Which is more important: Culture or product PMF?

Everyone knows there’s a marked difference between overall company culture and the sales org culture. A CRO is equivalent to a CEO in setting the tone.


I’ve heard horror stories from former Splunk reps who made $500k+ getting random blue birds $5m orders, but QBRs were 2 hours long and the sole intent was to make them as miserable as possible. And they’d get side-eyed if they left before 5:30, even on Fridays. It made me wonder; is bad sales leadership tolerable if you’re selling the best product in its class?


Assume OTE is the same in both scenarios in the poll. I put B- because anything less isn’t worth selling, period. I wouldn’t work for Mr. Rogers himself if I had to sell a bad product.

Which scenario would you take:

Attached poll
*Voting in this poll no longer yields commission.
🎈 Mentorship
4
salesnerd
WR Officer
3
Head of Growth
As long as I can sell the product and win against competition at a decent rate, I’d pick the B- product every day. 

Nothing is worse than hating your life every day.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
2
🦊
Product if it's a great one.
CadenceCombat
Tycoon
1
Account Executive
Great question. Hopefully, it produces an insightful convo.

for me, the latter option is the clear winner and that’s because the product is a B- instead of an A+... seems like a worthy compromise... if that product was D or C grade... tougher call.
thegreatestsalesperson
Tycoon
1
AE
making 500k+ would certainly be nice but at what cost to your mental health.  There's a wide range if you are talking 500k+ vs a 100k but a great culture I'd say you can tolerate the 500k bad culture for a short period and get out but if you are talking making 300 vs 200 but the 200 has a dope product and amazing culture I'm going 200 everytime.  Key factors:
How negative is the culture and how big of a difference in pay is it.  The other thing is the lower pay could be aligned with your future goals of management etc
Fenderbaum
Politicker
1
Retired Choirboy🪕
Gotta have that good leadership and culture.
Trinity
WR Officer
0
BusDev
For me, at this stage, the latter. Already experienced the former.
9

How important in work culture?

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6
5

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12