willyhndz3

Account Executive

Negotiating Severance

I've been at this company for 10 months as a Strategic Account Executive working on six-figure deals. In the first six months, I prospected, qualified leads, and successfully close one for $145k in ACV and $725k in TCV.

At the end of January (which was the end of the fiscal year) my VP of Global Sales told me from the airport that my role was no longer available and that they wanted to give me options on where to go to within my company outside of sales. They offered me a Ent. CSM or a partnership role.

Well, long story short at the end of Q1, the decision-maker on the CSM side never spoke with me though. I had a good conversation with the hiring manager and he was trying to get me on his calendar., and then on the partnerships side, I never had a conversation with their hiring manager because he ended up quitting within the quarter.

Fast forward to today and they offered me 4-weeks severance in exchange for not saying anything about the company or sharing company secrets, and potentially a non-compete.

To me, this isn’t enough, and they are letting me go for essentially nothing, except for poor leadership and management (seriously - in Q4 the sales organization 54% of their number and in Q1 around 33%). Especially when their parent company is valued at $13 billion.

Anyways, how would you go about negotiating their severance in a case like this?

🔫 Job Separation

☁️ Software Tech

☠️ Unemployment

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16 comments

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Justatitle

Big Shot

6

Account Executive

your silence is worth more than 4 weeks of severance. thanks for tagging me @Kosta_KonfuciusAsk for 6 months of severance and 6 months of healthcare coverage. They aren't likely to agree to that but they are likely to go up from 4 weeks because of it. that said, it's a highly personal engagement to undertake and if you'd like to talk about it shoot me a DM and I'll connect with you.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

6

🦊

You're a gem ❤

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

5

Sales Rep

Sorry to hear about this, did see @Justatitlecomment this link in an older post, thought it might help

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-negotiate-your-severance-richard-harris-/

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful

braintank

Politicker

5

Enterprise Account Executive

Problem is what leverage do you have?

You can always ask for more. But if they say "no", then what?

rsuking

Valued Contributor

0

Account Executive

They fire you on the spot and you get to collect unemployment

HVACexpert

Politicker

4

sales engineer

Not sure you can negotiate severance it’ll be take it or leave it.

If there is no non compete, take it. If there is then it gets a little gray. How long for? What do the competitors look like or what do they consider competitors? Chances of getting a job outside of those competitors or industry?

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

3

☕️

Their ask is...well...illegal. They tugged you along for months while you could have spent them finding the right job. They owe you 12 weeks, which has been standard in established companies.

List out the business case for why you deserve the length of severance. Cite the fact that gag orders and non-competes are illegal in the case of a layoff.

willyhndz3

Fire Starter

2

Account Executive

I can totally do that specifically because I’ve been the person that has started their competitive Intel repository, as well as given product feedback on how to make our product more geared towards the enterprise as well as close the largest first hill ever for this company, which I found so surprising because six months, and then they deprecated my whole division. I put it on them wanting to saturate the SMB market more than anything else. That is their ICP. (Yet, I was successfully selling to enterprises like SAP, Dropbox, etc. until they randomly cut it short.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that they hired me without being prepared to take on larger more complex cases.

And since I’ve been in what I do for over five years, (at companies that have been around for over 10 years plus the enterprise space) and this company is only 6 years old, it kind of makes sense why.

I totally appreciate the benchmark on the illegality of a gag order and noncompete. I’ll ask for 12 weeks and see what happens.

CRAG112

Valued Contributor

1

Account Executive

Definitely would not sign a non-compete. Not for anything. Doesn't matter if it can be enforced or not.

Pachacuti

Politicker

3

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

4 weeks is actually pretty generous, especially with you knowing something like this was coming down the line. With your short time there they could have just let you with 1 week, 2 weeks, or nothing.

I’d make sure you get 100% payout if commissions owed and take the 4 weeks and run.

Diablo

Politicker

2

Sr. AE

Sorry to hear that, haven’t been in the situation. Considering the current job market, 1 month might not be enough to get the desired role. Also there are so many unicorn that let go people offered ~3 months of severance packages. I would try to present these 2 things and see what they have to say.

No transition possibility in the parent company ?

willyhndz3

Fire Starter

1

Account Executive

So the interesting part is that according to my VP of global sales, today’s conversation with the parent company’s HR person was to discuss the possibilities of a role whether in sales, operations, customer success at the larger parent company. When she hopped on the line, she immediately shut it down and said that they were going to offer me a severance package.

This parent child company relationship is very disjointed by the way, and the start up or child company does not know how to run this business. We’ve had such a high churn rate and also company layoffs. It’s crazy.

CRAG112

Valued Contributor

1

Account Executive

@willyhndz3

Reach out to Dan Goodman on Linkedin. He can help you out.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-goodman2001/
781-690-2754

Maximas

Tycoon

0

Senior Sales Executive

Sorry for that!
I believe you have no option in this case but to maximize your benefits till maximum by asking for a severance package length increase and other additional benefits like healthcare in addition to others!

quotascammedeverytime

Opinionated

0

account executive

Fuck them. Don’t sign go to a competitor and spill the beans on how poorly they treat people

Armageddon

Opinionated

0

Enterprise Account Executive

Ask for 2 months at least. Sounds like they need you quiet

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