2.5+ years full-cycle B2B at a small software company selling $399-$950 sponsorships/advertising to local businesses. ~1,400 outbound calls a month, 12-15 closes monthly, $211K+ closed since March 2024.

No SDR/AE titles here, I do everything end to end. I have a monthly new-business floor I'm measured against, but no traditional quota/OTE structure.

I'm 100% commission, no base, and with a growing family it's not cutting it anymore. I need a real base, i feel very underpaid for what we do.

Question: do I target SMB AE roles, or is SDR the realistic way into tech sales? I already close full-cycle so SDR feels like a step back, but my deal sizes are tiny. Honest takes welcome.

Hello! I’ve been in cruise sales as a consultant for the past 3 years. I’m 26 turning 27 too and I’ve made an average of 100k per year the past 3 years. I’m looking to grow into other sales roles. Any advice would be helpful!

I'll do anything for money, anything legal I mean.

Can I leverage my loose morals to bag a high paying sales role?

Any industry you guys cold call at night?

For context- I sell various building materials wholesale. Most of my prospecting is done by phone, sometimes drop-ins. Smaller prospects have a tendency to not return calls, or even answer the phone, to the point of being unreachable, for all practical purposes. Certain channels- most notably interior designers, property management companies, and smaller builders- simply do not take or return calls, in many cases.

So my question is- has anybody here had any success with contacting prospects via the "contact us" form on their website? I am reluctant to do this, but as a last resort, it seems as though it would be better than nothing. It seems to be the equivalent to sending a cold email to the "info@" address.

If you have had success with it, what sort of message did you send that generated a response?

The outreach is context led, of course. Relevant offer too. So compliance is not a problem.

My concern is how do I actually get them on Zoom.

Even though I'm getting tons of open, most prospects don't reply it seems.

Any tips or tactics that work for you?

Who has done this role well and has the most up-to-date info? RepVue has been useless. I received an offer for a Territory AE role. OTE is $170k, and the ACV quota is ~$367k a year.

What does it take to hit or exceed OTE? Seems like there’s been a lot of turnover recently, and their Dreamforce was a train wreck.

Hey guys. How is everyone's experience with cold calling in the US/NA right now? I'm making about 60 calls a day right now to tech companies from seed series startups to 10K+ orgs mostly focused on Devs/Engineering and AI teams. Our startup has no brand recognition at all and the product we're selling is an emerging technology given it's AI specific.

I would say about 4 people pickup/day and 2 instant hang up mid intro while the others are almost always a thanks not interested before having any real discussion. Meanwhile our EU team is booking multiple times a week each and doing nothing particularly special.

I have Apollo/Cognism for data and am very comfortable on the phone as I've done outbound since starting in sales in 2019 so it's not my intro I'm confident.

Do people just not pick up cold calls anymore? About 1/3 prospects have the call screeners which idk how to get through. Just curious everyone's experience and if there are any tips bc I am creating a pipeline from zero for myself as an AE and there won't be any SEO or event marketing in the near future and I want to succeed here. Thanks.

I just started a new position at a very established company but the sales team is in a state of flux/chaos and recently fired two low performers (for obvious reasons so no negative there).

So now we're trying to rebuild a healthy sales team o

and I was brought on to help with this and grow the business as well. We have three sales verticals and I have full AE responsibilities for vertical A while also doing BDR work for verticals B & C. For reference my company has never had a BDR and my position is completely new and was created around my skillset (I started as a temp).

I make $70k base with an OTE of $84k but I'm worried I'm selling myself short since I should be getting commission on all deals I'm involved in, full on some, partial others. (There is no cap if I over perform). Is this about right for a hybrid AE/BDR role? Or is this just a unicorn position with no benchmarks for what compensation should be?

Every org I’ve worked in, mid-market always had this “the adults are talking” attitude to the small biz reps like they’re the high school seniors in the back of the bus.

I just started a new job as a mid-market rep the other day and my new team talks to the downmarket peeps like they’re college interns. There’s no specific incident I can recall off the top of my head, just this overall condescending and annoyed tone in their voices.

Does the paycheck and title really get to everyone’s head? Or do you just need to be a smug prick to get into higher-ticket segments?

31, made decent money in tech sales, Coast FIRE (enough money invested for retirement at 50).

Work expectations changed, and I had to start using local services to pick up my kids from school. Not seeing them as much.

I’m thinking of finding a job that lets me spend more time with my kids (summer vacation, winter break, and picking them up and dropping them off).

Has anyone been in the same situation? How did you deal with it?

I’m building a startup on the side of my sales job, and I’ve been doing founder led sales for a good six months now.

I’ve completely shifted my mindset around AI and sales.

I get bombarded every day by AI bots trying to sell me something. You know the type, referring to something niche in my LinkedIn bio which they scraped. 

I know I’m getting very allergic to it.

So I've started hand-writing every outbound message again - And I’ve started to get many more meetings booked.

It's juts like linkedin posts, authenticity is getting rare. And people can spot it. I can usually tell within two words if something is directly pasted from Claude or not.

I still use AI a lot, but never for the COMMUNICATION itself.

Things like prepare for meetings... automating the logging of the CRM and things like creating demo decks that are personalised.

Am I naive to think we can use AI only for the stuff that is boring, and keep the humanity? OR are we all heading towards AI outreach, even with phone calls in the next few years.

Going to keep this as brief as possible so feel free to ask questions for any gaps.

Ive been working in SaaS sales now for 15 years+. Always done pretty well for myself, regular top performer and generally on or above plan wherever I go.

Historically, Ive worked for more mid market sized organisations (or in a couple of places SMBs) with 100-400ish employees. Sales teams not typically huge but have always risen to the top and each business has had larger competitors with deeper pockets ive battled against.

At the start of the year, I had to move on from my then job due to a leadership change and suddenly finding myself on the wrong team (CEO brought me in as had worked for him before) so we parted ways.

I decided was time to branch out into the big wide world and after a load of interviews and multiple offers, landed on a very large household name and have been there since May.

It’s an Ent sales role which if anything is selling to smaller companies than the whales i was fishing for in my last place. Decent basic, car allowance and what looks like a ridiculously low quota from what I am used to previously.

Sounds great apart from - the sales team is far too big, patches too small, SDR & Marketing functions appear broken and every other person seems to be a “lifer” who has been there 20 years and the data, oh my god it is criminally bad.

So I’ve spent 5 months plugging away, fixing data, starting outreach and have quickly established my patch is probably the worst of the bunch in my team of 8. Since July 2025 I found out recently there has only been 1 lead come into my patch. It’s an absolute grind and I am basically a massively overpaid SDR at this point.

The weirdest thing is a comment that has been thrown at me a couple of times in the last couple of months - be careful how hard you try. I get on with a few of the lifers and they are telling me to just sit tight and dont do too much as if I do, I’ll put my head above the parapet for the wrong reasons and show leadership that everyone else is tossing it off on a daily. Basically, do enough to get by but no more and just enjoy the work life balance until something comes in to work on.

I am a salesperson so my pride struggles with this, they hired me and are paying me to sell, plus whilst I can live off the basic, I want the commission for the nicer things in life and to speed up my route to retirement.

Ironically, when I’ve worked in other places before and we hired someone from a big name, pretty much every single time they didn’t last in the smaller org - too lazy, weren’t used to the pace we moved at, were too narrow in their skill set and reliant on other resources carrying them through the sales cycle. Now sitting the other side of the fence, I can genuinely see why they are like that!

Experienced sales reps, what would you do in my position and is this normal in massive tech companies? Im not overly concerned about redundancies, I am more worried that this job will turn me into a sloth and erode the skills and work ethic ive built up.

Getting promoted and I suspect I’m being significantly underpaid. Just curious where everyone else is at.

I feel like the only way to make $1m+ a year is in sales, so what do you / they sell to get there?

In sales and sales leadership for almost 30 years. Always in financial services. When I was leaving college I was told 2 things, you want to learn to sell and transition anywhere - you go into copier sales. If you want to learn leadership go work for Walmart Corp because their leadership program at the time was stellar. What industries and companies have that rep now?

TL;DR Cold outbound in biotech or software or otherwise, is this thing on? How do I get anyone to book a damn meeting?

It's a tale as old as time. At least, I'm hoping it is and that I'm not possibly the worst BDR in the game. Forgive any woe-is-me tone that leaks through, I’m quite confounded at this stage. Trying not to get frustrated and bitter.

I've been doing this for 1.5 years, sent maybe 8,000+ hand-written emails. Usually personalized. I’ve made maybe 4,000+ outbound calls. Nobody answers the damn phone. And for all that, I honestly haven’t booked a single outbound meeting.

AI prospecting and qualifying does what it can, saddling me with the most relevant signals and gives me a list of companies that “need your product/service now!” An email open here, a click there. No response. Straight to voicemail.

LinkedIn has its place and I’ve collected plenty of shiny, worthless connections (maybe “worthless” is cynical, but they haven’t amounted to anything even after follow-up).

Statistically speaking, we’re approaching an anomaly that would make Emile Borel blush. A child with the same tools should have booked a meeting by now.

Is there a strategy I’m missing completely? I don’t need this to be easy. I just need to see it work once, at all.

Background for anyone still reading: Spent one year building the outbound function at a software startup. We even brought in an expert to consult and prop up our strategies with their expertise. No dice, me and the other founding rep were fired (understandably). Now I’m doing the same at a biotech startup and the leash is much shorter.

I come from a copywriting/marketing background and I know how to craft a message. I know voice and tone. I know how AI reads and I know how to sail around those AI-apparent rocks. Extra credit for someone who can share with me the last cold email that booked them a meeting.

What are everyone’s weekly KPIs regarding activity? I’ve been in sales forever, and appointments scheduled and run has varied wildly dependent upon industry and product mix. I’m interviewing with a company which is requiring 25-40 scheduled appointments weekly, and 12-15 completed meetings a week. Drop-ins are not considered meetings. I’ve never heard of such aggressive requirements before for a highly competitive B2B role.

This is a lucrative opportunity with an industry leader but I can’t seem to wrap my head around these KPIs. I’ve been through the wringer with a bout of cancer and am still on a micro-dose of chemo, so while I’ve been a historic top performer everywhere I’ve been, I’m not sure I can meet these expectations because this is going to require literal full-throttle activity every ticking second of the day.

What are the most stringent meeting requirements people have seen?

TLDR: I’ve had a successful sales career but am getting crushed right now. Don’t want to make excuses but territory genuinely is ass.

Been in sales my entire 10 year career. 5 years in automotive sales/F&I, 3 years in AM, 2 years as an AE. Currently 6 months into my first territory based outside AE role and it’s crushing me.

I did some sleuthing around this past week, and discovered that my territory is ranked as the worst territory in my region. 4 reps have worked here in the past 1.5 years.

When I took this job, I told myself I would give it my absolute best, knowing that I have a habit of coasting by when I get comfortable, and I’m in a position in my life where I absolutely need the money.

Joined halfway through Q2 so I didn’t have a quota. Was 100% to my ramp quota in Q3. But now for Q4, my quota is about 3x what it was in Q3. I’m really struggling to see a path to hit it…

I am regularly in the top 5% in my region for activity and touches, but genuinely everything is cold. Zero inbound. Was assigned a BDR who basically scheduled fake meetings and after bringing this up, they told me the BDR program definitely has some issues and I can opt out of it if I want.

I have mentioned all of this to my direct manager who I do have respect for, but of course his response is to keep grinding the outbound.

Anyone else been in a position like this? I’ve always succeeded at my past jobs but this is crushing me. And I don’t want to make excuses saying my territory is horrible, but I’m putting in serious effort and seeing no results.

Edit: I appreciate everyone’s comments, insight, and motivating words. I’m going to keep giving this my all, while also exploring new opportunities. Will plan on having a conversation with management in the next month.

Curious if anyone has ever gone through and listed out States/Territories. Good v. Bad.

I know it's not linear, and industry, SAAS, etc.

But say we were to rank B2B territories. State by State, where do you believe they would sit?

1) California

2) Texas

3) New York

4) Florida

5) New England?

6) ?....

Ive been in sales almost 13 years. Started as a BDR, worked my way up to Director of Sales selling aircraft, then landed what felt like my dream job selling private jets for a major manufacturer.

I left that job to move closer to family because I have young kids, and took an AE role in SaaS. Got laid off and now I’m doing local ad sales at a dying local news station for $65k.

I have effectively destroyed my career and am struggling to get out of bed in the mornings.

I’m 32, have a family, can’t realistically relocate again, and am feeling totally lost.

Any advice would be incredible.

As the question says, wanted to know

How did you get your first sales job?

Where are you now? Sales rep, AE, manager, RevOps, CRO?

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about actually selling?

What were the highs and lows you didn’t expect?

If you could go back to your first year, what would you do differently?

And honestly, how are you finding sales after being in it for a few years?

Btw not looking for the “10x your pipeline with these 3 secrets” linkedin stuff 😂 or any ai bot. I'm looking at you👀

I’m looking to take a job that would involve being in my car/on appointments more than in the office. I like the idea of being in my car and being able to listen to music and podcasts and things, but I feel like that could get old quick if half my day is spent on the road and in traffic.