snacks

Them’s the prospecting breaks

Not sure if this falls under more question or discussion but I'm curious what y'all think.

As an AE I have to own a portion of my prospecting (no shame in the game, it's my pipe after all). I happen to work a territory with a particularly high volume of small deals, whereas some of my fellow AEs work in an opposite region where wins are far and few between yet their wins are closer to enterprise level sales, and then some others somewhere in the middle.

My question/point of discussion is:

if AE #1 brings in 5 deals worth a total of $20K into their pipe and AE #2 brings in one deal worth $30K - who has been more "successful" in their prospecting?

🔎 Prospecting

💌 Cold Emailing

📞 Cold Calling

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Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

Depends how you are measuring the success. ARR? Time being Spent? No of accounts/contacts being prospected so you know the conversion? Future growth in those accounts? Sales cycle? and the list goes on...

snacks

Opinionated

@Diablo This is the exact question I posed to my leadership so they can verbalize what they are measuring, given everyone's territories are not apple to apples equal

There's a finite amount of accounts we can prospect so the spray and pray method will fall flat, fast. So to me, consistency is the core value and ability to generate meetings, regardless of client or deal size.

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

If the one deal isn’t just reliant on one opportunity I would say the 30k deal.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

You work with what you have. Are your quotas the same, regardless of deal size? And how are you measured? If it's on $$ value, then the higher deal wins. If it's number of opportunities generated, then the number works. That said...what's being sold in the $30K deal that is different than the smaller ones? And could those smaller opportunities have been grown?
I'm curious about why one territory would have smaller deals and another larger deals. Is that the territory, or the rep?

snacks

Opinionated

@Sunbunny31 the product is the same, it's the user count that influences the deal sizes

aka I do have some Ent level sales (far and few between) and just so happen to work with smaller SMB-type orgs so unfortunately not able to maximize deal value over a certain ceiling
Quotas are more or less similar for all AE's across the territories. $500K annual give or take $50-100K depending on seniority. I happen to work in an area with lots of smaller clients, so hence the lower deal value but higher volume of sales.

Each territory has a similar potential ARR it's just the make up of the regions vary. So one person can close 10 deals at $50K and hit their year, meanwhile others like me (but not just me) will need to make up the dollars with closer to 30-40 opps a year.

Admittedly, I am a bit salty regarding one size fits all prospecting metrics because I would argue consistency is worth more than someone who booked one meeting while I hustled to book five, even at a lesser ARR value.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Ah - so the prospecting metric is measured? I mean, clearly you did work with what you had.
Thanks for the summary, it does help explain the situation better.

snacks

Opinionated

Yep! They used to have a ridiculous metric of x amount of calls per month.. and it took them a while to catch on that people were logging fake calls just to check the box with no pipeline was actually being built

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

All companies need to evaluate the kind of behavior they want to incentivize. This is a continuous process. Sometimes they get it laughably wrong. Hopefully your feedback around metrics are taken into consideration along the way.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Me too. Prospecting should only really be looked at closely/measured if numbers aren't being hit.
You're there to close business and bring in revenue, not add deals to the CRM.

snacks

Opinionated

@jefe can you be my boss? hahaha

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Maybe some day ….

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

Yeah the company might put a certain perspective on success based on their strategy. In the end a sale is a sale, and a dollar is worth the same. Regardless of how you pay your bills or meet your quota, it shouldn’t matter how many deals you close or the size of them, just that you get there.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Amen

snacks

Opinionated

@HVACexpert We have both revenue and pipe dev targets. I'm closing sales, but getting beaten over the head with pipe dev. If I hit my revenue number, leave me the f alone. If I don't, sure, come at me with prospecting grievances.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

Hard to measure that with limited context. If this is for personal leaderboard and comparison purposes, I'd take the seller who does 5 over 1 all day. But my opinion doesn't matter. You should absolutely get clarity from your leadership if employment is on the line.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

It just matters on what actually closes tbh

GDO

Politicker

BDM

It depends. How big are the closing chances. Always some luck involved as well

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

hands down #2. BUT... having just the 1 deal is VERY high risk. Its a all or nothing game. So from a manager's POV - the #1 is a better bet and a preferred funnel.

LambyCorn

Arsonist

A mfkn E

Who ever brought more revenue in my eyes! Considering the time factor aswell.. if one took 1 month to bring 10k and the other one 1 week to bring in 5k, well

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

Leadership sees dollars.
But it certainly sounds like your territories are broken.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

Law of averages would dictate the 1 deal worth 30k, at the end of the day we are in revenue and it doesn't matter how you get to the number all that matters is the number delivered.

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snacks

Them’s the prospecting breaks

21 comment

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