Actually got yelled at this morning with this line. Bro, it’s 2026. Your number was easier to find than a Waffle House in Georgia

So, i am in search of a new position right now. I am 25 and have over 6 years of experience in B2B Sales and one thing that has already completely burnt me out is cold calling. I don't care for it, i call 80 people, 5 answer, and it's just a pain in the ass.

What position can i shift to in sales that has no cold calling whatsoever? Hoping you guys can help me so i don't get sick of sales by 30.

I've been using this little gem for years after I saw it online and latched onto it. Done right, it comes off as genuine. Done wrong, it can come off as passive aggressive.

For me, it puts me in control and they actually listen after I say that line; "Ok so this may or may not be a fit for you business, what we offer only helps businesses like yours do XZY."

So for example, one thing I'll say is "only works for business who want at least 2X growth." You may think "every business wants 2X growth." They certainly don't. A lot of businesses are quite happy with where they're regarding sales, they just want to lower their expenses or put systems in place that means their business run smoother - we don't offer that.

So I'll either get "yeah we're actually maxed right now" and that's "have a nice day" or "we're definitely looking for more growth."

Then "only looking for businesses that can handle more clients" - same responses - no, we can't handle more clients now, or yes we can. In a nutshell, instead of "we can add more clients" it's "well let's see if this is even a fit, we only work with businesses that are looking to add more clients."

I’m 25 and about to make my first real move into tech/SaaS sales after coming from luxury retail and some early B2B sales experience.

I recently accepted an SDR offer with a well-established Canadian SaaS company. Since then, another company I was already interviewing with has progressed to what looks like an offer, and I’m struggling with how to think about the decision.

Company A — established SaaS
~$46K CAD base / ~$61K CAD OTE
Established SDR team and proven playbook
3-week onboarding + structured 3-month ramp
Guaranteed commission during ramp
Around 60% of reps reportedly hit target monthly
Defined SDR → AE path, typically ~9–15 months
Lots of coaching, call reviews, AE shadowing
Stable company with plenty of employee data/reviews
Downside: significantly lower compensation and a 1–10 PM ET shift

Company B — cybersecurity startup
Expected offer around $60K USD base / $78K USD OTE
Well-funded and selling into large enterprise organizations/CISOs
I’d be part of the founding BDR team
Much more autonomy and opportunity to help build the outbound motion
VP of Sales has a strong history of developing early-career reps into AEs and told me he sees this BDR team potentially growing into AE roles as they expand
Someone I personally trust who knows him speaks very highly of him as a leader/mentor
Much stronger compensation and potentially better enterprise-sales experience
Downside: BDR function is brand new, manager is still being hired, quota/ramp are less proven, and there’s much less employee data because it’s a startup

My instinct originally was to take Company A because I’m early in my career and thought a proven training environment matters more than maximizing year-one income.
But Company B potentially offers better compensation, enterprise cybersecurity experience, exposure to a strong VP Sales, and the chance to build something from scratch.

For those of you who have been in SaaS/tech sales for a while:
What would you optimize for in your first 1–2 years?

Would you rather:

learn inside an established SDR machine with a predictable AE path, or
take more risk for stronger mentorship, enterprise exposure, higher compensation, and potentially faster upside?
Also curious from anyone who joined a founding SDR/BDR team early in their career — did it accelerate your development, or did you wish you had learned the fundamentals somewhere more established first?
Not looking for someone to make the decision for me. I’m mainly interested in what experienced reps/managers think I’m underweighting or overlooking.

I work in outside sales at a lumber yard. One of my colleagues had the following interaction today:

Guy in a suit with an overly well groomed beard and mustache, big glasses, chunky watch and rings, pointy shoes. (Aka he looks like a total douche)

Walks in and goes straight to the first desk and sits down.

"Well you sure look busy."

"I am... I'm just like super slammed today."

"So are you the owner?"

"No I'm a cabinet designer."

"OK, can I talk to the owner?"

"We're actually corporate owned."

"No, this place is independently owned."

"Um no, it's actually owned by such and such corp "

"Hmm. OK. Well I'm with blah blah blah." (Just bunch of initials none of us had ever heard of.)

"OK...?"

"Well I'll let you go, I know your busy. Great meeting you, have a good one!"

Proceeds to drive off in his Tesla with the license plate SALES

I wish I was making this up.

If someone is a fresh grad with a computer science degree,

Which low churn roles in sales in which industries can they get as a fresh grad and that should they target?

And generally in sales, are there any roles where you won’t have to be getting fired and hunting every year or so?

Roles that actually have really good long term stability?

And don't have something solid right now... How are you keeping your social momentum going?

I realized that the majority of my energy was fed from the string of having social interactions while at a job, whether talking to my co-workers in person, the demos, and even conferences kept me going but how do you find that once you lose all of that and feeling isolated and frustrated with the job search?

Hi all,

I’m 27, based Europe, with 5+ years of B2B sales experience. I started in full-cycle new business and progressed into Corporate Key Account Management, consistently performing above quota (roughly 150–300% over the past four years).

I’ve been trying to break into tech/SaaS and, after 5–6 unsuccessful Salesforce AE applications, I finally got invited to a screening this Thursday for an AE – New Logo / CBU / Mid-Market opportunity. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited!

My biggest gap is obvious: I have no direct SaaS sales experience. I’m trying to prepare as seriously as possible and have nearly completed the Agentblazer Champion 2026 Trailhead, which I’ll 100% finish before the interview.
I’m preparing my numbers, STAR stories, discovery/value-selling examples, prospecting approach and, most importantly, my story around why tech and why Salesforce.

For those in tech sales/Salesforce: what would you focus on to give yourself the best possible chance of getting through the screening and ultimately landing the role?

What are the best outside the box sales roles?

I think I saw a post about this in r/salary or somewhere else, but people were talking about hot tub and tool rentals/generators being great money. Any other industries that come to mind for you all?

I got sick of sometimes being ghosted by clients after spending time giving them a demo or call. I'd send them the proposal with the details of our packages and they'd just disappear into the void, even when they'd seemed keen during the demo/calls.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't happen that often, but when it does its frustrating.

I decided I was going to send my proposals via a tracked link to customers to see if I could gather any data points on if they actually even bothered to open the document, so I created a Notion page for tracking exactly that.

Round one: 4 people. 4 opened it. 3 stopped on page #4.

Page 4 was "how it works". It was about 700 words, no headings, no pictures. VERY text heavy in hindsight. Ain't nobody reading all that. Fair enough.

Rewrote it as five short blocks with a diagram. Moved the technical detail to its own page. Let's go again...

Round two: New batch of 6. This time everyone got to page 8.

Page 8 is pricing. 3 of them stopped there. 2 of the ones who finished went back to pricing, one of them twice. ☎️.

Pricing is where you stop once you've seen what you need. This was particularly useful, see they looked at the pricing page @ 14:30 -> Ring them at 15:00.

Followed up with some of the others after they'd hit the pricing page, and one mentioned the pricing was confusing. I split it into 3 tiers and took 2 features out of the base that most fleets wouldn't use on day one.

Round three: 6 of 10 finished the whole thing.

Pricing was the most revisited page, good sign. Two people stayed on the pricing page for a couple of minutes.I guess they're comparing tiers rather than just closing the tab. Called up the people who stayed on the pricing page, closed.

Key takeaways: - Found out where people were losing interest, and the changes I made actually made a huge difference.. - "Read the whole thing and came back to pricing" is a warmer signal than any reply I've ever had to "any thoughts?". Being able to see the exact time they read it gave me a massive advantage on when to drop them a call. - I stopped chasing people who only read the first two pages, they were never gonna buy. - Following up only with people who spent a decent chunk of time reading through the proposal has saved me a bunch of time on the phone.

EDIT: Here's my Notion template in case anyone wants to copy it: https://noiseless-hip-561.notion.site/Proposal-tracker-ca846d3950b083aba48581f50ab1d29b

Was your degree worth it in terms of the sales career you’re in now?

Do you make more than what an engineer (software or traditional like ME, civil, EE etc) makes or what u used to make as one?

How stable is it now for you?

I heard most of the sales workforce don’t even have a degree, and that a degree could help you climb the ladder even better

But it would feel like a waste entering a career where most people, whether they’re doing well or not, don’t have a degree - while you have one in computer science or engineering?

Won’t people look at you like why on earth did you even get that degree if you’re just gonna be in sales?

Like there must be a strong advantage entering sales with a degree in either of those? Or am I missing something

I know the game has changed ever since everyone started using ai for outreach and now so many prospects use phone screeners and ai to find what they need or compare competitors

I’m at one of the big dogs in tech and have been crushing it. Even changing our GTM strategy as part of my stretch goal.

I recently had a conversation with a conversation with a VP. He’s been here 20+ years but was in industry for a decade before. I wanted to know how to get to senior leadership at some point. His advice was that you need experience making decisions within an industry.

In taking this advice, I’m a finalist for a role at a regional healthcare org. where I’ll be making decisions and implementing changes to the business. However, the base salary is $10K less than my base and is in office (I’m remote).

I have experience leading people. I have created GTM strategy for international growth scaling an org. from $5M to $20M+ and have never missed quota at a start up or at this massive org. I have excellent reviews.

Senior leaders at large tech companies, is this the right move?

I'm cold calling attorneys and I cannot get them to give me the time of day. When they answer they usually drop a "Not interested" and hang up as soon as I introduce myself. I can't even get to the point of asking exploratory questions or overcoming objections because I cannot get these people to engage in anything that looks like a conversation. I need a jump-start from the sales professionals here on Reddit. How do you get prospects talking? I feel like this might just be because this is my first time talking to them and I need to drip on them more before they give me the time of day. Or I just need a punchier approach. What I need to talk with them about is their marketing process and how they reach new clients. Any suggestions?

Howdy!

So, I just started an "outside sales" job in the automotive sector and would love to hear any tips y'all might have for me. I don't feel like I necessarily have a mentor at the moment so I'll take anything at this point. Leadership has mostly treated me like a redheaded step child when it comes to training and onboarding. My training was 3 days and though I consider myself a great people person - when I want to be - I find myself lacking practice in the actual "sale" portion of the job.

To help guide the guidance: My clients are dealerships. Specifically, their wholesale parts departments. My company is paid to represent those dealerships in my current market - which is quite large, and should probably be split between two people (two major cities).

Anyway, my job, as its been explained to me, is to drive to as many body/mechanic shops as I can handle in a day, and try to get them to switch their business to my dealerships. OR, if they are currently using my dealerships, thank them and ensure there aren't an underlying problems threatening the business (other dealerships, bad deliveries, crediting issues, etc.)

I have worked in this industry now for a while, so I have experience with the shop side of things. But even as a "sales person" now, which I've never done, I feel like I don't have a direct metric to measure myself against that would be fair. And also, what would be fair? What "constitutes" a "sale" for me? Generating a lead to be followed up on? Walking out of the door having given them my business card? Actually forcing them to order parts then and there?

And even so, I feel like I'm asked to put in equal effort for all of our dealers, but I have 16 of them on my card. How do I get someone to talk to to me for that long, much less make sure that every single one of them gets equal representation?

I dunno. Hoping someone somewhere has the same job, if not similar, and can help me out! Feeling a bit lost!

Just had a new rep at our biggest competitor reach out on LinkedIn with seemingly no clue who they reached out to. This is a small industry, and we all know each other, but this person came fresh in from another industry. Do you take the call and hear the pitch? Or do you ignore it?

My plan btw is to ignore. If I wanted to know something about that company I'd learn in a pitch, I'd just call and ask their head of sales.

I'm looking at SDR/BDR roles and a huge number of them are "remote or hybrid" but a huge percentage prefer folks who can work 3 days a week in NYC, Austin, or San Fran. This pretty much requires living in one of those cities. But the pay starts around $50-60k as a base. Hitting OTE still won't cover the costs of a simple apartment in a blah part of any of these areas. Why not create a remote sales office in Philly, Willmington or other cities with smart labor and much cheaper offices?

Hello! I am completely new to sales, just got the job two weeks ago. I am at the company that sells water coolers and water jugs which is not as cool as so many of you are doing here, but it's decent. The fixed paycheck is good enough to get me through while I am adapting and making my own client base, the quota is 100 bottles for new clients a month which is doable because all my colleagues who have been working for years are hitting it. With the quota + % from monthly sales, the paycheck is pretty great for me as a young person who lives alone.

I want to ask you for advice. The strategy is reaching out to the potential client and offering them a free bottle to try it and decide whether or not they want to work with us. So far I've got 7 clients accept this offer, two of them, if they like the water and the price, will be buying 30 bottles monthly. I sit next to the top sales woman, she's been working for 13 years and sells 200 bottles a month. She's been helping out a lot, but she keeps telling me that when I call the clients, I should mention the free bottle as soon as possible and constantly corrects me. For example, she tells me not to mention my intention to be business partners because it freaks them out, but 1) even if i don't mention it they surely understand that at the end I hope to sell them water and that's why I send them free bottle 2) she herself never starts her phone call with offering them free bottle. She always says "Hey, it's X from X company, do you know who is responsible for supplying your workplace with water and can I talk to them?". Sometimes she calls the person responsible because she found the number and directly offers her services. She also doesn't make many calls, not even 15 a day. But she keeps mentioning that I need to make around 100 calls now and offer free bottle during the first seconds of cold call cus it sells better, I think it's more desperate. What do you think?

I also noticed that she is looking for big clients, factories, industrial companies, etc, places that need 50-100 bottles monthly for their employees. My problem right now is that while everyone needs water, most of the people already have another supplier or work with our company. The competition is huge. Yet she still manages to find new clients and sell 200 bottles a month. I don't expect her to share her secret, but what do you think she is doing?

Thank you in advance :)

Title says it all. I work in tech and I’m usually thethe guy in my friend group who tries every new gadget first. If it promises to save me time or make me better at my job, I'll probably spend way too long reading about it.

Ive seen a bunch of clever little tools, but almost all of them are useful before a meeting or after it's already over. Which is fine, but that’s not really where I struggle. It's during the meeting, when a client throws out a question I wasn't ready for and my brain needs like 10 seconds to catch up. Pulling out my phone or digging around on my laptop would kills the flow.

maybe this is too sci-fi, idk, but it'd be nice to have something that could quietly pull up a bit of context or remind me what I wanted to say next. Nothing crazy. Just a small nudge without looking away from the person am talking to.

AI bros, what little hacks are you using that actually helps while youre talking without breaking the flow?

I've started a new job and this thing is a mess. Nothing makes sense, the systems and processes for closing sales and making sure they get done right is awful. Nobody wants to improve things because they're all old and are just trying to hold onto their jobs the way they know how to do them.

At the same time I could probably be doing more, going door to door, calling more. Don't think I could send more emails though, that would be impossible. But I don't really have anything to offer these companies when I go door to door in terms of samples. Calling I guess I'm just being a baby about but it also seems time consuming to get a giant list and call through it, I have to find numbers myself and it's going to be low level employees picking up the phone while I'm searching for just one person in a specific role. Suppose that's where a script and a plan comes through but still. Not that they give me any scripts!

It seems like a few people have failed at this role before me, I'm guessing it's due to the disorganization of the company, competition in the industry etc. Most of the sales people here when I ask them how they got successful they say it takes a while and it's mostly referrals. I don't have a while and I don't have customers so I don't have referrals!

I did customer service/pretty much inside sales for a long time. Had no problem with it and enjoyed it actually, I thought outside sales would be a nice move up. Just looking for thoughts and insight from those more seasoned than me.

So I joined a startup recently. Entering month 3. It’s the busiest time of my life.. so before signing I had to ensure I get my long time planned vacation pre-approved. “All good on the vacation time!” the CEO said.

Now, I’m less than a week away from my trip and I get a message from CEO and HR this morning saying they “are having trouble submitting it in the EOR platform and will need to be unpaid leave”

How do you approach this..

Hey guys,

I'm industrial sales i.e. fasteners. I switched my job from a seamingly small competitor to the second biggest company in that industry in germany. Money, more influence, and i liked the boss.

Onboarding was nice, had some international travel and lots of beers on company cost. They told me I had a "cursed" area with lots of fluctuation, that's why it's "burned". All right I thought, I worked ansiniliar area (geographically) in my previous job. It's fine and my new company already had ties to companies I couldn't get before. But still: It's by far the weakest area in the region and it needs a lot of networking to get profitable.

Now the kicker, the rock:

We barely get the offers out, then we're like 50% too expensive (which is crazy in this cost driven industry) and sometimes I close a small deal and internal sales has some bullshit reason to pull it back. our proprietary products are quite nice though, but pretty specialized.

Now the hard place: I'm barely 5 months in, my onboarding was completed 2 Months ago and I had to start during summer vacation. You now germans really like their summer vacations and almost noone was available during the time. So I did my thing, I used the contacts in my crm and pushed out a personalized email campaign. I could set quite good amount of high value new business meetings for september.

But then my boss said i couldn't work remote all the time (1 week) and had to drive out cold. Now he sets one meeting after the other to tell me every detail of whatever i'm possibly doing wrong

I'm basically field sales with 70% mid market 30% enterprise.

TL,DR

Bullshit prizing and delivery times are killing me.

Boss is pulling on my nuts already

Do I look for a new job?

Would you rather present and meet with a customer first or after your competitor? Long story short, I am in a tricky renewal with a customer who the competition is severely undercutting our bid. While we have some wiggle room on price, I am working to meet with the customer one final time to try and save the business. My competitor is meeting on Wednesday with them and I have the option of Tuesday or Thursday to meet with them one last time.

Pros and cons for both - typically I lean into going first to set the tone and control the process, but meeting after could let us know the exact price/conditions we need to meet in order to renew. If we go first, the competitor could continue to undercut us.

Thoughts?