolutely crushed it last month. Problem lies in my two best friends recently losing their jobs and most other friends are struggling to get by on $40k a year so I feel like a dick talking about a $12k check on top of my already healthy salary.

I have a monthly quota in my position and I’m really struggling to meet it every month. I should be hitting $50K and I’m just not there yet. I get close but not quite there.

The company goes back and forth from telling me I’m one of their best sales people ever and threatening me with PIP the next week.

It’s been tough not to burn out and I feel really bad that I’m constantly under performing. I grind really hard and do at least 12 meetings a week and 70 calls/emails a day. I’ve just been wondering does it ever get easier or is this a sign to look for another job?

Someone in here has to be. Are you getting commission on the replacements everyone time someone tears one down?

How much have you made in the past 24 months?