What does the top AE at Salesforce do all day?

Published: Wed, 11/09/22

November 9, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. The business world is in turmoil – economic confusion, bad news, and intense uncertainty. But for salespeople, it’s just another week! In this edition of The Quota, we interview Ian Koniak, a former #1 AE at Salesforce, tell the story of a test drive gone wrong, and give some advice to a marketer who wants more respect. Let’s do this.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

24% of salespeople reported that they majored in business in college.

Source: Hubspot

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

Carvana, the once-promising startup that promised to eliminate the car salesperson for good now faces the very real threat of its own demise, as its stock posted its worst day on record last week after missing its quarterly expectations. Shares are down a whopping 96% (!) for the year, signaling dark clouds for the disruptive company. You can read more about Carvana’s troubles here.
How often have we heard complaints that there’s no formal education program for aspiring sales reps? Well, one (of a few) more has sprung up at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The Sales Institute at the University will allow students to either minor in professional selling or pursue a concentration in professional selling with a major in marketing. You can read more about the new program here.

FEATURE

An interview with Ian Koniak, sales coach and a former #1 AE at Salesforce

Ian Koniak is the former #1 Strategic Account Executive in the Enterprise Select Division of Salesforce, a sales coach, and an all-around great guy. In his career, he’s been a top seller at several Fortune 500 companies, exceeded his quota for 42 consecutive months, and trained dozens of teams. We wanted to pick Ian’s brain, so we sat down for an interview. You can connect with Ian on LinkedIn here, or inquire about his services here. (Note: This interview has been condensed for length and clarity. You can read the full interview on our website).

First off, how did you get your start in sales? When did you know that it would be your career?

Like many people, I came from a non-traditional background. I didn't want to be a salesperson when I grew up, and I didn't really know about the industry. After college, I wanted to be a photojournalist, so I was taking pictures, traveling, and teaching.

At the age of 23, I had to figure out how to make at least $50K to support myself and my girlfriend. So I ended up going to a sales career fair, where I found a job selling copiers door-to-door. It was one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I would close one out of four deals and the average deal size was 8K. I had to close one deal a week to hit my quota of 30K a month. But within a year, I was able to support myself and my girlfriend, all because I got paid based on my performance. That's how I got hooked. There was nearly uncapped earning potential, and I was willing to do whatever it took. That was 20 years ago, and I’ve never looked back.

You were previously the #1 AE at Salesforce. How did you get there in such a hyper competitive environment? What does it take to be the top AE at a company like that?

Before Salesforce, I spent 10 years working at my previous company. I definitely developed a lot of grit and discipline, but I realized I was playing the wrong sport. I had a feeling that SaaS was the future. We had brought in Salesforce to my previous company and I had a lot of success with it. I was running the sales team, and we had about 80 employees and were running a healthy business

I had to take a big step back and leave my ego at the door to get into SaaS. I decided to be an individual contributor because I knew I wouldn’t get hired as an executive or a VP at Salesforce. So it took me taking a step back and changing industries to get into SaaS. And after a few rejections, I was brought into the Enterprise division at Salesforce. I had no enterprise or SaaS experience, but my first year, I got Rookie of the Year through hard work and persistence.

I thought I was really amazing, but then I fell pretty hard. I missed my quota three years in a row – year two, three and four, I missed it. I realized it was because I had this inherent belief that activity yields pipeline yields results, because that's what had worked for me in the past. I took that approach to enterprise software and it didn't work.

So in order for me to become the #1 sales rep at Salesforce, I had to completely unlearn everything I was taught and what it took to get there. This involved shifting my focus from quantity to quality. Rather than being in a lot of accounts, I went high, wide, and deep, with fewer accounts and really applied the 80/20 Pareto Principle.

To get to #1, you need to care about the success of the people, even more than you care about your own success. I know that sounds counterintuitive to the industry of sales, but if you help customers achieve what they want, you are always going to get what you want.

Do top enterprise sales reps who work for huge companies have any work-life balance? How many hours do you think they’re putting in?

I used to think hours spent mattered. But it's more about how you spend those hours. To get to #1, it’s going to require you to singularly focus on your goal. So if you're going to make seven-figures in sales and your goal is to get to #1, you're not going to do that by working 20-30 hours a week. Realistically, when I was the top performer, it was probably between 45 and 50 hours a week. Sometimes it involved working some nights and weekends depending on the velocity of the deals.

I had two years in a row where I killed it at sales, but I made a lot of sacrifices in the process. My family, my health, my mental health, and I didn't have that balance in my life.

And so, it took me nearly losing everything to figure out what was most important and I realized that, you know, it doesn't matter how well you perform, performance is only one aspect of success, right?

I learned that if you're chasing money, you're going to feel unfulfilled and you're probably going to behave badly in the process and do some things that lack integrity in the pursuit of wealth.

Why did you decided to 'retire' from B2B tech sales and go into coaching/teaching?

I had a near-death experience and I realized that even though I had been so successful in this one area of my life (sales), I was very unfulfilled and if I died at that moment, I would have had a lot of regret where I didn't actually help people and didn't make an impact on the lives of others.

I have a great family, great life, but what was missing when I had that near-death experience is that I actually hadn't contributed to the lives of others.

So in 2019, while I was still at Salesforce, I decided to start making videos and sharing content. I didn't even plan to monetize it; I just genuinely wanted to help people. That grew and I started getting coaching clients. So now I had a side hustle going and when I had that side hustle, my balance of work-life shifted.

It's about fulfilling my purpose on this planet and using some of the hardships and the failures that I’ve had to help the lives of others and help people from making similar mistakes, such as sacrificing their family and their integrity. I struggled with addiction, I struggled with a lot of things when I was at the peak of my achievement. But now, I don’t face those struggles anymore. So if I can help people succeed the right way and have it all without making these sacrifices, my time on Earth will have been very well spent.

What's one piece of advice you have for someone who's just starting their career in sales?

My biggest piece of advice would be to embrace the suck. When I started in sales, I was door knocking, I was getting thrown out of buildings by security guards. But I had my ‘why.’ I knew why I was doing it. Connect with your ‘why’ and remember exactly why you're doing it.

I think so many people, especially now, fall into these get-rich-quick schemes that make it seem like there's an easier path than doing the hard work.

But the reality is, if you want a career in sales and you want to master it, you're going to have to start at the bottom where you're doing a lot of phone calls, you're doing a lot of prospecting, where you're doing things without maybe making the money you want to make.

If you just do the task at hand to the best of your ability and give it your all, the next opportunity will naturally present itself. Focus on the process, not the prize; focus on the process and show up every day and give your all every day and the prize will come.

TOGETHER WITH QUOTAPATH

Remember to talk to your reps! When it comes to compensation plans, ask your reps for feedback, explain the math and the why’s behind different mechanics of their plan. And, most importantly, share how the company will help them reach their targets.

Pro tip: Motivate your reps by giving them more visibility into their potential earnings.

With Compensation Hub, find a commission structure that aligns with your business. Then, use the modeler to strike the right balance between pay and performance by adjusting nine variables, such as OTE, annualized quota, or ACV, among others.

Explore Compensation Hub to discover the right plans for your business.

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Which actor played Jordan Belfort’s father in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street?

A. Dean Norris
B. Rob Reiner
C. Alan Alda
D. Martin Scorsese

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

This didn’t happen to me, but I was there when everything went down. I’ve been in car sales for over twenty years, so I’ve pretty much seen it all. When dealing with the general public, you learn to expect the unexpected.

In the early 2000’s, when I was just getting into the business, I worked for a private used car dealership. We had a few different locations in New England. Our buildings were pretty nice, so we weren’t just some fly-by-night shop or anything like that.

So one time, we bought this flashy BMW at auction. It was a black 3-series, but it was a convertible and had these nice-looking 19-inch chrome wheels on it, so it was a really nice-looking car. This happened to be during a summer when sales were pretty slow, so our sales managers were on us to do whatever we could to move cars.

So the Beemer had been sitting out front for a few weeks, and one day, this young kid came in with another kid. They couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. They looked like skateboarders or rappers or something. And they wanted to test drive the BMW. My sales manager, who was skeptical, asked them about finances, and one of the kids pulled out paystubs showing that he was making almost $600 a week at a local pool hall/concert venue.

Normally, my manager probably wouldn’t have let him out with the car, but our numbers were pretty terrible, and he did have the income and some credit, so she let them go out on a test drive with one of the older salesmen to keep them company. We thought they’d probably just drive the car and then come back and leave.

Well, not even ten minutes after they leave the lot, we get a call from the salesman saying they had been in an accident. Apparently, the driver had tried to really get on the gas while taking a turn, and since it was RWD, he spun out and ended up smashing the car into a tree. Total loss. My sales manager was so angry that she left for the rest of the day after our sales guy came back. Sales fail!

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- November 2022

WORTH A PEEK

Do you ever feel awkward trying to figure out how to sign off on your email messages? “Thanks” is boring, and “best” is confusing (who is the best? You? Them?) If you’re looking for some alternatives, HubSpot put together 43 email-sign off alternatives that will put the boring ones to shame. You can read them all here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

I’m a growth marketer at a mid-sized company (yes, I know that this is a sales newsletter). I’ve personally never worked in sales, and have been in marketing in one form or another ever since I graduated from college.

The reason I am writing in is because I want to try to understand this sales vs. marketing dynamic that seems to be so commonplace in so many companies. Why is there an us versus them mentality, when at the end of the day, we’re all trying to accomplish the same goal?

Here is what I mean: my job is literally to drive leads for sales reps using an ad budget. I work hard to try to figure out new ways to do this, whether it’s Google, LinkedIn, or social media ads, sponsorships of communities and newsletters, events, and testing out other channels. I am constantly iterating to get better results, and my entire team works hard to try to figure out the best way to get leads into the sales funnel.

But despite all this, our sales team is constantly complaining about the leads they’re getting, saying that they’re “recycled” (which is nonsense), unqualified (in some cases this is true, but we ask questions on our lead forms to try to weed these out), or just not a good fit. Their leadership clashes with ours about this, and we get a lot of pressure to deliver.

We are doing our best, just as they are, but it seems that marketers are just looked at as people who sit around all day making watercolor doodles rather than actually working. The stuff we do takes effort and can be complicated and take time to get right. Why can’t sales understand that our jobs are difficult too? How can we make it so that we’re working together instead of against each other?

Frustrated in the Midwest

Dear Frustrated,

Ahhh, the old sales vs. marketing rivalry – a feud as old as the Hatfields vs. the McCoys. Salespeople are the grizzled workhorses pulling the cart, and marketers are the tie-dye-wearing, IPA-drinking “artists,” attending offsite retreats to get their creative juices flowing.

Ok… we realize that the above is probably not helping things, so let’s get serious.

Not every company has a marketing / sales rivalry, but it sounds like yours does. Most of the time (for better or worse), the two organizations are siloed, and operate fairly independently of each other. Sometimes this is a good thing, but oftentimes it’s not. In any case, that’s not exactly your problem, is it?

The way to solve your problem is by doing something everybody seems to hate doing these days: communicating. Everybody needs to get in a room together and discuss what’s working, what’s not, and how you can work together more effectively.

Sales just wants to close deals, and we can almost guarantee you that they don’t have any personal animosity towards the marketing team. And marketing should want the same thing, but they (you) might not quite understand all the nuances of the ideal customer, which, at times, is something only the sales team will understand, since they’re the ones with their ear closest to the ground.

So talk to your head of marketing, explain that the current situation isn’t working, and cross your fingers that they’re the type of person who tackles problems head-on instead of crossing their fingers and hoping they disappear. And if that doesn’t work, you can always make the switch to sales yourself! Good luck.

Quiz Answer: B – Rob Reiner

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

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