Weekly Team Meeting - Q&A #2

Best Companies to work for? am I getting paid enough? Objection Handling like a Chad

Welcome back Sales Team!

Before we get started, for the Q&A section this week, a reminder, please either comment on this post via the substack, reply to this email/email directly (dingo@degenisland.asia), or reach out to me via twitter @BowTiedDingo

We’re half way through Q3, meaning we need to get out ahead of the Q4 drop. We need to smash our target this quarter, and build enough of a pipeline to take us home through the Christmas and holiday period. So lets get down to business.

First of all, I have not been updating nearly as regularly as I need to, I’m posting this as my first post back at it, as subscribers are the priority. Up front this lack of content is because of something I’ve been doing for my own career. I’ve done a lot of research for a post that is coming out very soon on how to maximise career earnings in sales, and one of the top recommendations I can give is to change your company every approx. 2 years. Use the experience you’ve gained to find greener grass on the other side, and leverage a better pay check. So you know what I did? I followed my own advice, quit my job that was paying well for a few years, and found a new one. My anecdotal experience? The advice is good, pay bump and a better position, so look out for that post coming soon!

I want to start this weeks meeting with a bit of advice from @BowTiedBull on twitter. The OG that started it all.

This is why I write the substack, not to get rich - writing a blog is a slow, painful, and unlikely way to make any real money - but to give others some resources I would have wanted when I was starting out on each of those. I am doing the SaaS content because it is a high paying career that anyone who is willing to work hard can break into and earn in the top 10%+ of people. I am writing my SaaS White Label series because it is a scalable, low investment/high potential business model that stacks the skills you are learning in your career. At the moment I have no real investing advice that I am writing about, I recommend following @BowTiedBull for this.

So it is simple:

• Create an online business

• Get a good paying career

• Invest like crazy

You only need to get rich once, we are gonna make it.

Questions from Subscribers

There were a few questions from subscribers last Q&A.

The first one I want to answer is, “How do I book in a 1:1 meeting with you?”. This is part of the offering for all of you on the paid substack, so for a simple answer, book in a time for us to chat here: https://calendly.com/bowtieddingo/1-1-consultation

If you have any issues with time zones not matching or no availability, reach out to me via email and we will sort everything out: dingo@degenisland.asia

The other questions were mainly centred around being paid adequately and which companies are the best to work for.

There is a lot to think about with these, I’ll answer the pay question first.

Here is a table from the upcoming post on maximising your career earnings:

*Earnings in XX,000’s *Does not consider Tax

This table alone does not tell you everything, but what it does do, is give a rough idea of what you should be paid for number of years in sales. There is a wide variance of pay in each different sales job, between role, company, geography, product etc.

What you see in the table is expected pay for top and average performing reps at top paying and average paying companies. The expected pay based on role and years of experience, and what their total career earnings are. Note that in the cumulative earnings section, it is total earnings across your career, and not for that year.

So take a look at the table, see where you are, and you can get a rough idea of if you’re being paid appropriately.

A few good resources (I pulled data for this table from these) include:

• www.compgauge.com

• www.glassdoor.com

• www.payscale.com

Before moving on, and I will again be going deep into this topic in a following post, you will notice that being an average rep at a top paying company will (For most people and most situations) leave you with HIGHER total career earnings when compared to a top rep at an average paying company. Just something worth considering.

Now lets discuss what companies are the best to work for.

This one is a little bit harder to give advice for, there are a lot of intangibles that go into a “Good” company, they pay, location, % of reps who are hitting target, management, work/life balance etc.

Because of this I am going to defer for the most part to compguage (Linked above) and their metrics.

Before looking at the compguage data though, my #1 piece of advice for knowing which company you want to work for, and also for making sure you are being paid fairly, is to always be interviewing. Set up your linkedIn, keep it up to date, and leave the setting that tells recruiters that you are open to hearing about opportunities on.

Every so often you’ll get a recruiter reaching out with an interesting role, and you 100% should take the call. Even when I love my job and don’t plan on leaving, I will take interviews if there is something that interests me.

You are expendable to your company, and their job is to extract as much value out of you while paying you the minimum they can to do it, that is just the reality of the situation. When you are interviewing, you control the frame, you always have options so you’re less desperate, you know what you are worth, and you’ll often find a better offer.

Onto compguage:

Compguage have put together a database of sales professional’s income and target attainment data and given us some interesting results. I have included screenshots below for your ease, I recommend everyone who is interested to check out the site as well for more information and context.

Of course it is also important to mention that they are working with an incomplete dataset, there are a lot of companies out there that haven’t been listed or don’t have enough data to use. Use this info as a guide on how to start evaluating companies.

SDRs:

Account Executives:

Questions from Twitter

A follower on twitter sent me this screenshot with a question on how I would answer it:

I have a bit of an issue with this question, because it assumes that the client just wants a discount, and you need to tell them no. In realist, this is reasonably unlikely!

When a client asks for a discount, there is usually an underlying reason, and just as often, they don’t even care about the discount. There might be other objections that they don’t feel comfortable airing, you might not have shown enough value, they might have any number of different issues, and if you do what Jose is asking, you’ve already lost the sale!

My answer in short is to read this article from Gong. It breaks down the objection handling framework I personally use and have found incredible success from.

https://www.gong.io/blog/here-are-the-7-best-objection-handling-techniques-youll-read-this-year/

The answer I gave over twitter is not perfect, as I was writing it on my phone while out, but it gives an overview of why I think you need a lot more information than is given, here it is:

I would just add that we don't know why they want a discount, are they just trying to get the best price, are we too high for them and legitimately can't afford, have we not built enough value for them to think it's worth the price, or are they covering a different objection with something easy to ask for and we need to isolate the real objection.

I like this article from Gong: https://gong.io/blog/here-are-the-7-best-objection-handling-techniques-youll-read-this-year/… I live by the advice here.

I would start by mirroring. Just pause, don't get frustrated, and repeat back "A discount?" and see what they say, they'll probably give more info back - got this from Never split the difference by Chris Voss, chatted with @bowtiedsponge about it on his podcast.

Validate the objection (I would add back a label, another Chris Voss technique, after you say you appreciate the concern): That's a valid question, it seems like you're trying to do what is best for your business as you grow (This is a random label - it is essentially rewording what they say after you mirror "Discount" to make them feel understood, don’t say what I have written, say what they answer you with).

Isolate the objection, although I am not sure if I would use this one right here: “If money was the last thing on your mind, what other obstacles would we have to overcome for you to move forward today?”

Ask permission to address the objection: Can I bound a few ideas off of you?

Then reframe, this is the real objection handle: “It sounds like you're really trying to maximise the ROI your team is getting from your [whatever it is they do, and we help with], while reducing the time you spend doing it. Now, I can't offer a discount, that being said you've told me you spend a lot of time without getting the results you want doing [what we help with], if you start using our service today, as we've show, you will be able to reduce your time being wasted here making the investment back to the business quickly, and more importantly letting you invest your time in more important things and reduce your stress trying to get a return on this, knowing it is already sorted. Why don't we save you that time, and get you started?”

That’s all for this weeks meeting. I have a lot to catch up on as far as content for you goes, so I’ll be working late over the next few days.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll talk to you all again soon.

Best,
Dingo

We. Are. Gonna. Make. It.

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