Anyone else try a new sales gig and absolutely hate it?

I've been in sales my entire professional carrier, which is about 12 years at 5 different companies. I've always been a top performer at all of them. I don't think I'm "good at sales". I'm just good at talking to people and being real with them. It works for me don't hate.


But I had a really bad experience a couple years ago at a cannabis company and was curious if anyone else had any nightmare stories they'd like to share?


Story time.


A couple years ago a buddy got a job doing ops for a pretty 'well known' cannabis company. They were expanding and looking for sales people to grow the company. I ended up sitting down with the VP of sales and he talks my ear off about how it's uncapped salary and they have this amazing commission structure and the sales guys already there were making $200k+. I'd even get shares in the company when they go public - blah blah blah.


I would walk into a small book of business and grow from there. New market, hot commodity, barrier to entry for competition - seemed like a good deal to me.


They send me the onboarding paperwork and I do the math everything looks like it checks out so I say fuck it and quit my job that I actually loved just to chase that big paycheck.


A month later I'm in training for my first week in their swanky downtown office. Everyone working there was kinda socially weird but whatever right. They stuffed me in some shitty little corner office with no windows, loaded me up on SFDC with a shitty uncleansed list of about 1000 contacts and said "Go".


I was handed no book of business, zero. They just did a product packaging refresh that was absolute shit and didn't meet state requirements so I dealt with losing every account I gained because of returns. A fucked up pricing structure that wasn't consistent. They'd find some way to fuck me on my commission by structuring certain accounts as "wholesale" and some as "retail" to avoid paying out for the big deals. And to top it off the two 50/50 owners were fighting with which direction to take the company. All this lead to an extremely toxic workplace with people 'picking sides' and I'm just sitting here like WTF as the new guy.


And don't even get me started on trying to close deals with stoners, Jesus Christ. I love weed, smoke it almost every day myself but I am not some braindead high school drop out. If you enjoy talking to a fuckin tree then yea go ahead and do cannabis sales.


I'll cut it short here but I actually ended up getting fired for "breaking an NDA" - lol, I'm in sales I'm supposed to talk about our shit. They even tried to fight me on unemployment. I still don't know what I said to this day to get canned.


Anyways, figured I'd vent out that awful experience to fellow sales peeps. It was easily the worst job I ever had and I did wood flooring while going to college.


I am happy to report I found a kush sales gig in tech working from home, making good money, and just living my best life.

๐Ÿฐ War Stories
๐Ÿ’ฐ Compensation
๐Ÿ’†โ€โ™‚ Mindset
9
SlideDecksAreUseless
Personal Narrative
2
AE
I can relate to this and I'm sure a lot of others can too. I'm always wary during the interview process when the VP makes the sales commission sound like it's the best thing since sliced bread.ย 



I always make sure to ask how many reps hit their quota.ย ย 
OhhhhhhSnap
Valued Contributor
0
Business Development Manager
I learned that lesson the hard way but in the end it was an extremely valuable lesson to learn.ย 
GDO
Politicker
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BDM
My second job was horrible. To the point I was physically and mentally drained. Never again. Now I know what to look out for in a job/company.ย 
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
๐ŸฆŠ
Yuck.ย 
3

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