First sales role offer for a friend

Question

Hey all,

Been a long time since I looked over an offer for someone's first foray into sales straight to AE, and looking for y'all to check me here.

The offer is 35 base and 65 target commission for total year 1 OTE of 100K. The company sells green energy systems to homeowners (think solar panels or similar). The expectation in a given quarter is 20 sales at average of $25K, generating revenue of 500K. This works out to about a 3% commission.

This seems...woefully low to me? I feel like if I'd brought in $2MM in sales in my first AE role they would have thrown me a parade and I'd have made more like 200K, not 100K.

Mitigating factors I can consider is that its supposedly all inbound, and they also have SDRs that qualify those inbounds before sending to AEs. So maybe its more like order taking? Also, maybe there's quite a bit of pass through cost, and that 500K of revenue is more like, I dunno, 150K? My advice to her is to ask to see conversion metrics and inbound volume and talk to other AEs at the company.

Anyone else have any considerations to mention, or corrections for my assumptions?

Accepted Answer

My concern is the base salary.  If you're committed to a guy bringing in 2MM  why not pay more for someone serious.   My fear is that their reality is having a bunch of guys making no money prospecting up new business which then gets fed up the food chain when they can't make their quota or they just languish around at ~40K for a few years.

Answer

My first sales role had a 3.5m quota and my OTE was 90k… and it was easy as hell, because of my accounts.
 
Now, my quota is 1m, my OTE is triple and it’s WAAAAAY harder to hit my number.
All numbers are relative to the territory/COGs of the solution that’s being sold…

Answer

Hey I find this to be low but trust me you need a starting point and getting an AE role is great. Again, for me it's easy to say but you have to be happy with what are being offered.

Answer

This isn't an industry I know anything about so I'm not sure if this is normal.

Answer

That doesn't seem too bad, the base is a bit low. It also depends on how many reps hit quota. Higher risk of not hitting quota many times equals higher commission.

HumanSalesman

First sales role offer for a friend

10 comments

HumanSalesman

First sales role offer for a friend

10 comments

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