r/sales

I hope the mods can start banning those posts. it’s clear influencer losers have used this sub to test posts.

The latest Artisan ad is a doozy of a marketing tactic. According to the video, they've made Jordan Belfort their VP of Sales (really playing into their replace humans ad campaigns from last year). THE Jordan Belfort. the guy who started out selling meat and seafood door to door on Long Island, went bankrupt at 25, then career changed to securities fraud. now this guy is the face of a product claiming to outperform entire human BDR teams. I guess it makes sense that they went with the poster child for short term greed, zero sustainability, and literally going to prison for exploiting other people crimes. (Bet if this stuff had existed back in his day, he would have been one of the first people jumping on the chance to make something else do the work.) The ad It’s totally a script cooked up by chatgpt but its funny because its cringe, in a bit of a Micheal Scott way. That said, not entiiiirely sure what their hoping to accomplish with the wolf of wall street angle, are they trying to say that Jordan Belfort (who was essentially convicted for being bad at real sales) is a good person to trust about sales related things....?

I was recently let go after being placed on a performance improvement plan, and I’m trying to figure out how to best frame that in interviews.

When interviewers ask why I left and about my quota attainment, it’s tough to answer since my numbers weren’t strong. I want to be honest, but also position myself in a way that shows growth and accountability.

How have others handled this situation? What’s the best way to address it without hurting my chances?

Edit: Information I left out. The companies I’m applying for have leadership that was from my company. So odds of them texting my old company are possible. So I can’t blatantly lie about a lie about a layoff that didn’t happen.

title?

I work for a company, who among other things has a consultancy arm. A few years ago they had a good core staff of very experienced and knowledgeable consultants who were specialists in their field, a niche sector in corporate finance.

Mostly always booked out to clients, did extremely well for the company. Over time, due to laziness, greed and toxic arrogance, little by little, they have lost their core team, one of the key USP’s for me sticking with them.

Snr shareholder partners in the business have also torched key relationships and resources with technology partners so the back channels we had into 3rd line support is all but fading away too.

Partners believe it should be business as usual, selling or key services as a product….but it’s hollowed out now. Literally 2 in the team left (from a much bigger team ) who are overworked and miserable, tasked with trying to train up very junior staff to make up the difference and also do their day jobs.

They have had contractors come in but they don’t renew because of the stress and toxicity.

So we have pressure to sell what we don’t really have, with some snr management saying just go on linked in and find consultants to fill the role when you sell the services to the customer.

Absolutely clueless and headed for disaster with this strategy .

I am not and never will be in tech recruitment sales but am I right in thinking that most if not all of the specialist consultants will be in the same pool that recruitment managers from the project teams at the banks and insurance companies we are trying to sell to, as well?

If we don’t own the resource, why on earth would anyone pay us a margin when they could engage directly? The snr partners just don’t want to see this. It’s a fruitless task.

Incidentally, I am making moves to get out of this sinking ship, just wanted a sanity check.

I went from a top performer for 3 years at my first AE role in SaaS before our department was laid off. Since then, I've had two consecutive roles that have just been awful.

The first was a role that had absolutely no processes in place (first sales hire) where I left after 6 months, the second (current) I've been with for 8 months and it's awful. 80% of my day is account management (I'm an AE) and the rest are things I should have absolutely no responsibility for. It's a fairly large company but every day is chaos and my new manager is horrible and likely about to PIP me. Nothing makes sense 8 months in no matter how much I reach out for help and the service we provide our customers is awful.

I truly don't think I can stick it out any more. I start my day at 8 a.m. and finish by 8 p.m. most days just trying to stay on top of the constant client emails and problems but my new manager is furious I have been doing very little outbound, numbers suck, etc.. It's affecting my physical and mental health and I just can't do it anymore. How bad will it look if I have two short term jobs (less than a year) in a row on my resume?

I’m a veteran sales professional with a better than average close/won ratio. I credit my years of bartending for my emotional intelligence. I’ve seen roles on Upwork that offer high returns. They show to have paid out a load of dough - but does anyone have experience with this line of work that they can share?

Obviously it is tax season as we all know.

Currently I'm a w2 employee in sales & get paid out my commission quarterly.

Each of those quarterly commission paychecks are usually pretty large.. and hence taxes are withheld at a much higher rate.

This year I got a big federal tax return... while that sounds great, if you know anything about the time-value-of-money then you know tax returns aren't actually all that great.

Is there anyways to lower my taxes withheld so i get access to my money sooner instead of just getting that tax return once a year??

I know some people who've been in sales / this situation gotta know some things.

I’ve been on the job hunt as a MM and Enterprise Account Executive for a couple of months now. I initially had a verbal offer at a fintech that was rescinded due to a new VP joining and pausing all hiring, resulting in the role being completely shelved.

More recently, I finished a final round interview with a CEO at another fintech company on a Friday. I thought it went well and received good feedback from the team throughout the entire process. However, it’s been over a full week with no response and I’m wondering how to not lose this deal.

I sent a followup shortly after the interview thanking the team, reiterating my skill set and fit for the role, and emphasizing my excitement in working with the team. Mid week I sent a followup asking for any updates or visibility on the role, and today I sent another email. I also connected with one of the sales directors I previously met with and pinged him on LinkedIn with no response.

I was really excited for this role and would be pretty bummed to have this one fall through. What else can I do, and what could be resulting in this sudden communication drop off at the final stages ?

Just questioning life at this new company. I’ve had another colleague somewhere else say, “sounds very corporate.” We aren’t that big, maybe 30 reps. Other departments won’t do much, unless my manager is copying on the email. How common is this? I currently need a freight quote to ship product for someone that isn’t a customer yet. No account, no way to do it 🤦🏻‍♀️ but cc in my manager … poof, done. I’ve been here six months, I literally can’t be the first person ask this.

This might sound naive but I work for a fintech startup that has solutions for general partners in alternative asset management (finance). There are 4 board members who are all trying to help me succeed but one has an early meeting with me each week and makes me feel like I'm the one ill-prepared.

I mean I'm prospecting with the spirit of a hustler and have booked a few meetings 3 weeks in. The last chat I had with him he implied "have more questions ready".

After a few hours with him I don't need more right now but he defaults to an hour every 8am tue. How would you navigate that relationship which is surely going to come in handy on some circumstances without admitting the longevity and frequency isn't advantageous?

I'm setting up an outbound org for the first time in a couple years. I've set up several that summer (consulting) and found Apollo to be the most frustrating experience but cheaper than ZI or any real tech stack.

My needs: data source (selling to tech GTM, so data quality is probably commditized), sequencing with both edit and auto states, dialer, and domain warming (closer to 1k email per month than 10k, but I don't want to burn the domain).

We're upgrading Hubspot with the 90% off for startups and can probably get any high-potential discounts companies have.

So, is this Apollo? Or ZI + Hubspot? Do I still need Warmly or does everyone do that now?

Hey everyone, I'm planning a move to Spain (likely Madrid or Barcelona) and wanted to get some real-world input from people in sales or hiring in the Spanish market.

My background:

- 7 years in B2B sales at high-growth startups (fintech and logistics/freight)

- 2 successful exits, all companies backed by tier 1 VCs

- Currently based in Berlin, comfortable working in English, German, and intermediate Spanish

- Experience across full sales cycles — from hunting to enterprise closing

What I'm trying to figure out:

1. What's a realistic OTE for a senior AE or sales lead at a tech/SaaS company in Spain? I've seen ranges from €60K–€120K+ but the spread is huge.

2. Are most high-paying sales roles in Spain remote-friendly or do they require being in-office in Madrid/BCN?

3. How much does not speaking fluent Spanish limit you in enterprise sales? Most of my experience is selling in English to international markets.

Keen to hear any insights from expats who made the move!

Self-insured objection used to mess me up.

“I’ve got enough money, I don’t need life insurance.”

Every time I tried to push back, it felt like I was arguing with their own logic. It never landed right.

What changed for me was that I stopped trying to “sell insurance” in that moment.

I just started asking: “If something happened to you last night… how fast does your family actually get to any of your money? Like real access. Not eventually. First 30 days.”

Most people pause on that. You can see they haven’t really thought it through. Because yeah, they might be worth money on paper… but that doesn’t mean anything is usable right away.

Bank accounts can get tied up. Investments don’t just transfer clean. Real estate? That’s a long process. Probate can drag things out way longer than people expect. So now I don’t even frame it like “you need coverage.”

I just point out the gap: “You’re not really asking if you have money. You’re asking if your family can actually use it when everything’s frozen.”

That’s usually when the conversation changes.

What's the objection that took you the longest to get right? Curious what other agents struggled with most before it

clicked.

I’ve got an interview for an in-home sales role with a home improvement company (roofing/paint/siding).

They say all leads are warm/pre-qualified and there’s no cold calling or door knocking.

Pay is commission-based (~10%) with a $70k–$200k range advertised.

I’m trying to understand from people actually doing this:

• How “warm” are these leads in reality?

• What % of appointments actually close?

• How long does it take to start making real money?

• Are most people actually hitting $100k+, or is that top 10%?

• What are red flags to watch for with companies like this?

I’m fine with sales and working hard, just want to avoid walking into something misleading.

I’ve been in telco for 5 years, worked up from retail sales, which was my first job, to a SMB Ae.

I have a good system in place and full autonomy. No quota, but no base salary. I’m in Europe and from what I’ve seen there’s not a lot of companies in the SaaS market, but I’ve been to a few interviews from LinkedIn but eventually declined the offer.

I make decent money right now and the job is relatively easy, as in telco the only thing that matters is the price, and our prices are the lowest in the country.

So the job is relatively stress free, I make decent money, but as every salesperson ever, I want to make even more while I can.

Here and from my coworkers, I’m hearing a lot of talk about telco being obsolete and not “impressive” on the CV. I don’t see any future progression besides being a team lead or a mentor in my company, which got me thinking about switching to SaaS.

TLDR : Would you stay in low stress, decent/enough to live but no savings, or risk it for a better, higher paying job and for future career growth?

I know there’s a big difference in salaries between US and Europe, but from what I’ve seen even in Europe, SaaS is where the moneys at.

Thanks.

I’m trying to figure out my next step and would love some perspective.

I’m an Account Manager at a corporate event agency in Massachusetts with 3 years experience in the field. My 2026 target is $2.5M in revenue, with a $65K base and $25K in commission.

Would love to hear what others are doing: company type, roles, comp structure, targets, etc.

“I need to speak to my wife”

Oh man, when I used to sale life insurance that one was my favorite.

By reference, I am a women and this might no work for you but when men would tell me “I need to speak to my wife”

I would pivoted back and said “Well, why won’t you won’t you won’t get it, aren’t you trying to protect your wife? You are head of the household!”

Hitting at their egos and making them feel not man enough for not looking out for their partner worked extremely well in my situation, but I am not sure if coming from a man it would sound like you are an asshole, so use at your discretion.

I felt quite silly doing that, but it turned out to be extremely helpful for me.

Do you guys have a phrase that make you cringe that works on prospects? I want to laugh tonight.