Ryan Walsh

Top performers, when highly compensated, will put up with a LOT.

Over time, little annoyances that you don't think matter add up.  Things like:

That small tweak to the comp plan.
Taking just a couple accounts away and giving them to a new rep.
A slightly tougher internal deal desk review process.
(Another) new manager that’s slightly weaker than the last one.
Having to kind of train that new manager.
Continual change in their sales tech stack.
Layering on just one ‘more’ internal process to follow.
Adding another layer between them on the C level.

The breaking point for them is VERY quiet.  It’s simply the difference between ignoring that recruiter outreach from that high flying brand name tech company vs. taking the call.

Your job, as a sales leader, is to ensure that they don’t take that call.

Those little annoyances that you think won’t make a difference may not make a difference.

But over time, if there are enough of them, you’ll end up getting burned.  And many times they won’t come to you first to complain.

Because for most top performers, complaining simply is not in their nature.

Maybe go check in on a few of your top performers today.

✌️

PS we've collected salary, quota attainment, culture, leadership data on 25k+ orgs: https://bit.ly/3xzKHYv

“At {companyName} we're really like a family!“

The CEO earns >$37M. Company denies star employee's bonus payment.

Employee appeals the decision not to get paid (fairly).
Approved up to CEO.
CEO says no. (CEO earns $37m)
Employee successfully sues to get paid.
Employer sues back (one of their STAR sales pros!)

I'll drop the article below, fun read from 2017.

Ugh.

“That [Wilson's] application was ultimately rejected at the highest management level, I find to be incomprehensible and contrary to rational business practices. It essentially punishes rather than rewards extraordinary performance.“

#sales #transparency #startups

Your VP of sales should probably be a slight pain in your ass.

And not only is that ok but it may be the difference in your company surviving vs. biting the dust. That's because that pain in the ass VP might also be the best one you'll ever work for.

They may also be the type that you’ll learn the most from.

Here’s what they do:

They have their sleeves rolled up with regard to metrics and data.

Conversion rates, close rates, inbound flow, pipeline metrics, deal pushes, deal values, sales cycles. They can talk metrics with your marketers, analysts, etc.

Not only do they know the data but they can access it at any time.

Themselves. Without asking someone from ops for help.

They show up at every forecast meeting. They ask questions. Probing questions.

As long as you're prepared you’ll be fine.

They know things about your pipeline that you would never think they know (the deal that pushed, the one with the close date in the past, the fact that you didn't follow up for 5 days in that one deal).

They are in meetings with key customers.

Participating, selling, asking, showing value, being present.

They are working behind the scenes to create pipeline. Networking, LinkedIn, following up. Pushing on marketing. Probing about those campaigns.

Questioning things that don't seem to be driving results.

Yes they have good cross functional relationships with other groups, but are not afraid to question and push when YOUR TEAM isn't supported.

They performance manage. From individual contributors to managers and directors.

This may seem scary but if you have your $$$it together you’ll be fine.

You should want to work for one of these. Your career, your earnings, and your professional development will thank you.

✌️

“No job hoppers.“
“We only hire top performers.“
“We will only hire people that currently have a job.“
“They need to have hit quota consistently.“

I've heard all four of these quotes directly from companies in the past week and when you add these up the pool is getting pretty small.

My response: Long tenured top performers who have a job where they've consistently hit quota ain't looking to jump to your org, FYI, no matter how many foosball tables you've got in there.

I mean I get it. Hiring managers, CEOs, etc want to set a high bar for hires.
They want to tell their investors how strict they are.
They only want to hire 'A' players.

Don't be lazy during hiring. Do some diligence, turn over some rocks, give folks an opportunity.

700 open gtm roles (updated daily) https://bit.ly/3UFWaiq

🙏

I haven’t answered my phone from an unknown number in 8+ years.

Yet we’ve bought ~50 software tools over the past few years. It isn’t that buyers won’t get on the phone to talk with sales reps. They will. Even I will, I do it almost every week for something or another.

It’s just that they will ONLY do it on their timeline.

90% of the purchases we’ve made were initiated by us - nobody pushed us into the buyer journey, we took the first few steps (sometimes most of the steps), but then ALWAYS engaged a sales professional in the journey.

Here are 8 considerations (this is just my personal experience, someone else’s may be different) from a CEO who’s company has purchased over 50 software tools in the past few years.

1/ I don’t answer the phone

2/ I don’t listen to voicemails, so there are no call backs. I typically don't read the voicemail transcripts.

3/ I read every email that comes in, and even if I’m not interested, if the email is relevant and personalized, I might respond letting you know we’re not interested, sometimes with a ‘reach back out in X months’. But I have a high bar for email quality. But I do read the emails.

4/ If the email isn’t great but still hits on a problem or pain that we’re actively considering, I will probably will forward it along internally.

5/ If a company has reached out in the recent past and I responded, I probably won’t respond the second time if nothing has changed, regardless of the quality of the message, unless it’s beyond the time of ‘reach back out in X months’.

6/ If we’re in a position to evaluate the product my first step would be to forward this to whoever internally who owns this part of the business (this is true for us even though we're only like 15 employees)

7/ Marketers: 90% of the purchases we have made were initiated by us - nobody pushed us into the buyer journey, we took the first few steps (yes this is important). Awareness matters.

8/ The CEO is rarely the decision maker.

The best sales orgs are really good at driving top of funnel awareness and you won't have to just grind outbound for every opportunity. Top of funnel awareness and how that is accomplished is IMO going to be one of the largest shifts in buyer/seller interaction over the next 5 years. New mediums, etc.

We’re tracking seller sentiment on inbound lead flow at the organizational level - it’s the worst sentiment scores of everything we track (“I don’t get enough leads!!!”). Make sure to dig into how a potential organization is driving funnel, and get really specific when you’re interviewing for that 2025 role.

Here are 14,000 sales orgs with salaries, reviews, quota attainment, and top of funnel / lead flow ratings: https://lnkd.in/et56cuxT

✌️

15 years at a company, laid off via email.
15 years at a company, not a phone call.
15 years at a company, no word from the manager.
15 years at a company, no opportunity to give feedback.
15 years at a company. See ya.

"But hey we did so well with a severance package, it's better than average."

"The 'impacted' employees will always be part of the fam."

Remember this kind of stuff when you are:

*Considering backing out of an offer you accepted for a better one
*Considering leaving a company for a better opportunity
*Considering taking that recruiter call for a co. that looks intriguing
*Considering how much work-life balance you sacrifice for your 'work-fam'

They will 100% look out for number 1.

So should you.

Free resource with employee sourced salaries, reviews and ratings of 14,000+ orgs here: https://lnkd.in/ezpN47v5

✌️

Don't fall for the 'bet on yourself' trap.

I heard about a $65,000 base comp offer for an AE role at a mid-sized tech company. This is ~30% lower than market for this position (looking at average deal sizes, sales cycle length, industry, etc).

When they tried to negotiate (including having data to back up the ask), they were told: “We want people who want to bet on themselves.”

Accepting a below market base salary is not ‘betting on yourself’.

Instead, it's placing a huge bet on the company, product, and leadership.

Just being in sales is betting on yourself.

Don’t let them fool you into thinking you need to double down on that bet by being paid under market. They want you to shoulder more of the risk.

If a hiring org pushes back on this, ask to see the receipts:

– How many team members (X out of the total Y) hit their OTE
– What was the distribution of earnings, did anyone hit 150% of their OTE
– How many do they expect to hit in 2025
– Ask to speak with someone who was under 100% and someone who was over 100%
– Then go find someone who left the org recently and get another perspective on attainability

Remember... you're betting on yourself every day.

Compare salaries for 1000s of companies/roles to see if you're paid market: https://lnkd.in/eEHzczek

✌️

Over/Under of IPOs from this list at 4.5?

It's feasible that very few from this list IPOs in 2026, as it will depend on how the macro conditions evolve. If it becomes favorable we could see 6 or 8.

Also we've seen ridiculous access to private capital for these orgs over the past several years, so why would they bother having to deal with public company requirements/regulations, etc?

As for the over/under... I'm taking the OVER. Let's go!

Check reveiws, ratings, salaries, and get a tech sales job at any of these or 14,000 other companies: https://lnkd.in/ebxfhZv4

👀

Over/Under $3M commission for the AE on this deal?

My $3M bogey may seem low given the $5.6B spend, but consider:
1. The spend is not fully committed up front
2. There's a 'big deal review' committee looming (uh oh!)
3. This is a team effort to get something like this over the line
4. Did I mention the 'big deal review' committee?

Top performers at Salesforce regularly earn:
SMB AEs: >$375k/year
Mid Market AEs: >$635k/year
Enterprise AEs: >$800k/year
Strategic AEs: >$1m/year

(with isolated ent and strat reps much higher)

Salesforce sales salaries here: https://lnkd.in/gXNJCMDn
Check salaries and top end earnings for 14k other orgs: https://lnkd.in/gd8HPXqN

What a year for this AE regardless.

Got a DM from a seller that a CFO prevented a $345k commission check.

WHAT?  The execs should be ECSTATIC about paying massive commissions.  And If your CFO or CEO aren’t completely ecstatic about it, then you have at least one of these two core issues (probably both):

1) Leaders aren’t really committed to growing your business and doing what it takes and need a mindset shift.

2) You have a misaligned incentive compensation structure.

3) Leaders are simply anti-sales. (seems odd and what does that even mean, but trust me I’ve seen it)

Many times the mindset shift needed is:

"Budget for the OTE, and root like crazy for the person to overachieve that, by as much as possible, because you know that every dollar you pay is repaid many times over based on the increased enterprise valuation (of your company) that they drive."

Sellers, also think through this dynamic if you’re considering your next play - do the leaders have the right mindset?

How can you tell?  We built a platform allowing you to access everything you need about every major (and most smaller) b2b sales orgs in the world: https://lnkd.in/eNGZ5cNq

It’s a good feeling when the check clears.

LOL, no. Not possible. I get this question a lot so:

Paying us (to help you hire great sales talent) will not help you:
Improve your score.
Show that more people are hitting quota.
Show higher salaries
Remove reviews from our site that you don't like.
Other shenanigans.

Oh, this week is Reppys week. If your company won one, you're doing something right. We have nearly 15,000 profiles, and 198 of them won an award - 1.3% of companies won a Reppy. So:

This isn't Oprah.
Not everyone wins an award.
There are no participation trophies.

Check the site and our posts this week to see who wins: https://lnkd.in/ei7TEzJY

✌️

As you grow in your career, you're going to limit your income if you don't chase larger and larger transactions.

Your sales 'friends' at other companies are making more than you, seemingly every quarter, because they've figured out this one secret to higher compensation.

You're both doing well, high on the leaderboard. But here's the key difference:

Average deal size.

You can't $6k, $8k, $10k your way to a $1m W2.

Mix in a few $300k deals? That'll certainly help.

Unfortunately those $300k deals aren't going to be available in your commercial role or your mid-market role. Those opportunities get routed to the strategic sellers.

And it's really hard (career wise) to jump from $8k deals to $300k deals in one career transition. It might take two, or three... Why? Because you're probably not ready for those deals. They're harder, more personas involved. Legal, procurement.

The bar for value is higher.

So if you're in a role with an $8k deal size now, make sure your next career transition is up to $20k+.

In a role with a $20k avg deal size now? Shoot for $60k+ in your next role.

Maybe they have a higher deal size role in your current org.

Maybe you have to change orgs.

We have this same data on 1,000s of sales orgs (we're tracking deal size by division/team). Use the data.

Bonus: Add this interview question to your list...

"Can you break down you company's deal size by division (i.e. SMB vs. Enterprise)?"

And think of that in the context of future career progression.

We've published salary and deal size data for literally 1000s of companies, by role. Hopefully it can be helpful to you: https://lnkd.in/eGWdxVuH

BONUS: In 2025, the sellers chasing the largest deals also had the best chance of hitting quota 🤯

Wanna know how your sales org feels about the company's 2026 number?

25 most rated sales orgs in January (rated by the employees of their sales org), ranked by how bullish they are for the next 12 months of company execution.

See the same metric for 14,000 other orgs here: https://lnkd.in/eMrNsgvs

January is already in the books... unreal.

I've interviewed 1000s of candidates over the past 20+ years and have hired nearly 100% of them who took the following approach in the interview:

First: take control by proactively offering to walk through your background.

It's rare that folks take proactive control as an interviewee - most wait for the interviewer to take control. Think about why this is important if you're in sales...

Second, in walking through your background, emphasize the following traits with a short story about each. Don't walk through bullets, TELL A STORY:

**Grit. I want to know that you've had to overcome something. Weave (into your story) how you had to work through school, you had an activity or sport that took up a lot of time, you had a personal situation that was challenging. What drove you to push through and get to where you are now. Why and how >>> what.

**Curiosity. I want to know that you're a proactive learner. Give me a situation where you had less info than you needed to make a decision but worked to get that information, in whatever way. (Bonus: I am expecting to see your curiosity in action when I give you the chance to ask questions)

**Success. Talk about a small win somewhere in your background that you are proud of, and tell me the story behind that. Why was it important to you and how did you secure that win. Could be work, personal, anything.

**Share your 'WHY'. What's motivating you to chase this specific opportunity. Why is this one the right fit? Don't be generic. This will show that you've done research and are prepared.

To recap:
- Take control of the interview (like you'll take control of a sales process)
- Tell a story (the why works better than the what)
- Grit (you'll get a lot of rejection in sales)
- Curiosity (curiosity in general = superb discovery)
- Success (Wins will beget wins)
- Your WHY is very relevant to understanding mutual fit

1400 tech, sales, CS, SDR, and leadership roles you can apply for today; maybe try out a few of these strategies: https://lnkd.in/e5839Chw

✌️

Hit quota
Hit quota
Hit quota
Target raised
Hit quota (barely)
Miss quota (barely)
Hit quota (barely)
Target raised
Miss quota (barely)
Miss quota
Miss quota (barely)
PIP
Miss quota
Spend time on resume
Job search
**RESET BUTTON**

Yes, macro conditions are challenging.
Yes, you need to grind (always) to hit your quota.
Yes, there are tight budgets across your prospect base.

But we’ve seen some orgs put all of this on sales, which is misguided.

In many cases there’s mis-alignment between the serviceable addressable market and the total current sales capacity.

If you’re looking to find an org where there’s more resiliency, more customer demand, dig in hard to the product market fit. Understand the value proposition, who the buyers are, what factors are impacting them, even backchannel some customers about the value.

We've got product market fit ratings (from verified sellers within these orgs) of over 13,500 companies, plus salary insights (base, OTE, % hitting quota): https://lnkd.in/e44wNyZK

It will determine whether you have to go through this again in 2026.

It's good to evaluate what you'll be selling... before you're selling it.

World's top 20 publicly traded tech companies for sales people as of October 2025 (min 30 ratings):

1. Guidewire Software 92.99
2. Google 82.57
3. Vertex 88.99
4. Pure Storage 88.55
5. ServiceNow 88.33
6. Crowdstrike 87.58
7. Workday 87.45
8. The Trade Desk 87.41
9. Snowflake 87.40
10. Toast 87.36
11. Arista 87.25
12. Workiva 87.03
13. Tyler Technologies 86.52
14. Microsoft 86.28
15. Sailpoint 86.25
16. Monday (dot com) 86.25
17. Samsara 86.18
18. Doordash 86.02
19. Box 85.99
20. Cisco Systems 85.78

Filter 1,600 public companies or 14,000 total companies in our company database here: https://lnkd.in/ersAwUs3

What surprises you about this / who's missing?

Many folks want to be a VP of Sales one day. It’s key to understand their language. Here’s a cheat sheet:

Your VP says: “You'll make more $ with the 2026 comp plan changes”
Your VP means: “Every single person just got a 15% pay cut”

Your VP says: “Can you please update that opp in the CRM”
Your VP means: “Why the *** isn’t that opp updated in the CRM?!”

Your VP says: “There are no bad ideas.”
Your VP means: “Don’t ever speak up in a meeting again.”

Your VP says: “What’s a realistic close date for this deal?”
Your VP means: “You know that I know that you know it ain’t ever closing”

Your VP says: “How many calls did you make this week.”
Your VP means: “Your activity metrics are ****.”

Your VP says: “We’re going somewhere awesome for club this year.”
Your VP means: “Hardly any of you are making club this year.”

Your VP says: “The buck stops with me.”
Your VP means: “You all are the only reason I can’t make my number.”

Your VP says: “Improving training and onboarding is a key priority for us.”
Your VP means: “We don’t have any training or onboarding.”

Your VP says: “Check my calendar and add me to any sales call you want!”
Your VP means: “Sorry, per my assistant I’m booked for the next 5 months.”

Once you understand the VP of Sales speak then you'll be well on your way.

Did I miss any?

Check leadership ratings, salaries, quota attainment, and reviews for 14,000 companies: https://lnkd.in/ezEmMfdW

✌️