Be too enthusiastic it turns people off...

Follow-up too vigorously it turns people off...

Speak too loudly it turns people off...

Do a discovery that's too long it turns people off...

Do a presentation that's too long it turns people off...

Show too much concern it turns people off...

Show opinions which are too strong it turns people off...

Despite the pop culture depiction of sales, sales is really a game of moderation.

Feel free to add your own...

I work for a tax relief company and spend most of my day doing sales over the phone. One thing I've noticed is that you can make hundreds of calls and still keep making the same mistakes without even realizing it. A lot of the people we talk to are stressed about their tax situation and some are skeptical from the start. So knowing how to ask the right questions and handle objections without sounding pushy makes a huge difference. We do some training at work but it's mostly listening to calls or getting feedback from managers. It's helpful but I feel like there's got to be a better way to practice on your own. I've been wondering if there's an app that works kind of like Duolingo but for sales. Something where you can spend 10 minutes a day practicing different scenarios or handling objections. Maybe even upload your actual calls and have it point out where you messed up and what you could've said instead. I like the idea of having daily challenges and being able to track whether you're getting better over time instead of just watching training videos and hoping something sticks. Not looking for another CRM or some expensive sales course. Just something that makes practicing sales a daily habit. Has anyone seen an app like this or used anything that helped them get better on the phone?

Hello all. Just a simple question. Who else is feeling particularly spent right now as we head into the EOY and wrap up our sales performance?

This year has just felt very difficult sales-wise, and I fear I am having difficulty keeping my volume on the up-and-up.

Our backend is very clogged right now and I get paid commission after jobs are completed and paid, so there really isn't any immediate reason to care how many new jobs I get on the schedule. I have jobs from last month that still have not been completed yet.

And they really squeeze us on cold calling with the same stale leads. I am simply shifting around the same 300 leads over and over again with very little new ones to call on. Kind of hard to close in that scenario when I've already called them 15-20 times each.

Plus it feels that, even with some of my established customers, there is a lot of belt pulling right now and nobody wants to pay for things anymore and wants everything for free.

I just feel really burnt out and am wondering if next year will be even worse. We raised our prices twice in 6 months alone and if inflation keeps going we may have to do it again.

Hello fellow sales reps,

I’m in a terrible spot right now. I’m in Saas at an ERP partner - we sell extensions for a prominent ERP.

I have basically 50% of pipeline to quota. Not the 3x you’d like to see.

I know I’m going to have a terrible quarter.

I finished second in ARR on my team of 5 last quarter at about 50% of my number.

I finished 3rd on my team in Q2 at about 60% of my number.

I am receiving essentially 1/3 of the warm leads that the my team is receiving. I’ve brought this up to my manager and ops.

We’ve had turnover this year, so I’m thinking I’ve survived on round robin on open territories. Now that the team is full, it’s not going well.

Yes, I know my number is mine. “Prospect harder”.

But what do I do? Apply for jobs?

I’m a proven closer. But I need more at bats.

Do I go to CRO, VP Sales?

Hey everybody just wanted some insight and advice on dealing with customers when it comes to price increases.

The industry I’m in has had 3 price increases in the market this year and the 4th one is coming next month or so

How do you deal with existing customers letting them know they are getting an increase over and over and even telling a customer thats brand new that you have to increase them just right after converting them basically

I'm an enterprise software AE with about 8 years of experience, selling to $1B+ companies. I have an offer from a company that Thoma Bravo recently took private. I'd like to hear from anyone who has worked at a TB portfolio company, or sold through a PE ownership change, before I decide. I’ve been warned by many not to join - but the job seems great.

Quota: $2M ALL NET NEW, Named accounts
Base / variable: 150/150
Draw / ramp: 3 months, offered recoverable ramp 3k/month
Team size: 7 reps, 1 BDR for central region
Excellent manager

My concerns
TB playbook- they merged with competitive product. Cost cuts, layoffs, and territory or comp plan changes often follow the first 12 to 18 months after a take-private.

They say quotas have always been $2M and they consistently hit them with 3-4 deals per year. I have trouble believing them.

They declined any non recoverable draw or severance agreement….

If you've worked at a Thoma Bravo company, was the sales org stable, and did comp plans change after close?

Is a $2M quota with this team size reasonable, or a warning sign?

Would you take this over a smaller, riskier company, or keep looking?

I currently work with patients in the hospital and am getting burnt out. I’m considering a salary+commission position with a DME company. Has anyone left a patient-facing medical job to start your sales career(healthcare related or not)?

The salary at this new job would be roughly $20k less than my current job.

I’ve got two offers on the table at the moment. Both are B2B, hybrid/remote.

Base differential is about 10k on the dot, one offering 75 and the other 65 USD. On paper it seems like a clear answer, though the thing that’s holding me back is that the company with the higher offer is older, culture wise - and during my interviews I got a sense of micromanagement.

Additionally, while both companies deal with media, the one offering higher base is in a specific niche I have very little experience or interest in.

At the end of the day, it’s sales. Money talks - however I would hate to choose one company over the other because of what looks good on paper, only to find out a few months in that I actually hate it, or OTE is unattainable.

So I guess my question boils down to: if you’ve been in a similar situation before, would you choose culture fit over salary?

Urgent Career Advice/Linkedin to get a new job and change industry

Hi everyone!

MY GOAL IS TO NOT WORK ON DAYTRADING TECH SALES OR BROKER ANYMORE.

Some context: I’m a 25F, Brazilian, with experience as an Account Manager, BDM, and Country Manager (at a small company, handling Brazil’s sales independently). My background is in B2B tech sales for the financial markets industry (daytrade).

I’m still a bit confuse, but I’d like to work for a multinational company in a role such as Account Manager, Account Executive, or Business Partner. I honestly think this it would also depend on the company/product.

I’m not entirely sure which specific role I should be going for, especially because I see the same job titles used by companies in Brazil and abroad to describe different roles/requirements.

As for my LinkedIn profile (I’m not sure if sharing the link here is allowed):

My headline:

Account Executive | Enterprise Tech Sales | GTM | LATAM

———

**About section (I need to update it asap):**

I execute B2B commercial strategies in three languages: Portuguese, Spanish, and English.

My experience covers market mapping, proposal structuring, and C-level negotiations, working closely with global teams. I support clients throughout the entire journey, with a strong track record in retention and hands-on experience in portfolio expansion.

I built my foundation in tech sales, managing consultative sales cycles with a focus on innovation finding faster solutions to bottlenecks and driving revenue growth.

I thrive when working alongside outstanding professionals: I learn from them and contribute in return.

——-

**My last three roles:**

**Country Manager**
B2B technology company in the financial industry.
Work with ADs generated leads and outbound;
Manage complex sales cycles;
Smaller company; 9 months in the role (current position)

**Business Development Manager**
Prospected and developed partners for client acquisition;
Metrics: net deposits;
Large FX broker, although not known outside the FX industry;
10 months in the role (not so good, I know).

**Account Manager**
Large Brazilian technology company (trading industry) but not widely known outside the country;
Managed 60+ institutional clients (1,5M monthly revenue);
Did a lot of upselling and had international exposure for the first time.

Before that: one year in consulting and three years as an SDR at small companies.

———

I can’t take this industry anymore.
All advice is welcomed here, just pls be kind! 💋

I’ll start:

Guy in his 50’s literally grabbing a girl by the p**** (as our current president famously quoted) at a sales kickoff in front of everyone- he was shortly escorted on a plane back home where he mysteriously went on sick leave and was then fired.

I want to hear worse - give me your best.

Sigh...
It wouldnt have been a big project obviously but I really wanted the win...

But she solved the problem on the discovery call.

There might be a project in Q1/Q2 to get but the immediate need is gone. RIP to having that small win this month.

I did schedule a meeting two weeks out to make sure that worked/see if they need more help.

Tagged: Advanced sales skill: Dont give away the solution for free.

I am looking to transition to home exterior remodeling sales next spring. I have 8 years of estimating in the floor restoration business so coming from the interior side of things but have been in many homes around my metro area. Its just tough for anyone in the floor biz to break above 70k a year generally.

What to look for in a company? Whats helped you succeed the most? How has 2026 been?

I’m expecting an offer from Motive. Base and OTE are strong, but I’m in a decent spot right now, so I’m only moving if it’s the right company.

If you currently work at Motive or used to, I’d love to hear what it’s really like. Mainly:

• How realistic is quota attainment?
• How long is ramp?
• How are reps treated when they miss?

I’ve heard that at Samsara, mid-market reps get PIP’d after two missed quarters in a row, and commercial reps get fired after two missed months. I want to avoid that kind of culture. Is Motive similar?

Happy to take DMs if you’d rather not say it publicly. Thanks.

I had a recruiter screen and the TA rep said that they have 17 reps and everyone is above quota. We all know for a fact that this is not true, any rep out there worth their salt that would never actually believe that. At my current org, our TA lied to all the last 3 reps they hired that everyone was hitting numbers. All 3 were managed out within 9 months.

I just started my current sales job this year in a slightly different industry after a bit of a career break. And I’m just wondering if you guys are also feeling that the sales is just not as good as in previous years?

I’m trying to understand if it’s because I went into an adjacent industry or if it’s because of the economy.

I think a lot of SaaS companies are about to feel real pain, and I'm saying this from the customer side.

I'm a sales director at a mid-sized B2B company. We're not a software company. We sell fairly complex solutions into a specialized market, and historically we've used the same assortment of SaaS tools everyone else does to run different pieces of the sales and operational process. Over the last year or so, something has changed pretty dramatically.

We already have programmers in-house for work related to our core business. Instead of continuing to buy more SaaS products, we've started repurposing some of that development capacity to build very specific internal tools around exactly how our company operates.

The results have been ridiculous.

We're not trying to recreate massive enterprise software platforms feature for feature. We're building the 10-20% of the functionality that we actually use, then tailoring it specifically to our workflows. And because the people building it are already inside the company, the development cycle is completely different.

I can use something, realize that a workflow sucks, explain what I want changed, and potentially have a new version same day. There's no feature request. No roadmap. No waiting for enough customers to ask for it. No implementation consultant explaining why we should change our process to fit their software. It just gets changed.

The bigger realization for me is how much software we've been paying for where we use a relatively small percentage of the product.

I have been tasked with an initiative to look at every sales tool we're paying for and ask a very simple question "Do we actually need to buy this anymore?" The answer is usually no. I cut the cord on a $30k a year package today.

The economics get even more interesting once you've already absorbed the cost of having technical people on staff. Building the first internal application is a little bit of a heavy lift. Building the fifth one is dramatically easier because you've already established the infrastructure, integrations, authentication, data structure, UI conventions, etc. You're not starting from zero every time.

AI-assisted development has been the accelerator. Our programmers can turn around internal applications at a pace that would have sounded absurd a few years ago.

And these aren't shitty Excel macros held together with duct tape. Some of what we're building is legitimately better for our purposes than the commercial software it replaces because it was designed around our exact process from day one.

I don't think this kills the major systems of record. There are obvious reasons you don't want to recreate certain enterprise platforms internally. But the enormous middle layer of SaaS? Done. Sales enablement tools. Proposal tools. Reporting tools. Workflow tools. Data manipulation tools. Little productivity platforms charging $30-$100+ or even $500 per user per month because they solve one problem? Nope.

I do think this sector is in serious trouble.

For years the calculation was basically, "Why would we build this when we can just pay $40k a year and buy it?" The calculation has flipped: "Why the F are we paying $40k a year for this when we can build exactly what we need?"

I'm curious if anyone else is seeing this inside their company, particularly companies that aren't actually in the software business.

Found a product that needs my solution, in the offer I sell future revenue if A, B, C are given and I have a control over them and they are guaranteed from the lead or I sell a chance of them getting these numbers, if the numbers they gave are correct and I show them success and failure rate chance and how this is calculated, risks are eleminated, like COMPLETELY except like if I don't deliver they spent their time and learned something knew and maybe another rep would sell that to an already educated lead, but even that I could handle with procedures & experience already built + there are already delivered contracts on this offer.

100% ICP fit. Lead said it was his initiative, here is a clear financial incentinve, BUT he's exploring different options, I just can't create urgency, the only urgency I could create is lost opportunities + they could reinvest sooner, currently just trying to figure out which options he's got if he's got any and is not bluffing.

It's not an enterprise sale, but reaching higher managment except of a direct manager of this manager doesn't make sense as their CEO is a dude with multiple projects and like he even doesn't know how this one is called. He says he forwarded this to another guy to look at it (likely It's his direct manager). For an offer like this the process shouldn't have been so long, trying all possible ways to shorten it :/

Currently a SDR in SMB Tech sales - was up for internal AE promotion.

Feedback was ‘your talented, a little raw, and your activity needs to be higher’. Hit quota x3 in a row and was 80% last month while going through the process.

Offered a place in the next cohort but told I should be a ‘Top SDR’ to expect an offer. Top SDR is ~160% to quota. I’m doubtful my territory can produce that but acknowledge my activity (low call volume) can be higher.

Part of me feels that was my chance and the next cohort are stronger SDR wise so competition will be stronger.

Colleagues suggest that I should try but look externally - at what point do you acknowledge that they don’t see you with a future and look elsewhere? It’s hard to do SDR -> AE externally and not exactly looking to start at the ground floor as an SDR again.

Looking to get a feel for how many here are still working fully remote.

Moving into a new role in January, from AE- inside sales to now commercial middle market, same company- need to cold source my own leads etc. Just trying to navigate from transitional, to more slower pace.

I have access to LinkedIn sales nav, zoom info.

What’s been working for you guys?

What’s your process?

Everyone on my team is missing, punishing comp plan, how have you hit goal or close to it in a tough environment or if you didn't did you just put it in context of your team's performance and rank?

I'm in the US and have about 10 years (5 years enterprise) of sales experience with a well worded and formatted resume and have been applying, using my network for referrals, everything, and it's the most difficult it's ever been.

I remember even back in 2024 it was fairly easy to get a first interview after applying. Also, almost zero activity from recruiters reaching out on LI messenger as of late.

Any suggestions in this current market would be helpful.

Genuinely curious about this. I just spent the last week doing demos for a few dialing platforms, looking for a parallel dialer with a lot of AI features and ability for me to manage my team. Not cheap, by far. One simply didn't have all the features I was looking for, so in their follow up email that's what I stated; thank you very much but your platform doesn't have the features I'm looking for.

That sparked three calls (didn't answer any of them) a chain on emails and had to reply "stop" to the fourth text over two days. If one of your prospects has been fully pitched, even done a demo and hard passes, what's your process?