Some coworkers can't be trusted

Published: Wed, 12/14/22

December 14, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning. While the rest of the world is kicking back and doing their holiday shopping, those of us who work in sales are running around like chickens with our heads cut off, all while keeping the economy afloat. In this week’s edition of The Quota, we’ll take a look at which public companies are the best to sell for in 2023, share a Sales Fail about reservations, and give some advice to a rep who was thrown under the bus by a coworker. Let’s go.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

Just 8% of salespeople say that their marketing teams generate high-quality leads.

Source: HubSpot

SALES ROUNDUP

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

A recent study conducted by sales enablement company Allego in conjunction with Sales Insights Lab indicated that top performing reps discussed product features 50% less than lower performers. The study also found that top performers are more engaging, conversational, curious, and put prospects at ease. You can read more about the report here.
If you thought your last sales demo was bad, it’s got nothing on Vladyslav Vityk, an 18-year-old car salesman who crashed a BMW X6 M into a residential garage while on a test drive with two potential customers. It’s not clear exactly how the Beemer ended up on its side on top of a fence, but since the car was wrecked and the salesman got arrested, it’s unlikely that the deal ever flipped (see what we did there?) to closed-won. You can read more about the high-speed test drive here.

FEATURE

The 10 Best Public Companies to Sell For in 2023

The economy is in a weird place, but the labor market remains tight, with more job openings than available candidates across industries. In terms of sales roles, much of the (well-documented) instability in the startup world is leading some reps and managers to seek employment at better-established companies.

We wanted to find out which publicly-traded companies are the best to sell for, so we reached out to our friends at RepVue, the world’s largest crowdsourced sales organization ratings platform, for a list. The results aren’t all that surprising, as four of the usual suspects made the cut, though there are a few companies that might not be on most people’s radars. Here are the top ten public companies for sales rep job satisfaction:

1. Sprout Social
RepVue Sales Org Score: 93.60
HQ: Chicago, IL
About: Sprout Social offers deep social media listening and analytics, social management, customer care and advocacy solutions to more than 25,000 brands and agencies worldwide. Sprout Social has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. Sprout Social's sales professionals are reporting that 69.1% of the team is hitting their quota.

2. Google
RepVue Sales Org Score: 93.38
HQ: San Francisco, CA
About: A tech company you may have heard of before, Google sales teams span across advertising products (Google Ads), cloud products (Google Cloud Platform), and productivity & collaboration tools (Google Workspace). Google has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. Google's sales professionals are reporting that 67.4% of the team is hitting their quota.

3. Atlassian
RepVue Sales Org Score: 93.31
HQ: Sydney, Australia
About: Atlassian builds productivity & collaboration tools like Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello to help teams across the world become more nimble, creative, and aligned. Atlassian has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. Atlassian's sales professionals are reporting that 79.5% of the team is hitting their quota.

4. ServiceNow
RepVue Sales Org Score: 92.61
HQ: San Jose, CA
About: ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform whose solutions help digitize and unify organizations so that they can find smarter, faster, better ways to make work flow. ServiceNow has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. ServiceNow's sales professionals are reporting that 64.8% of the team is hitting their quota.

5. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
RepVue Sales Org Score: 92.30
HQ: Seattle, WA
About: Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now widely known as cloud computing. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has high ratings for Product - Market Fit. Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s sales professionals are reporting that 72.9% of the team is hitting their quota.

6. CrowdStrike
RepVue Sales Org Score: 92.14
HQ: San Jose, CA
About: CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with one of the world’s most advanced cloud-native platforms for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data. CrowdStrike has high ratings for Product - Market Fit. CrowdStrike's sales professionals are reporting that 72.9% of the team is hitting their quota.

7. Microsoft
RepVue Sales Org Score: 92.13
HQ: Seattle, WA
About: Another tech company you may be familiar with, Microsoft sales teams focus mainly on enterprise selling Microsoft Office suite products and cloud computing (Azure). Microsoft has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. Microsoft's sales professionals are reporting that 66.0% of the team is hitting their quota.

8. HubSpot
RepVue Sales Org Score: 91.84
HQ: Boston, MA
About: HubSpot is a leading CRM and marketing platform that provides software and support to help businesses grow better. HubSpot has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. HubSpot's sales professionals are reporting that 64.9% of the team is hitting their quota.

9. Bill.com
RepVue Sales Org Score: 91.53
HQ: San Jose, CA
About: Bill.com is a one stop shop that simplifies, digitizes, and automates complex financial operations for small and midsize businesses. Bill.com has high ratings for Culture and Leadership. Bill.com's sales professionals are reporting that 66.4% of the team is hitting their quota.

10. MongoDB
RepVue Sales Org Score: 91.39
HQ: New York, NY
About: MongoDB is the leading modern, general purpose database platform, designed to unleash the power of software and data for developers and the applications they build. MongoDB has high ratings for Product - Market Fit. MongoDB's sales professionals are reporting that 64.8% of the team is hitting their quota.

TOGETHER WITH SUBSTRATA

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MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Which former presidential candidate was once a top salesman at IBM?

A. Chris Christie
B. John Edwards
C. Bob Dole
D. Ross Perot

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).

My biggest sales fail happened a few months ago. I’m a rep for an industrial space management company. We sell organizational technology (“smart shelving”) to warehouses in order to increase efficiency and intelligent use of space. It’s a pretty good gig! We sell mostly to warehouse and storage facility owners and managers, and it’s a pretty long and in-depth sales cycle.

I had been working with this one prospect for a few months, and was getting closer to an in-person meeting, but it was still a long, slow slog. So I decided to invite him to dinner, and asked if there was a restaurant near him that he liked. He said sure, we could go one night after work, and recommended an Italian restaurant that wasn’t too far from their facility. He told me that it did get packed for dinner and that we should make a reservation, and I said no problem.

So I finally met up with the guy at the restaurant, and right away he was a bit standoffish. I suspected it was because I look younger than my age, which can sometimes hurt me with these gruff older types, but I can typically overcome it.

The restaurant was packed, but I had made an online reservation for 6:30, so we went up to the front desk and I gave my name to the hostess. She asked me to confirm it a few times. Then she asked for my first name, and then asked me to confirm it again, all while she was staring into her computer. Then she said excuse me and went and got an older guy who was the manager. He made me go through the same thing, all while my prospect was standing next to me clearly getting impatient.

Finally, the manager asked for my phone number and after a few more seconds of looking at the computer, he said, “Aha, I found it. Looks like you made a reservation for next week.” I tried to play it cool and asked if they had a table for tonight but he said they were all booked up but that we could wait at the bar and if anybody didn’t show up, we could get their table. My prospect agreed, and we went to the bar (which was also packed) and had a drink while standing, while we waited for a table to open up.

Well, as you can guess, about forty minutes went by and no table opened up and we couldn’t even get dinner because there was nowhere for two people to sit. The prospect kept checking his watch and when it became clear that we wouldn’t be getting seated anytime soon, he said he needed to go and thanked me for the drink. I did give him the pitch while we were talking but I think he was completely checked out after I screwed up the reservation. What a complete waste of time. And it was all my fault.

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- December 2022

WORTH A PEEK

How automated is your (and your team’s) sales process? Do you jump from one screen to the other, wasting time updating multiple pieces of software when you could be selling? Our friends at XRay.Tech are offering a free sales operations quiz to tell you how efficient (or not) your sales process is. Take the short quiz here and you’ll get a sales process score in minutes.

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,

Ok, this is probably a weird question, but something upsetting happened to me at work recently and I’m trying to figure out how to navigate through it. I work for a big company but our sales offices are distributed, so every branch is kind of its own entity. We got a new branch manager less than six months ago, and even though he started off nice, he’s kind of a tyrant in some ways.

I don’t want to exaggerate how bad he is, but basically he’s the type of person who is an angel to prospects and customers but pretty brutal to the people who work for him. He doesn’t even try to make his sales team feel valued; he’s basically a “What have you done for me?” type of person.

Here’s the bizarre thing that happened: I have a coworker who I thought I had a good relationship with. She is mostly professional, but we’ve had personal discussions about non-work stuff too. The point is that I didn’t see any reason not to trust her. So we went to get coffee together about a month ago, and she asked me what I thought about the new manager, and I basically told her what I typed above. I said that he doesn’t seem to have many people skills for someone in a people-first role.

I didn’t think much of it until my new manager called me into his office and called me out for what I said to her. He basically asked if I said that and I lied and said that that was not what I said and that my words were taken out of context. There was no resolution in our discussion but it felt like a “warning.” Now I’m stuck with a manager who probably hates me and a coworker who ratted me out completely unexpectedly! What do you think I should do here? I dread going into work now.

Shocked in New England

Dear Shocked,

Your coworker is lame, but there’s a good lesson to be learned here: keep your controversial opinions to yourself whenever you’re at work. The catharsis you might get from a little bit of venting isn’t worth losing your job over. And if it is, then you should find another job anyway.

Which is a good segue into our answer. If you’re truly dreading going into work, then it’s probably time to move on. Start applying to other jobs, and try to keep your head down while you’re still employed in your current role.

Of course, you could also use this as an opportunity to close as many deals as humanly possible, and show your two-faced coworker and unpleasant manager that you’re not going to let them stop you from succeeding.

But that part is up to you. If you feel like things are irrevocably tainted, then there’s no reason not to move on. Good luck, and next time, make sure you fully trust your coworker before telling them what you really think.

Quiz Answer: D - Ross Perot

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

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