NotCreativeEnough

Professional Day Ruiner

Cisco Sales Staff Exodus

Per a business insider article (so you know I'm not just making stuff up)

In an effort to encourage sales people to close larger deals, Cisco has decided to cut AE's base salaries and increase quotas.

They're giving out quota's as high as $50M a year, with average deal sizes under $2M.

According to LinkedIn data, they've lost 12 enterprise AE roles in the past year.

It's crazy to see companies doing stuff like this. They sacrifice sales staff to improve their bottom line without acknowledging its impact to revenue generation. That's why I love that sweet spot between startups and massive enterprises like Cisco. They still recognize how important sales roles are and pay them well, while having more job security than a Series A/B/whatever.

Anyone in the Cisco world (either work for them or with them) to know how much truth there is to this? BI mentions its source as "several anonymous insiders", but we all know that can just be a few disgruntled people over exaggerating.

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20 comments

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jefe

Arsonist

6

🍁

What?! Why!?

This CANNOT be a good idea.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

5

Bravado's Resident Asshole

This just sounds so counterproductive when it comes to growing any business. It's like they forgot what brought them to the point they are at now. SALES.

braintank

Politicker

5

Enterprise Account Executive

I put in time at Cisco (via acquisition). It sucks.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

3

🦊

I'm sorry to the reps over there yikes.

butwhy

Politicker

3

Solutions Engineer

Salesforce did this once when they wanted to "naturally" downsize the core AE team. They increased quotas significantly and also reduced territory. I only know because I worked at an ISV and we had a huge wave of them interviewing with us telling the same story with mind boggling numbers.

I think companies do this to not be on the hook for severance. Or in the startup world for next series valuation at the expense of actual execution.

ChumpChange

Politicker

3

Channel Manager

YIKES! Let me just strip away all income security that a salesperson needs to sustain their livelihood. Executive brilliance. Let me just send a shockwave to the lifeblood of the company. SMFH

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

2

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Depends on the quota, and how they comp. This might just be a ploy to shed bloat without firing anyone. How is everyone else doing comp? Might be an industry trend

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

1

Professional Day Ruiner

Personally, I don't see any scenario in which reducing the pay of sales staff is a good move. Its how you lose top talent to competitors who are willing to pay for them

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

0

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Not really. If you tell someone that their commission is going up, your OTE is higher, and you will make more money with the same amount of sales, you probably aren’t. Once again, depends on the change in base. Most likely, you are only shedding dead weight.

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

0

Professional Day Ruiner

that's what's tough about not having actual hard numbers. I don't work for Cisco, but I do work in that space. and a $50M quota is insanely unrealistic. So OTE probably did go up, but anyone being able to consistently hit that will never happen. So all they did was lose base and probably get a lower commission % per deal.

Skyrocketing quota doesn't magically make more deals appear out of thin air. Especially after you just demotivated your staff by increasing said quota by a huge multiple and simultaneously took away from their base salary.

slsldr1986

Fire Starter

2

Regional Sales Manager

The sales team is being led by operational or PL leader. No real sales leader would do this. It’s all about the bottom line

TennisandSales

Politicker

1

Head Of Sales

damn.
If you want to save money then just say it!

this makes ZERO sense to me.

hey you know how we can close bigger deals? make our sales team feel even MORE stress.

completely backwards/

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

2

Professional Day Ruiner

It never makes sense to me when a company thinks cutting sales staff is how you grow.

That's what happens when you have people who have never worked in sales running a company. They think it's easy and the revenue can just appear out of thin air. They don't realize how much actually goes into it.

DollarBill

Executive

1

Director of Sales - Financial Services

Why not just increase quotas and variable pay for overall higher OTE? Touching base salary is offensive.

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

1

Professional Day Ruiner

It’s straight up telling your sales team you don’t give a shit about them or their well-being

SaaS_Man

Executive

1

BDR - MANNY

Look at Exxon, they had a $17B quarter and are still laying people off and buying stocks back. This about greed and stupidity running rampant.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

1

Sales Rep

Congrats on making the big bucks and affording a subscription. My cheap ass found the article and gave up when I had to pay

NotCreativeEnough

Big Shot

0

Professional Day Ruiner

I don't have a subscription. It just randomly lets me read some articles and tries to require that I pay for others. idk how it determines which ones I'm not worthy of reading for free.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

1

Sales Rep

It just knows I am illiterate, wont even let me

Error32

Politicker

0

ISR

“Did you try turning it off and back on again?”

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