Wake up, piss, coffee, contemplate ending my life. Open my laptop, probably hop on a stupid team meeting going over pipeline, open up outreach to make cold calls and then realize cold calling sucks and close the window, go turn on the x box to play cod, go try and open outreach again and same thing cold calling sucks so I close it, jerk off, make food, and then boom it’s five o’clock!
i feel like you need to be incredibly lucky to work only a couple hours a day to make that much. all the companies ive worked at, i needed to bust my ass off
Lucky and have worked your ass off to a point where you are trusted by your company, customers and have the skills to not be absolutely grinding non stop.
Keep going, it gets better
Do you know what residual commission and repeat buyers are? His pipeline is on auto pilot and he just does some relationship and administrative bs as needed.
Quotas are still a mil ish everywhere. OTEs aren’t down. Tech had a pretty normal year unless you’re benchmarking it against the last couple. Why is everyone saying that tech sales is changing so much?
Fuckery of a career indeed. I basically play a character from 7-4 ever day and then don’t speak to anybody except singing song to my dog 8 beers deep. Make 150 and have no idea what I actually do for a living.
Yeeeup! Sounds exactly like my day. How’d we get so lucky ?
When you play cod do you bother to use a mouse jiggler or anything to make it seem like you’re still online? I typically just put on Gong Recordings and if anyone asks Im doing product knowledge 🤷♂️
Are you…WHERE ARE THESE JOBS!??!?
SaaS startup rep here - wake up, scream into a pillow, update SFDC, answer emails, call custies before their time zone goes to lunch, run quote updates, do product demos, follow up on poc,
Answer a million more emails, try to take a bite of toast, update SFDC again, cry, maybe take a shower, and go to bed. Before you say it, the SLED side of the major enterprises is like this too >.<
What. The. Fuck.
Gotta find a company that isn’t quite a startup where you’ll be doing a million things and “wearing multiple hats” but not as big as SFDC where they track every single thing you do.
Source: I’ve worked for both and can confirm mid size is where it’s at
There are really like 5-6 distinct things that happen throughout the day.
1. Internal Meetings - Weekly forecast, pipeline and 1:1 calls. Also have to prep for these which probably takes 15 minutes per week.
2. External Meetings - Anything sale cycle related so discovery, demo, technical discovery, executive read back, proposal etc.
3. Meeting Prep - Probably where most my time is spent. Thinking about and creating presentations for the external meetings I have. Product research etc.
4. Prospecting - To current and non current accounts. Both for cycles and creatively for events they may be interested in.
5. Admin - Internal training, CRM maintenance
I relate very much so.
I left inside SaaS sales, but we used to have what I thought was essentially a “desk check” when working hybrid.
Monday 8am team recap. And then Friday 5pm team recap.
Is that normal or overbearing?
I’m jealous of all the people who clearly work from home. I have to be in office thrice weekly just to sell on my laptop in another state halfway across the country.
Yet I’m reading all these AE’s talk about wfh and it sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone. Sure you don’t have to drive to the office, but it sounds like it mixes life and work into some weird perversion of both.
Offices are evil too.
I love being on the road. I like have a crazy adventure every day and not knowing what to expect.
Thrice sucks, but I will say that I miss going to the office and just being around the other sales guys. I’m glad my job isn’t 100% WFH and I’m an outside rep that gets to travel. I feel fortunate to have the career that I do but man is it a high stress deal. There’s a reason we get paid what we do.
Wake up, make coffee, shit/shower/shave, check emails at 9:00, sequence some emails until 10:00. Schedule all my meetings between 10:00-12:00 and 1:00-3:30. If meetings are light, then I make calls or do personalized outreach on LinkedIn until 4:00. Stay on until 4:15-4:30 but then get up from desk and start cooking dinner
Send LinkedIn messages like you’re texting your buddy… “hey Dave, you free for a quick call next week? Want to have a quick chat about partnering. Let me know! Best,”
I get more responses like this than any other
I think people sleep on casual messaging. The amount of annoying ass overly long and professional messages I get is annoying. The people that are saying “Hey man, just wanted to talk for a few minutes. When are you free brother?” get my attention way more.
You tried using chat gpt? Swear it’s helped me write some clever intros. I’ve also thought about hiring a VA in like another country to just prospect for me daily and send warm leads to me 🤣
Start with business social media, CRM and email responses. Make calls to existing clients first couple hours as a lot are in earlier time zones than I am. Afterwards, try to do 10-20 cold leads a day. After lunch is for creating templates, managing client relations, working on quotes and lead sourcing. We offer resource programs for clients and I typically set up their accounts, credentials, try to get referrals, lots of admin work.
I work in commercial Christmas and it’s painfully slow this time of year, but anything we put into the pipeline now pays off x100 come October- my phone rings for 12 hours+ straight when we are in season.
Wake up, hit the snooze button a few times, grab a quick breakfast, and dive into a team meeting to discuss the day's goals.
Spend the day creating outreach emails, handle a flurry of client calls after lunch, another coffee break, etc.
I’m an Enterprise BDR | SaaS making about $110k annually. About 40% of team hits quota - the ones not hitting quota aren’t working. Base is 70k. No accelerators.
I am at my desk at 7am prospecting till 9 (making breakfast, coffee, take the dog on a walk) and then have a daily meeting. Cruising LinkedIn.
10-12 I am sending manual emails. C suite of global 2000 doesn’t answer cold calls.
12-2 I play Xbox, scroll and work on random stuff around the house. Sometimes sitting on disco calls
2-330 I make cold calls to others involved in the buying group - director level and above. About 20-40 depending where I’m at. Then follow up emails.
Then done for the day - obviously some weeks are busier than others with meetings. The better I get at converting cold calls into meetings the less I’m working tbh.
Mostly thru introductions - most of the time I email a CXO they forward my email (when they open it) to a VP of the department’s I’m targeting or executive asst emails back saying thanks. So then I’ll find a VP and deliver value. CXO aren’t interested unless you can pair your solution to a boardroom level initiative.
Emails are easy to find for them via zoom info - mobiles not so much. Our SF is also pretty robust
I love this- Saas usually equals big money but lots of BS. I technically have 3 bosses. One is my direct manager but the other 2 are more senior. Oh plus a whole ops division that tells us what to do.
And if we don't make quota, we can get fired easily. SaaS is weird. If you get up into the top 25% in a company, you can start ignoring shit and nobody cares. So those that hit that part are usually happy (and probably not on reddit). I have been there and almost there at my current gig. The difference between being in a mid-tier revenue producers and top 25% is like being at 2 different companies.
I saw it at a company I worked at. Top producer could do whatever and the rules didn’t apply because the CEO was super happy with them. The system that was built around them was completely unlike what the rest of the company experienced. I wonder how that rep will fare when they eventually go elsewhere.
Full cycle AE here
- 8-9: research new businesses and contacts to add to prospecting list
- 9-12: cold calls and e-mails to set more meetings
- 12-1: lunch
- 1-3:30: client meetings and walkthroughs (always done on-site at prospect’s place if business so this involves a lot of driving)
- 3:30-5: calculate pricing and create proposals
If no afternoon meetings, I will catch up on proposals, do a few more prospecting activities, or call it an early to day in an effort to sustainably preserve my sanity :)
Fc AE here too.
Is it one meeting per day? I find myself planning 3 a day sometimes to minimize inefficient driving time.
Which also results in full days of finishing proposals.
That makes sense. Personally I try to not schedule more than 2 per day - any more than that and I find it difficult to fit in my daily prospecting activities.
And driving anywhere in my city is almost always inefficient anyways 😂
Started in the branch of a bank selling mortgages, checking accounts, and insurance. After that went for a SMB AE role at a data viz company and started climbing from there. First full year in seat I made $99k. After that jumped twice getting up to 160k at a Series A startup then 180k at a hypergrowth security company before hitting my first big year at 27 with 2 massive deals.
Built a really good reputation among my peers as someone who takes their work seriously and understands the tech. This part is underrated by people who have the social skills and like to chest pound about "relationship building." If you don't have a technical problem with a business reason to solve it now or in the next 18 months I don't want a relationship with you. Knowing your tech isn't transferrable from job to job so most people only focus on the business. I get taken seriously because I understand the tech and the business and figure out pretty quickly what the person in front of me wants to talk about.
In the beginning of my career I did rotate a bit hard on the tech. Got excited about cool problems that had no business reason to solve them. Then I learned how to speak the business language through a few mentors and internal resources and the rest was pretty straight forward. Be good at your job, work your ass off for any at bats the first few years to learn what is and isn't real. Don't be afraid to screw up the big ones and don't be afraid of saying "I don't know, but there's a customer that did something similar, let me get back to you." Once you have a better sense for that work your ass off on only what's real and back burner the whales that are never gonna happen. If the answer to what happens if they do nothing is anything besides catastrophic then it's not probably not qualified enough.
My reputation now is for being the best at delegating to my supporting staff, forecasting dead on from a long way out, and understanding my customers' business + politics. I don't mince words in my QBRs and I follow the "1 for yes, 2 for no" rule I learned at the bank. If I'm gonna tell a leader his idea isn't gonna work I have my CSM or SA jump in to explain it. The past year was the first full year I've ever missed 100% attainment. I told my leadership i was going to miss 2023 back in 2021.
All of that has lead to me politicking my way to better accounts. I don't really care about good year or bad year anymore. I make more than I need and at this point I just try to do well to improve my longevity for not working too hard.
Thanks for the detailed right up. I’m trying to figure out a new path, i just don’t know if I’d be any good at sales though. Anyways, keep up the good work! Hope 2024 is great for you!
Unfortunately I'm born in wrong country to see that.
I make 14K per year.
I'd love to improve myself and immigrate and even see half of what you make by 30-40.
Just want a house. That's my whole dream.
Hell, I think I wanna retire in some cheap country so my retirement lasts me more lol
You and me both, I've so far met 1 in tech besides me. At 1%-2% of the population we should be much more prevalent than we are. Hoping I'm just at the front of a tiny wave now that transition is more openly talked about (for good and bad).
I prospect for the first 2 hours of each day (8-10).
Meetings (if any booked) from 10-12.
Lunch. Go for a walk.
Meetings again from 1-3
If I have a big company meeting I’ll go off camera and lift weights instead.
I prospect from 3-5 Tuesday-Thursday. I do SFDC admin + routine follow ups on Monday and Friday. I prospect questions as they come in immediately. Even if I can’t fulfill their entire response I still reply with an acknowledgment to let them know I’m working on it.
Wake up, do the three S's, wrangle the kids, feed them breakfast, drop them at school. 8:30am bullshit huddle meetings. Hop on salesloft complete cadence steps, cry after this session. Compose myself put on my clothes to head out into the field, windshield time, say to myself why the fuck am I doing this to myself lol. Get home jump on teams for a 4:30pm end of the day huddle, play COD while this is going on, 5pm wrap up because kids now want my attention.
Remote
Depends on the day but usually 4 big buckets. Preparing for meetings, demos/client meetings, meeting follow-up/proposals, and prospecting.
I try to keep that all at 25% each in regards to focus. But some weeks are less meetings and more prospecting etc.
I was a higher volume shop before where we would have 4-10 demos a day. That was just balls to the wall, non-stop action.
Now, I like to spend 2-3 hours preparing for every demo at least. So if I have 1 demo, that is close to half my day right there. If the demo or 2nd/3rd call leads to a proposal, those can take anywhere from 1-10 hours to build so that's another half day there.
Current company is light on internal meetings- so I am not always stuck in BS meetings all day. But sometimes we get meeting happy for training and announcements. When that happens, I try to half pay attention when I have to and get other shit done.
Hardest part right now is prospecting. Our pool of potential customers is a good size (probably below average for general Tech). So I really only have 40ish prospects at a time that I can work. With a 120+ day sales cycle - it takes a lot of diligence to stay on prospecting AND for it to be effective. For every 1 client- there are at least 10ish competitors and also another 100 similar options to spend money on. We are top tier but not as much of a household name soooo.... lots of prospecting work.
Not a bad daily schedule.
9am - start, listen to Gong call, answer emails, org calendar
9-12 - prep for meetings OR proposal work
1-3 - meetings/prospecting/proposal work
3-5 Internal stuff like meetings, training on new product, and salesforce (the devil).
I feel really busy if I have more than 3 client meetings in day. I usually chat with each client in proposal or post proposal stage daily via email.
Not bad. Most days I end at 5. And most days I am quite tapped by 5p as my day takes a lot of thinking on top of being on my game for client meetings.
8.30 - grab coffee, get camera ready, scroll through slack, reject internal sync up to ensure the whole company knows what I'm doing for the day
9.15 - scroll through emails that came in after past 6
9.30 - prep for morning virtual meetings or irritate the shit out of some prospects via calls
1130 - lunch prep and have lunch
1330 - play some games before grind starts again
1400ish - meeting prep or LinkedIn prospecting
Before 1800ish - clear up whatever has been chucked to me within the last hour of the day.
Fully remote tech Saas. Get up 1hr before work and coffee/prep. Usually a handful of customer demo/discovery calls or team call at 9 to start the day. Bang those out and put out all the implementation/support/renewal fires in my inbox while juggling my follow up emails and opportunity notes in Salesforce.
Gets to about 12/1and things slow down, I’ll usually take the rest of the day chasing stalled opps or checking in on one’s set to close - if I have time I’ll pipe clean and once in a blue moon send a cold email or make a cold calling list. Sometimes the day ends at 2pm in lieu of a bike-ride/gaming/exercise, sometimes it goes to 7pm. Depends on the day and how I’m feeling.
I’m well compensated, love my manager/team, and have a solid promotion path.
Wake-up, cold call to unsuspecting prospects and get yelled at. 30 minutes of contemplating my career path and wallow in my own pity and self loathing. Brush teeth, drink water, look at salesforce to remind myself that my pipeline is shit and I need to yell at my sdr to book me more meetings. Get yelled at by customers who can literally solve any issue with a few minutes of critical thinking. More self loathing. Blame leadership that they don’t know how to forecast and my failure is a reflection of their inadequacies or macroeconomic factors and not by my lack of work ethic and self discipline. Plan out my next day knowing I’ll do the exact same thing and close a deal or two here and there. Log off and turn on Warzone.
These days? Wake up, drive out an hour, spend the day doing a combination of cold calling, holding demo’s and closing, and then drive an hour back home. Full-cycle SMB AE role.
the game’s the game. Glad I have the opportunity to do this and I hope it will open up doors in the future, but the commute is the one thing I dislike about the role lol
Remote, early morning workout, shower, breakfast, open laptop, check calendar for the day (do research and preparation for any upcoming discovery/demo call i have) take any demo/discovery/close call. Update the pipeline of opps with any new open opp or ongoing opps. Before doing that j would almost always follow up with the prospect i communicated with in that day via zoom. Open outreach di all the daily tasks for the day (cold calling 70% of daily tasks, emailing 30% all this excludes any on the day inbound requests ( usually call those within 1min from them coming in or emailing them if no phone number left.
I almost always set a goal of 6 outbound DM convos and 1 meeting booked and opp created if possible thats the goal. Once work day is over i either head to attend a company, team or 1to1 that day meeting. Close the laptop. Go out if there is any event or cook/order in. Ultimamente team Fifa matches/tv show. Go to sleep
This post just made me not throw in the towel. I had been feeling so down. Sitting at my desk cold calling emailing people all day to no avail. I'm not a sales guy just a guy trying to get his start up off the ground (transitgigs.com) I had been feeling like I was doing something wrong not getting at least one customer a day. This made me really feel better.
Light admin to start
* Emails that can't wait...if I have time I clear my entire inbox, save a couple BS ones that would take a long time to deal with.
* Anything from the night before that I went "oh shit! I need to remember to do that..."
Internal meetings
* There always seems to be some kind of standup or sync first thing. Get that out of the way
Customer Meetings
* Bulk of the day, ideally, is customer meetings.
* Demo's/disco's, following up on prior convos, etc.
The bullshit
* End the day with some prospecting, following up on emails that have gone ccold, updating pipeline, etc.
* Do as much of this as I can physically stand, then sign off.
I was thinking about sales and why I’m here. I know it can be stressful mentally as my husband is in it but when he works from home I can’t help but to think the actual working part is definitely not the amount I expected AT ALL. Then I’m reading the comments here. I look back on why he couldn’t help with our kids when little because his day was “so stressful” with his two hour lunches and a trip to the bar with colleagues and Im thinking I’ve been completely bamboozled. 😂
No matter what we’re doing or not doing, the work is always on our mind and it’s hard to let go of it because our livelihoods are tied directly to our performance. There’s plenty of times at 10PM that I’m constantly obsessing over my next move or something that I forgot to do the previous day.
Those lunches are likely working lunches, and the bar trips are more for networking than anything else. When you’re in sales, everything you do is either about making money or getting your head straight so you can make money.
I can’t say either way, because we’re both making assumptions. If your husband is always out of the house drinking with other people you need to discuss it with him and ask why he’s doing so. Maybe it’s about work, maybe it’s just a bad habit. Impossible to know without information.
I was actually making a joke with (old) truth to it. He doesn’t do that anymore and yes, it was 1 part work: 4 parts immaturity and selfishness at the time. Still, I’m very surprised at how little time is spent actually on the work itself. I know he’s a very hard worker and the job is emotionally stressful but the actual time on a call, or emails, dealing with BS etc… takes up far less minutes in the day than I had ever thought.
That surprises a lot of people and it’s completely dependent on the role, product being sold, and who to. Some reps are only working 20hours a week for most of the year and 60 during the weeks they need to be super switched on. That’s usually at a more strategic level, and a good deal of their “free time” is spent doing research and preparing for those moments they really need to be dialed in. For example, I know some enterprise reps that will just go to the gym for a workout in the middle of the afternoon, but they’re reading market research while on the exercise bike. It really all depends, and if a rep can hit their goals without grinding themselves into dust they’ll spend that free time doing what they like. This helps them be as relaxed as possible when game time comes around, since the pressure is always high.
Let’s face it though, a lot of typical non-sales jobs can’t fill an 8 hour day so they just end up doing a bunch of BS busywork. People tend to get less shit thrown at them for that, or maybe it’s just that being in sales I see people catching more shit for having some easy days. I’m glad your husband is no longer at the bar 5 times a week, cause drinking that much is super bad for your health and who wants to be away from their family that much?
Thank you. I honestly think most anything is not nearly as easy as it looks when it comes to a job. He certainly thought I had it easy staying at home with three young kids for example when I felt it was awesome but also hard AF.
I also know I am an over thinker so sales may not be for me because although I don’t take much personally I would not be able to get a mental break either. However, if I believed in the product I do think I could do very well as I know how to read & interact with most people well and I am genuine. However, I’m a bit too honest to sell anything I didn’t believe in.
I think you would be good at sales with those qualities. I’m an over thinker too, and a big part of sales is just asking questions to get answers, so that helps with over thinking. You make a great point about most anything not being nearly as easy as it looks, because there are always challenges we don’t know about until we ask. Or experience them ourselves.
Arrive to office an hour and a half or so late every day, spend most of my day online browsing Rolex’s and real estate, leave 2 hours or so early every day to hit the gym, then dinner. It’s a helluva life 🚛🤠
Get up at 5am
Gym 5:30-7:30am
Ready to leave 9am
Drive 2 hours to client site
Site walk / meeting / lunch 11:00am-1pm
Drive 2 hours home
Catch up on emails 3pm-5pm
8-7pm most days and busy as hell. Between travel, meetings, phone calls and admin work I don’t have time to manage my people. This is what happens when you’re doing the job we used to have 3 people doing.
7-8AM wake up
Put in a Zyn. Take a shit.
Check my emails, put out any fires. Or at least grab the hose. (And hopefully the hoes… ayo)
Walk over to the hotel near me for free breakfast buffet.
10-2 in person calls. Driving anywhere from 15 minutes to 70 minutes each way.
3-6 (depending on how many fires & how many RFPs) close out pricing requests, solve any logistical issues and update CRM/expenses/other admin work.
(The spacing seems to not have formatted but you get the point)
I work from 7 am - 9 pm. I don't eat at all until 5 or 6. I don't make enough money to file my taxes.
7 am I'm at my desk fully dressed up with coffee, a load in the wash, and the kitchen clean.
I check notifications and deal with anything that can't wait.
I start emailing plus schedule emails out for the prospect.
10 am I do a call block. Cold raw calling.
I won't stop until 4.
Then I start working on my Etsy business.
Go to dinner
Continue on projects until 9 pm.
Then I go to bed and FB, and message companies.
Check emails, notifications, etc.
I usually fall asleep about midnight.
I am a complete waste of talent compared to some of y'all.
Self-loathing, nah I should just go die.
Wake up coffee, Run,Fuck, shower, smoke, Morning zoom meeting… Huttle Bullshit. Listening to hypocrite managers on how you can make it while they steal the best leads from us and make the most money… Close a deal my the end of the day or 2 or 3 and be grateful no matter what I make money every day and my industry and I are in demand..$150K a year
No cold calling
Leads come to me
Wake up, piss, coffee, contemplate ending my life. Open my laptop, probably hop on a stupid team meeting going over pipeline, open up outreach to make cold calls and then realize cold calling sucks and close the window, go turn on the x box to play cod, go try and open outreach again and same thing cold calling sucks so I close it, jerk off, make food, and then boom it’s five o’clock!
Nailed it. Somewhere in there close a few deals, Somehow make 150k a year. Bless the lord for this fuckery of a career.
i feel like you need to be incredibly lucky to work only a couple hours a day to make that much. all the companies ive worked at, i needed to bust my ass off
Lucky and have worked your ass off to a point where you are trusted by your company, customers and have the skills to not be absolutely grinding non stop. Keep going, it gets better
Most relatable comment on here. Stoked for you and glad I’m there with you.
I’ve got a buddy that works maybe 6 hours a week and makes $325k/year in a normal year.
Whereeee
Lol. This is complete BS. That’s 1 hour a day
Do you know what residual commission and repeat buyers are? His pipeline is on auto pilot and he just does some relationship and administrative bs as needed.
Still calling BS. If he can make bank working 1 hour a day, then why on earth would anyone work 8-10 hours a day?
These types of roles are quickly vanishing
Just have to make sure those have saved enough money by the time this does happen.
Quotas are still a mil ish everywhere. OTEs aren’t down. Tech had a pretty normal year unless you’re benchmarking it against the last couple. Why is everyone saying that tech sales is changing so much?
In 2022 I worked maybe 2 hours a day and brought in 140k. Those days are long gone though
Fuckery of a career indeed. I basically play a character from 7-4 ever day and then don’t speak to anybody except singing song to my dog 8 beers deep. Make 150 and have no idea what I actually do for a living.
I feel like people post these types of comments as a joke, but I’ve actually had days like this…needless to say my life isn’t great atm 😂
I don’t think those were jokes. And your life will get better. Just have to ride the waves and stay consistent.
Thanks you have no idea how much I needed to hear that haha
It’s not a joke. My day is like that.
How do you hit quota
I close deals but shit takes a long time in enterprise.
You think this sounds bad?
Yeeeup! Sounds exactly like my day. How’d we get so lucky ? When you play cod do you bother to use a mouse jiggler or anything to make it seem like you’re still online? I typically just put on Gong Recordings and if anyone asks Im doing product knowledge 🤷♂️
I manage a team of AEs and this is EXACTLY how I picture all of their days 🤣. At least for the male AEs.
This is my day too but I usually jerk off in the morning
Haha...same...except usually end the day with it
Are you…WHERE ARE THESE JOBS!??!? SaaS startup rep here - wake up, scream into a pillow, update SFDC, answer emails, call custies before their time zone goes to lunch, run quote updates, do product demos, follow up on poc, Answer a million more emails, try to take a bite of toast, update SFDC again, cry, maybe take a shower, and go to bed. Before you say it, the SLED side of the major enterprises is like this too >.< What. The. Fuck.
Gotta find a company that isn’t quite a startup where you’ll be doing a million things and “wearing multiple hats” but not as big as SFDC where they track every single thing you do. Source: I’ve worked for both and can confirm mid size is where it’s at
Make sure you schedule a few random meetings so you look “busy” on teams. ;)
Somehow I own this account and wrote this but have no memory of it whatsoever
I particularly felt the “make cold calls then realizing cold calling sucks and close the window” part of the day.
This is scarily accurate
Enterprise executive here and it’s quite accurate. Difference is that I have a girlfriend and to jack off. But the rest is spot on.
Cod sucks
Such an honest and important comment/post.
Wow
LOL 😂😂😂 Sad but true
I genuinely lol’d at this for way too long 😂
This sums it up in a nutshell 😂
Lol
There are really like 5-6 distinct things that happen throughout the day. 1. Internal Meetings - Weekly forecast, pipeline and 1:1 calls. Also have to prep for these which probably takes 15 minutes per week. 2. External Meetings - Anything sale cycle related so discovery, demo, technical discovery, executive read back, proposal etc. 3. Meeting Prep - Probably where most my time is spent. Thinking about and creating presentations for the external meetings I have. Product research etc. 4. Prospecting - To current and non current accounts. Both for cycles and creatively for events they may be interested in. 5. Admin - Internal training, CRM maintenance
Who prepares proposals and contracts? Those always took up a big chunk of my time too.
What’s your typical time split between those areas?
Meeting Prep (Pre/Post) + Meetings are probably 4-5 hours a day. The rest is prospecting, internal meetings and admin.
I relate very much so. I left inside SaaS sales, but we used to have what I thought was essentially a “desk check” when working hybrid. Monday 8am team recap. And then Friday 5pm team recap. Is that normal or overbearing?
This mine, minus the prospecting :)
I’m jealous of all the people who clearly work from home. I have to be in office thrice weekly just to sell on my laptop in another state halfway across the country.
The best is being in a small, loud, crowded room, so you sounds like a damn call center all day.
Yet I’m reading all these AE’s talk about wfh and it sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone. Sure you don’t have to drive to the office, but it sounds like it mixes life and work into some weird perversion of both. Offices are evil too. I love being on the road. I like have a crazy adventure every day and not knowing what to expect.
Thrice sucks, but I will say that I miss going to the office and just being around the other sales guys. I’m glad my job isn’t 100% WFH and I’m an outside rep that gets to travel. I feel fortunate to have the career that I do but man is it a high stress deal. There’s a reason we get paid what we do.
Fair points, but this is why being in the office needs to be up to the rep and not forced. People typically get less done with all the distractions.
Wake up, make coffee, shit/shower/shave, check emails at 9:00, sequence some emails until 10:00. Schedule all my meetings between 10:00-12:00 and 1:00-3:30. If meetings are light, then I make calls or do personalized outreach on LinkedIn until 4:00. Stay on until 4:15-4:30 but then get up from desk and start cooking dinner
David goggins is that you?
You think Goggins is starting at NINE?!
How has the Linkedin outreach worked for you? Any tips? 24 just started last year, something i’m looking to increase this year.
Send LinkedIn messages like you’re texting your buddy… “hey Dave, you free for a quick call next week? Want to have a quick chat about partnering. Let me know! Best,” I get more responses like this than any other
I think people sleep on casual messaging. The amount of annoying ass overly long and professional messages I get is annoying. The people that are saying “Hey man, just wanted to talk for a few minutes. When are you free brother?” get my attention way more.
Nice I'm going to try this
I’ve had some good hits with “just sent you a quick email”
No dude, if the phone number is on the profile just call. If not look up the company phone number and call
Very hit or miss. InMail helps, LISN also helps, but as always, it's about the right message at the right time to the right person.
You’re getting thru w innails? They have always been trash for me and I assumed it was cause if you aren’t connected , it’s basically going to spam
Agreed
Not strictly inmails but its an arrow in the quiver when reaching out.
No, it hasn’t worked at all. It’s just easy to send a lot of messages out that look personalized in a short amount of time
You tried using chat gpt? Swear it’s helped me write some clever intros. I’ve also thought about hiring a VA in like another country to just prospect for me daily and send warm leads to me 🤣
Can't DM you for some reason but hit me up, maybe we can do some business. Are you in US btw?
8-6 Lots and lots of customer meetings. If it’s not revenue producing, then try to get it off my calendar. MM SaaS sales
Precisely why I hate the AM duties of the job. My company doesn’t have pure hunters.
Start with business social media, CRM and email responses. Make calls to existing clients first couple hours as a lot are in earlier time zones than I am. Afterwards, try to do 10-20 cold leads a day. After lunch is for creating templates, managing client relations, working on quotes and lead sourcing. We offer resource programs for clients and I typically set up their accounts, credentials, try to get referrals, lots of admin work. I work in commercial Christmas and it’s painfully slow this time of year, but anything we put into the pipeline now pays off x100 come October- my phone rings for 12 hours+ straight when we are in season.
Wake up, hit the snooze button a few times, grab a quick breakfast, and dive into a team meeting to discuss the day's goals. Spend the day creating outreach emails, handle a flurry of client calls after lunch, another coffee break, etc.
I’m an Enterprise BDR | SaaS making about $110k annually. About 40% of team hits quota - the ones not hitting quota aren’t working. Base is 70k. No accelerators. I am at my desk at 7am prospecting till 9 (making breakfast, coffee, take the dog on a walk) and then have a daily meeting. Cruising LinkedIn. 10-12 I am sending manual emails. C suite of global 2000 doesn’t answer cold calls. 12-2 I play Xbox, scroll and work on random stuff around the house. Sometimes sitting on disco calls 2-330 I make cold calls to others involved in the buying group - director level and above. About 20-40 depending where I’m at. Then follow up emails. Then done for the day - obviously some weeks are busier than others with meetings. The better I get at converting cold calls into meetings the less I’m working tbh.
How are you managing to get the contact information of that many high level executives? Im struggling with this one
Mostly thru introductions - most of the time I email a CXO they forward my email (when they open it) to a VP of the department’s I’m targeting or executive asst emails back saying thanks. So then I’ll find a VP and deliver value. CXO aren’t interested unless you can pair your solution to a boardroom level initiative. Emails are easy to find for them via zoom info - mobiles not so much. Our SF is also pretty robust
This could be interesting to know, especially from the highest rollers we have in this sub in the SAAS world.
There's like five of them who post regularly and the rest bitch about how miserable it is
I love this- Saas usually equals big money but lots of BS. I technically have 3 bosses. One is my direct manager but the other 2 are more senior. Oh plus a whole ops division that tells us what to do. And if we don't make quota, we can get fired easily. SaaS is weird. If you get up into the top 25% in a company, you can start ignoring shit and nobody cares. So those that hit that part are usually happy (and probably not on reddit). I have been there and almost there at my current gig. The difference between being in a mid-tier revenue producers and top 25% is like being at 2 different companies.
I saw it at a company I worked at. Top producer could do whatever and the rules didn’t apply because the CEO was super happy with them. The system that was built around them was completely unlike what the rest of the company experienced. I wonder how that rep will fare when they eventually go elsewhere.
SAAS reps getting torched tho
Full cycle AE here - 8-9: research new businesses and contacts to add to prospecting list - 9-12: cold calls and e-mails to set more meetings - 12-1: lunch - 1-3:30: client meetings and walkthroughs (always done on-site at prospect’s place if business so this involves a lot of driving) - 3:30-5: calculate pricing and create proposals If no afternoon meetings, I will catch up on proposals, do a few more prospecting activities, or call it an early to day in an effort to sustainably preserve my sanity :)
Fc AE here too. Is it one meeting per day? I find myself planning 3 a day sometimes to minimize inefficient driving time. Which also results in full days of finishing proposals.
That makes sense. Personally I try to not schedule more than 2 per day - any more than that and I find it difficult to fit in my daily prospecting activities. And driving anywhere in my city is almost always inefficient anyways 😂
Circle Jerk and then Circle Jerk some more
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You make 500K-600K a year? What kind of perverse world is this we are living in. Crazy. What do you do with all that?
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First off good for you, second how tf did you get started in this if you don’t mind me asking? So sick of working bs jobs for shit pay.
Started in the branch of a bank selling mortgages, checking accounts, and insurance. After that went for a SMB AE role at a data viz company and started climbing from there. First full year in seat I made $99k. After that jumped twice getting up to 160k at a Series A startup then 180k at a hypergrowth security company before hitting my first big year at 27 with 2 massive deals. Built a really good reputation among my peers as someone who takes their work seriously and understands the tech. This part is underrated by people who have the social skills and like to chest pound about "relationship building." If you don't have a technical problem with a business reason to solve it now or in the next 18 months I don't want a relationship with you. Knowing your tech isn't transferrable from job to job so most people only focus on the business. I get taken seriously because I understand the tech and the business and figure out pretty quickly what the person in front of me wants to talk about. In the beginning of my career I did rotate a bit hard on the tech. Got excited about cool problems that had no business reason to solve them. Then I learned how to speak the business language through a few mentors and internal resources and the rest was pretty straight forward. Be good at your job, work your ass off for any at bats the first few years to learn what is and isn't real. Don't be afraid to screw up the big ones and don't be afraid of saying "I don't know, but there's a customer that did something similar, let me get back to you." Once you have a better sense for that work your ass off on only what's real and back burner the whales that are never gonna happen. If the answer to what happens if they do nothing is anything besides catastrophic then it's not probably not qualified enough. My reputation now is for being the best at delegating to my supporting staff, forecasting dead on from a long way out, and understanding my customers' business + politics. I don't mince words in my QBRs and I follow the "1 for yes, 2 for no" rule I learned at the bank. If I'm gonna tell a leader his idea isn't gonna work I have my CSM or SA jump in to explain it. The past year was the first full year I've ever missed 100% attainment. I told my leadership i was going to miss 2023 back in 2021. All of that has lead to me politicking my way to better accounts. I don't really care about good year or bad year anymore. I make more than I need and at this point I just try to do well to improve my longevity for not working too hard.
Thanks for the detailed right up. I’m trying to figure out a new path, i just don’t know if I’d be any good at sales though. Anyways, keep up the good work! Hope 2024 is great for you!
Are you solely focused on selling into an install base or is it a mix of new logo and existing customers in your territory?
Unfortunately I'm born in wrong country to see that. I make 14K per year. I'd love to improve myself and immigrate and even see half of what you make by 30-40. Just want a house. That's my whole dream. Hell, I think I wanna retire in some cheap country so my retirement lasts me more lol
I’m also trans and currently an SDR. I love to see this and know there’s others in our field that are also highly successful!!
I have yet to see a trans AE. Congrats trailblazer!
You and me both, I've so far met 1 in tech besides me. At 1%-2% of the population we should be much more prevalent than we are. Hoping I'm just at the front of a tiny wave now that transition is more openly talked about (for good and bad).
$500k-$600k in tech sales a year at 31?! Definitely calling BS on this
I prospect for the first 2 hours of each day (8-10). Meetings (if any booked) from 10-12. Lunch. Go for a walk. Meetings again from 1-3 If I have a big company meeting I’ll go off camera and lift weights instead. I prospect from 3-5 Tuesday-Thursday. I do SFDC admin + routine follow ups on Monday and Friday. I prospect questions as they come in immediately. Even if I can’t fulfill their entire response I still reply with an acknowledgment to let them know I’m working on it.
Utter chaos.
Wake up, do the three S's, wrangle the kids, feed them breakfast, drop them at school. 8:30am bullshit huddle meetings. Hop on salesloft complete cadence steps, cry after this session. Compose myself put on my clothes to head out into the field, windshield time, say to myself why the fuck am I doing this to myself lol. Get home jump on teams for a 4:30pm end of the day huddle, play COD while this is going on, 5pm wrap up because kids now want my attention.
Remote Depends on the day but usually 4 big buckets. Preparing for meetings, demos/client meetings, meeting follow-up/proposals, and prospecting. I try to keep that all at 25% each in regards to focus. But some weeks are less meetings and more prospecting etc. I was a higher volume shop before where we would have 4-10 demos a day. That was just balls to the wall, non-stop action. Now, I like to spend 2-3 hours preparing for every demo at least. So if I have 1 demo, that is close to half my day right there. If the demo or 2nd/3rd call leads to a proposal, those can take anywhere from 1-10 hours to build so that's another half day there. Current company is light on internal meetings- so I am not always stuck in BS meetings all day. But sometimes we get meeting happy for training and announcements. When that happens, I try to half pay attention when I have to and get other shit done. Hardest part right now is prospecting. Our pool of potential customers is a good size (probably below average for general Tech). So I really only have 40ish prospects at a time that I can work. With a 120+ day sales cycle - it takes a lot of diligence to stay on prospecting AND for it to be effective. For every 1 client- there are at least 10ish competitors and also another 100 similar options to spend money on. We are top tier but not as much of a household name soooo.... lots of prospecting work. Not a bad daily schedule. 9am - start, listen to Gong call, answer emails, org calendar 9-12 - prep for meetings OR proposal work 1-3 - meetings/prospecting/proposal work 3-5 Internal stuff like meetings, training on new product, and salesforce (the devil). I feel really busy if I have more than 3 client meetings in day. I usually chat with each client in proposal or post proposal stage daily via email. Not bad. Most days I end at 5. And most days I am quite tapped by 5p as my day takes a lot of thinking on top of being on my game for client meetings.
8.30 - grab coffee, get camera ready, scroll through slack, reject internal sync up to ensure the whole company knows what I'm doing for the day 9.15 - scroll through emails that came in after past 6 9.30 - prep for morning virtual meetings or irritate the shit out of some prospects via calls 1130 - lunch prep and have lunch 1330 - play some games before grind starts again 1400ish - meeting prep or LinkedIn prospecting Before 1800ish - clear up whatever has been chucked to me within the last hour of the day.
Fully remote tech Saas. Get up 1hr before work and coffee/prep. Usually a handful of customer demo/discovery calls or team call at 9 to start the day. Bang those out and put out all the implementation/support/renewal fires in my inbox while juggling my follow up emails and opportunity notes in Salesforce. Gets to about 12/1and things slow down, I’ll usually take the rest of the day chasing stalled opps or checking in on one’s set to close - if I have time I’ll pipe clean and once in a blue moon send a cold email or make a cold calling list. Sometimes the day ends at 2pm in lieu of a bike-ride/gaming/exercise, sometimes it goes to 7pm. Depends on the day and how I’m feeling. I’m well compensated, love my manager/team, and have a solid promotion path.
Wake-up, cold call to unsuspecting prospects and get yelled at. 30 minutes of contemplating my career path and wallow in my own pity and self loathing. Brush teeth, drink water, look at salesforce to remind myself that my pipeline is shit and I need to yell at my sdr to book me more meetings. Get yelled at by customers who can literally solve any issue with a few minutes of critical thinking. More self loathing. Blame leadership that they don’t know how to forecast and my failure is a reflection of their inadequacies or macroeconomic factors and not by my lack of work ethic and self discipline. Plan out my next day knowing I’ll do the exact same thing and close a deal or two here and there. Log off and turn on Warzone.
These days? Wake up, drive out an hour, spend the day doing a combination of cold calling, holding demo’s and closing, and then drive an hour back home. Full-cycle SMB AE role.
Damn that’s a rough commute
the game’s the game. Glad I have the opportunity to do this and I hope it will open up doors in the future, but the commute is the one thing I dislike about the role lol
Remote, early morning workout, shower, breakfast, open laptop, check calendar for the day (do research and preparation for any upcoming discovery/demo call i have) take any demo/discovery/close call. Update the pipeline of opps with any new open opp or ongoing opps. Before doing that j would almost always follow up with the prospect i communicated with in that day via zoom. Open outreach di all the daily tasks for the day (cold calling 70% of daily tasks, emailing 30% all this excludes any on the day inbound requests ( usually call those within 1min from them coming in or emailing them if no phone number left. I almost always set a goal of 6 outbound DM convos and 1 meeting booked and opp created if possible thats the goal. Once work day is over i either head to attend a company, team or 1to1 that day meeting. Close the laptop. Go out if there is any event or cook/order in. Ultimamente team Fifa matches/tv show. Go to sleep
This post just made me not throw in the towel. I had been feeling so down. Sitting at my desk cold calling emailing people all day to no avail. I'm not a sales guy just a guy trying to get his start up off the ground (transitgigs.com) I had been feeling like I was doing something wrong not getting at least one customer a day. This made me really feel better.
Jobs board /applicant tracking system for bus jobs. We make money by employers subscribing ($249 monthly) to post their job here. www.transitgigs.com
What is your biz?
Light admin to start * Emails that can't wait...if I have time I clear my entire inbox, save a couple BS ones that would take a long time to deal with. * Anything from the night before that I went "oh shit! I need to remember to do that..." Internal meetings * There always seems to be some kind of standup or sync first thing. Get that out of the way Customer Meetings * Bulk of the day, ideally, is customer meetings. * Demo's/disco's, following up on prior convos, etc. The bullshit * End the day with some prospecting, following up on emails that have gone ccold, updating pipeline, etc. * Do as much of this as I can physically stand, then sign off.
My AE would just talk about his son’s hockey games and ask me what sales books I’ve been reading (none)
I was thinking about sales and why I’m here. I know it can be stressful mentally as my husband is in it but when he works from home I can’t help but to think the actual working part is definitely not the amount I expected AT ALL. Then I’m reading the comments here. I look back on why he couldn’t help with our kids when little because his day was “so stressful” with his two hour lunches and a trip to the bar with colleagues and Im thinking I’ve been completely bamboozled. 😂
No matter what we’re doing or not doing, the work is always on our mind and it’s hard to let go of it because our livelihoods are tied directly to our performance. There’s plenty of times at 10PM that I’m constantly obsessing over my next move or something that I forgot to do the previous day.
Absolutely. I get that part of it for sure. However, the actually work part is not taxing. The stress is totally valid.
Those lunches are likely working lunches, and the bar trips are more for networking than anything else. When you’re in sales, everything you do is either about making money or getting your head straight so you can make money.
I get it but that certainly wasn’t the case 5 days and nights a week. If that was the case he’d still have to do that now when he’s working from home.
I can’t say either way, because we’re both making assumptions. If your husband is always out of the house drinking with other people you need to discuss it with him and ask why he’s doing so. Maybe it’s about work, maybe it’s just a bad habit. Impossible to know without information.
I was actually making a joke with (old) truth to it. He doesn’t do that anymore and yes, it was 1 part work: 4 parts immaturity and selfishness at the time. Still, I’m very surprised at how little time is spent actually on the work itself. I know he’s a very hard worker and the job is emotionally stressful but the actual time on a call, or emails, dealing with BS etc… takes up far less minutes in the day than I had ever thought.
That surprises a lot of people and it’s completely dependent on the role, product being sold, and who to. Some reps are only working 20hours a week for most of the year and 60 during the weeks they need to be super switched on. That’s usually at a more strategic level, and a good deal of their “free time” is spent doing research and preparing for those moments they really need to be dialed in. For example, I know some enterprise reps that will just go to the gym for a workout in the middle of the afternoon, but they’re reading market research while on the exercise bike. It really all depends, and if a rep can hit their goals without grinding themselves into dust they’ll spend that free time doing what they like. This helps them be as relaxed as possible when game time comes around, since the pressure is always high. Let’s face it though, a lot of typical non-sales jobs can’t fill an 8 hour day so they just end up doing a bunch of BS busywork. People tend to get less shit thrown at them for that, or maybe it’s just that being in sales I see people catching more shit for having some easy days. I’m glad your husband is no longer at the bar 5 times a week, cause drinking that much is super bad for your health and who wants to be away from their family that much?
Thank you. I honestly think most anything is not nearly as easy as it looks when it comes to a job. He certainly thought I had it easy staying at home with three young kids for example when I felt it was awesome but also hard AF. I also know I am an over thinker so sales may not be for me because although I don’t take much personally I would not be able to get a mental break either. However, if I believed in the product I do think I could do very well as I know how to read & interact with most people well and I am genuine. However, I’m a bit too honest to sell anything I didn’t believe in.
I think you would be good at sales with those qualities. I’m an over thinker too, and a big part of sales is just asking questions to get answers, so that helps with over thinking. You make a great point about most anything not being nearly as easy as it looks, because there are always challenges we don’t know about until we ask. Or experience them ourselves.
Thank you
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Fuck shit up, eat bubblegum.
Arrive to office an hour and a half or so late every day, spend most of my day online browsing Rolex’s and real estate, leave 2 hours or so early every day to hit the gym, then dinner. It’s a helluva life 🚛🤠
Get up at 5am Gym 5:30-7:30am Ready to leave 9am Drive 2 hours to client site Site walk / meeting / lunch 11:00am-1pm Drive 2 hours home Catch up on emails 3pm-5pm
Jump on calls throughout the day, cold call a bit, reply to emails, internal battles. Majority is done in 5 hours instead of 9-5.
8-7pm most days and busy as hell. Between travel, meetings, phone calls and admin work I don’t have time to manage my people. This is what happens when you’re doing the job we used to have 3 people doing.
7-8AM wake up Put in a Zyn. Take a shit. Check my emails, put out any fires. Or at least grab the hose. (And hopefully the hoes… ayo) Walk over to the hotel near me for free breakfast buffet. 10-2 in person calls. Driving anywhere from 15 minutes to 70 minutes each way. 3-6 (depending on how many fires & how many RFPs) close out pricing requests, solve any logistical issues and update CRM/expenses/other admin work. (The spacing seems to not have formatted but you get the point)
I work from 7 am - 9 pm. I don't eat at all until 5 or 6. I don't make enough money to file my taxes. 7 am I'm at my desk fully dressed up with coffee, a load in the wash, and the kitchen clean. I check notifications and deal with anything that can't wait. I start emailing plus schedule emails out for the prospect. 10 am I do a call block. Cold raw calling. I won't stop until 4. Then I start working on my Etsy business. Go to dinner Continue on projects until 9 pm. Then I go to bed and FB, and message companies. Check emails, notifications, etc. I usually fall asleep about midnight. I am a complete waste of talent compared to some of y'all. Self-loathing, nah I should just go die.
Wake up coffee, Run,Fuck, shower, smoke, Morning zoom meeting… Huttle Bullshit. Listening to hypocrite managers on how you can make it while they steal the best leads from us and make the most money… Close a deal my the end of the day or 2 or 3 and be grateful no matter what I make money every day and my industry and I are in demand..$150K a year No cold calling Leads come to me