IndianaShep profile picture
IndianaShep profile picture

IndianaShep

Director of Sales and Marketing

Politicker
Valued Contributor
Opinionated
+7

Please not again

Yet again my projects team messed up and I lost out on about 1.7k/month of commissions. I sell in a custom-work environment, but I cannot seem to get away from serving as a proto-project manager just to ensure my commission actually happens. 

For those of you in smaller orgs, how much customer success management do you end up rolling out? For those of you in larger orgs how often does this happen despite having shiny support departments?
😟 bitch
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TheDude
Politicker
6
Partnerships Lead
1.7k/month, for how many months?
What does(n't) the project team do correctly that creates this loss for you?
IndianaShep
Politicker
7
Director of Sales and Marketing
18 months

Without getting lost in the weeds they lost the trust of the client, if that makes sense.
6
Founding BDR
Jesus…losing over 30k from a CS problem is crazy
TheDude
Politicker
1
Partnerships Lead
Jeez that's brutal, sorry your CS team isn't supporting you.
Is it capability or rather their performance management metrics are misaligned from yours?
IndianaShep
Politicker
0
Director of Sales and Marketing
No CS team, sadly.

It is a combination of lots of things: a difficult industry, the idiosyncrasies of human-focused content, and the delta of people being good at a technical skill but an absolute train wreck when it comes to talking to another human.

It’ll be fine, on to the next, but woof.
Pachacuti
Politicker
6
They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy
Its part of the territory unfortunately. I get yelled at all the time, and throughout my career "You need to be selling". But what good does selling do when the Delivery team f's it up. I lost out on a HUGE add on sale this last year because the Delivery team f'd it up and extended out the deliver time by months. The consequences are that the client is delaying the add-on for ~year (if I'm lucky). Lesson learned = you need to babysit the deal cradle to grave.
IndianaShep
Politicker
2
Director of Sales and Marketing
I feel you buddy. I swallow it and move in because what else can you do, but still it makes me a bit hot under the collar.

Sorry that happened to you.
5
Founding BDR
How’s your communication line with the CS team? May be a dumb question but have you tried talking to them reg. this?
IndianaShep
Politicker
3
Director of Sales and Marketing
No CS team…lol
3
Founding BDR
Ahh misread it
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
2
☕️
I don’t get it. Do you get paid monthly based on client retention or did the deal churn and you’re missing out on a $36k commission check?

I’m in the services business. Retention is paramount and if you don’t have a CS team actively working with each client in a scaled capacity based on value…then what are you doing?
IndianaShep
Politicker
2
Director of Sales and Marketing
I am paid 10% on invoiced total, and at a deal value of 17k a month I get 1.7k. I have quite a few accounts, some are bigger, most are smaller. But 1.7k is still 1.7k.

I sell actual one-off products (this particular instance was writing support for federal grants), and as such when my team doesn’t deliver we don’t get paid.

In my industry project managers work as pseudo CS, for lack of a better solution. They’re not CS, and as such I end filling that role with bigger clients pretty regularly. The pay is amazing, but I want to sell not hold people’s hands.
HVACexpert
Politicker
2
sales engineer
I’m constantly doing more, but I work at a small company with less resources. Part of the game unfortunately.
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
Wisdom. Me too bud.
unclespacejam
Politicker
2
ur dad’s brother
Felt this one too. I’m the same boat. Doesn’t help either when you’ve got project managers that try to do literally anything but actually PM, including try to sell? Lmfao what a joke
BigShrimpin
Catalyst
2
Account executive
No cs team and bad delivery is a rough combo you'll either have to embrace the PM side or find something else more than likely. My org is under 50 people selling a similar type deal structure but our CS team is incredible which after having experiences similar to yours I dont take for granted one bit
Sunbunny31
Politicker
2
Sr Sales Executive 🐰
Ugh, that is not fun at all. So sorry. Smaller orgs with disjointed practices can be a real PIA. Sorry this is happening to you.
jefe
Arsonist
2
🍁
OUCH. I've only had delays in getting paid out on custom work because of resource constraints. It was to come eventually, but I got tired of waiting.

Also had to handle the delays with the clients post-sale, which wasn't what I was there to do.
JustGonnaSendIt
Politicker
2
Burn Towns, Get Money
In my experience in both small and large orgs, you never escape from service or delivery problems. Ultimately, if you want the relationship to grow, and you want to up-sell in the future, you have to ensure current commitments are delivered on.
Justatitle
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
send them Venmo requests for $300 each, each month....
IndianaShep
Politicker
1
Director of Sales and Marketing
I like your style.

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