4 ms·

My 2 cents as a person on the sales engineer side of the fence. I can't speak to your experience or all organizations, but what you're getting at in my eyes ar

My 2 cents as a person on the sales engineer side of the fence. I can't speak to your experience or all organizations, but what you're getting at in my eyes are two things. Sales Executives _tend_ to be the most transparently compensated employees. It generally is 60 (base) / 40 (variable) but other ratio exist (70/30 is more common the technical sales side). Since the sales side has explicit KPIs tied to revenue, it's very clear how success can be determined unlike most other roles inside of organizations. In the best case, there's a stock plan but that is only indirectly related to revenue. Moreover, if you don't hit your quota, you are gone. If you're a seasoned sales rep or have personal relationships, you can skate by having a bad quarter / half / year but this is the exception, not the rule. This is a fine-ish solution for compensation for the sales side of the org, right? You have a quota, your success is based on attainment. Easy-peasy. Didn't hit your quota because of a recession? Didn't hit your number because of a global pandemic? Didn't hit your number because of A, B, or C? Tough luck. For other roles, in my eyes, there does need to be an intrinsic decoupling of current or next quarter / half / year sales objectives and their incentive structure. Refactoring may be important for a code base but fundamentally doesn't bring in revenue. It nets to _hurting_ short-term revenue since the man hours aren't focused on the newest widget the competitors have. Over a longer time horizon, it can fuel revenue indirectly by making it easier to add new features, etc, etc but for someone like me who has a quota, it doesn't _help_ me in any direct manner. I have to build presentations and demos to work around the bugs I know exist, weak spots in the product. I have to explain roadmaps for feature sets while being very transparent that a purchase today does not entail a customer commitment so that we don't have revenue recognition issues in 3 months when a feature slips. If the company doesn't ship features X and Y within 6 months, are engineers fired? Generally not. Will the net effect from a marketplace competition perspective result in sales reps being fired? Generally yes. Back to the culture issue, yeah, that's present. The boiler room mentality of a lot of sales reps breeds a locker room mentality and the incentive structure formalizes things. Sales reps aren't retained for being a nice gal / guy / whatever. They are retained based on a single figure: revenue. That's the focus and in poor sales orgs that's the only focus. Will someone make more money, all else being equal, selling something? Yes. Will they have a stable livelihood? Almost assuredly not.

8ytecoder 6y ago
And that's unfair. Sales roles ends up being overly pushy on customers. Relationships are entirely transactional. The stress on them is also undue and a net negative for the culture. I should have made it clear. I have no qualms with Sales as a position or role. It's required for an org. But the way it's setup today doesn't feel right. And likely is also the reason why it attracts a certain type of people. Someone who genuinely wants to help a customer or someone who actually listens to the customer's needs and propose a solution even if it's a competitors' would obviously not survive in the field.
- levi-turner 6y ago
  This all depends on the organization, but that isn't my experience. There's always room to be a trusted technical advisor. Shitty sales orgs do shitty things, but sub sales for any other group and the answer is the same. In the software industry the land and expand model is extraordinarily common and wasting time on unqualified opportunities is a net drain on achieving a quota. So there's a self-correcting cycle embedded in many sales cycle, although obviously not all.

8ytecoder 6y ago

And that's unfair. Sales roles ends up being overly pushy on customers. Relationships are entirely transactional. The stress on them is also undue and a net negative for the culture. I should have made it clear. I have no qualms with Sales as a position or role. It's required for an org. But the way it's setup today doesn't feel right. And likely is also the reason why it attracts a certain type of people. Someone who genuinely wants to help a customer or someone who actually listens to the customer's needs and propose a solution even if it's a competitors' would obviously not survive in the field.

levi-turner 6y ago
This all depends on the organization, but that isn't my experience. There's always room to be a trusted technical advisor. Shitty sales orgs do shitty things, but sub sales for any other group and the answer is the same. In the software industry the land and expand model is extraordinarily common and wasting time on unqualified opportunities is a net drain on achieving a quota. So there's a self-correcting cycle embedded in many sales cycle, although obviously not all.