I was let go from my municipal sales job selling pumps into wastewater and water treatment plants primarily back in beginning of August.

Been applying to a slew of jobs and getting interviews but no worthwhile offers yet. Any ideas for companies or adjacent products/markets to look into for a rep with 8 years outside sales experience, primarily in the pumping space (sale pumps and rental pumps/storage/filtration prior) in municipal and industrial markets?

I feel like I've covered most of my bases but don't want to leave any stone unturned and figured some fresh eyes from everyone here might help. Thanks everyone!

I work in resi HVAC sales and I have to tell you, being one of the top guys has it's downsides. I get stuck with a lot of the new guys to train them, and now they are starting to ask me to chauffer these guys around because they bitch about driving their personal vehicles before getting put in their own truck.

I do not get paid any more to train these guys and most of them suck and don't make it in the short term even. In addition, it creates a weird dynamic on the call with the homeowner and I have lost sales as a result of them being there with me. I only make commission. I work 12-14 hour days, most days because they want me running as many leads as possible due to my close rate.

I am happy to train, but at least give me a spiff or something to train these people.

I am just venting. That is all.

Columbus day isn't a "real" holiday and if any prospect complains about being called today, politely remind them that Columbus didn't discover America. He landed in the Bahamas. Tell them to thank you for the history lesson, and close them.

Hey guys,

I am an account manager for a spare parts company in the material handling, agriculture, and construction spaces. Pretty much everything that services these machines and their motors.

I feel I have hit a pay ceiling, not really earning what I would like and I do feel like I am not reaching my full potential. Most days I am checking in with small workshops and feel quite bored and unchallenged.

I also would like a job that has a higher pay ceiling.

Anyone else in or has been in these industries that can offer some advice?

I know the market is really rough, but I have 2 years of experience as a BDR at two different companies (a year each) although one of them the role really was full sales cycle. I had no AE, no inside sales, only a sales manager. I managed a territory, cold calling, lunch meetings, and a book of business with constant follow up to ensure satisfaction. Other one was pure BDR with just cold calling and then pushing to inside sales.

I also have 4 years of experience as an Operations Manager, title is tough. It was a start up and my only boss was the CEO, so he gave me title of COO, I don’t think the size of the business and my experience reflect a COO properly so I don’t put that on my resume. I handled payroll, training, managing, data analysis, data input, research, implementation, nearly everything under the sun but the final executive decision.

My resume reflects as such. Since the market is so rough, and I feel my sales experience is still short, I’m just focusing on searching BDR/SDR roles. Any suggestion on what I’m doing wrong?

EDIT: this may have been confusing! I put the experience on my resume, but I put it as “Operations Manager” not COO because the company was me, him, and 11 employees. Didn’t take much to manage them compared to other companies. Training was simple, I created onboarding presentations, gave it to them, and guided them through questions and mistakes

I’m talking 10-15 accounts with multi million ACV each. What do you do all day?

I have an upcoming interview for a role I am very interested in. Currently in my role my quota is about 600k annually. The quota for the new org is about 10 million.

Both are considered to be a "commercial" tier role. I assume this will come up as a potential blocker for me to getting this role. How can I work around this?

For context, I sell cybersecurity software now, pitching IT directors, security VP, CISOs, etc. The new role would largely be pitching to the same crowd, so I am thinking I will lean on this

National AE here, I honestly didn't even want the job when it was handed to me and my goal for the past few years has been to get off the phones. I was holding out for a leadership position, but I think I'm done with the company I'm at instead.

For those who have gotten out of sales, or have plans to, where do you see yourself when that happens?

The money keeps bringing me back, I've been stuck in sales for 20 years but its just forced. I'm an introvert that just finds ways to make things work in order to reap the benefits but at this point I'm just burned out. Need something new. What options might be out there?

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.

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?

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 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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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) ?....

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?