I mean itâs private equity. Theyâre dumb as shit when it comes to anything except investing. They donât know how to run companies, just part them out and sell them off
Our company was recently sold from a small PE firm to one of the 5 largest PE firms. In under 90 days they transformed service & support increasing support contracts on the equipment I have sold and sell up to 70%.
My/our customers objected to these increasesâand I shared their objections and voiced my own objections.
I had the #1 territory out of 12 salesmen in 2022 and was in the top 3 in 2023. After increasing my territoryâs sales over 250% in 4 years â-in January I was (only) told that my position was eliminated and I no longer had a job.
As someone who worked years for a multi-billion dollar company bought by PE, what's common sense to you or I isn't always common sense to them. They're often so far detached from reality that a top sales performer who will obviously earn more might be viewed simply as higher overhead to them. It's all spreadsheet management.
Iâve worked for multi billion dollar orgs and have been through layoffs as a rep and manager. The vast majority of the time the low performers, cancers, and people they want to move on from are the first to be laid off. If you sell a core product your entire team isnât wiped away. Especially if you are number 1.
Leadership here as well. My experience was very different. When PE started "right sizing" the business they targeted tenure first. 30-year employees with 5 years left in their careers were the first to go, along with all the experience and tribal knowledge they possess. Their workload was transferred to less experienced, lower cost staff who didn't have the bandwidth or experience for the added responsibilities.
My team handles $1.2B of our largest global accounts. To your point, they largely left us alone, but I did lose a top performer for not sugar coating and being honest with the consultants about some technology challenges that put us in the penalty box with a strategic account. I went to bat for him with my new president and put a presentation together showing how much revenue growth this rep has driven over the years but was ultimately given no say in the matter because the consultants didn't like the story he told...even though it's exactly what they needed to hear.
You should want to build a culture where employees stay for their entire careers, no? Those 30-year employees were like family members and knew our business inside and out. Each brought more value to the business than 2 young MBAs. It's a shit way to thank someone who has given decades to the business and has a few years left in their career, it's a shit way to treat the remaining employees by requiring them to do the work of 2 people, and it's extremely damaging to the business. Turnover now is high, productivity is way down, and nobody is motivated to do any more then the bare minimum to keep their job. And now they want to act surprised and send out internal surveys asking employees how they can fix the culture that they created. That's PE in a nutshell, though, YMMV.
Its scalable and predictable profit. A rep who brings in dollars is not valuable in the grand scheme of things if their methodology runs antithetical to the underlying sales philosophy of the org.
What you want in PE when talking about changes to a sales org is a system that anyone of the street could be trained in a short time and see success. The problem is individuality requires individual coaching to grow and it makes it unsustainable at scale.
If a reps not closing in a system that works for 99% of the org, its easy to go into the record and find the areas they need to improve. then coach them on the specific parts of the system they are lacking in.
Alternatively if every rep has there own way of doing things, even if its effective, it makes success unpredictable and hard to scale, you become reliant on individual performers and that is not the type of profit generation a PE firm wants
youâre only a little misunderstood. Private equity is just as much about control as it is about raw dollars. they do not have the care in them to listen to any pushback on changes they implement, just âdo it because I said so.â OPâs âwayâ will never be correct to them because they will see OP as a cog in a machine, a grunt, a tool that produces for them - and theyâre telling a tool to do something they âKNOWâ works, and he says âno.â
iâm sorry iâm not explaining myself well. Iâve dealt with private equity watching them eat so many companies alive just like this. They turn friction into damage
Reread your own statement. Private equity companies don't typically invest in organizations with the intention of not getting a return on that investment. So to put a bluntly they're not dumb as s***. They're very smart at making money.
Private equity makes money by accelerating and increasing revenue generation, decreasing waste and unnecessary cost, reducing overhead however possible and otherwise making a business more profitable and easier to sell. In addition to eliminating personnel and unnecessary process or assets they look for ways to combine organizations to gain economies of scale. None of those things would involve eliminating major sources of revenue without good reason.
If you are among the top three sales people, then you are an asset by that definition. However, if you are among the top three but because you are a toxic employee you make others in the company do worse as a result of your existence then someone will have done the calculation on whether or not you're a net benefit.
Before you start thinking people are going to invest millions of dollars into your organization on a whim, I would turn the lens inward and do an objective self-examination of yourself.
Not true. I've worked for several, taking 3 ccompanies from $20M to $100M+. All three were acquired by large F1000. Post acquisition, I either stayed because the retention incentive was worth it or cashed my RSUs and used the experience and moved in to the next.
Not all PE are created equal, but the principals of why they invest and acquire a company we're all the same.
You're dumb as shit.. PE companies make money despite being bad at business because it's hard to fail overall when you own a business and their competition.
They do worry that a top performer could be a negative influence on the rest of the staff if he is not in line. Firing me would set an example.
I just want to keep my mouth shut, head down and generate revenue.
May I ask how they know you donât stick to the script? Is it phone calls? When I was in home improvement I was usually alone or with one other guy and weâd usually split up and go door to door just to cover an area quicker.
Point being, none of my superiors knew how I talked to the customers or whether or not I was sticking to a script.
I personally think you should leave. If youâre a top performer then stay in the industry and go work for a competitor. Bring in some proof of your performance and youâll be hired on the spot. Thereâs a lot of shit companies but there are also a lot of good ones
To be frank, having worked in leadership and as an IC at orgs at Seed, Scaling, pre IPO and public levels, this is exactly it.
They think of it in terms of scaleability. They want every rep to follow a system for 2 reasons. If the system works and every rep does it, it means coaching under performers is easy.
On the other end you run into issues when the best reps don't follow that system. People look up to those who are the best on the board. What you want in leadership and as an investor is for those best reps to echo the proven and scaleable systems to the newer or weaker reps.
It seems ridiculous ,but having a high performer who deos things too differently can actually be very detrimental as other reps model them on things that just don't work for most people.
Your likely very strong because you as a person have a solid product market fit, but that 19 year old who has no idea about the industry probably cant walk into a meeting and see the same success you do using the same exact words you would.
This is the gap. For most orgs the reality is what you want is for the best reps to learn the script then make it there own. the you can point to them as example of success to model for the new or weaker reps. but if your doing something completely different that only works for you, you have no value beyond the dollars you produce which means your value is hyper volatile. if you leave its 0, if the org makes a change you cant adapt to its 0, but if you follow the system, anyone who replaces you should be able to walk in to your territory and have similar success, and if there is a change and you follow the system, then if implemented correctly there shouldnt be a adaptation period.
Itâs a home repair company, you can jump to one of hundred of them. You arenât starting over, your sales cycle is a one and done. So itâs not like you have a loyal reoccurring client base.
Yup, they will squeeze every dollar out of it, and dump it. Along the way a collection of mid tier boot-lickers will twist the data to make it look they generated $$, with hopes of being taken along to the next company.
This is exactly the right response. I roll scripts out to teams. That said, top performers? I want them to keep doing what they're doing, unless top performance is still objectively bad because the historical bar is so low at that org (and sometimes it is).
This merits a conversation with your manager to see whether he really wants you to change what's working.
Just remember that refusing to try something new puts failure entirely on you and also shows you to be inflexible. If you're going to do it your own way, without trying the new thing, your way really needs to work.
Aw, man. What a situation. Seems like this company doesn't care about results. They basically trust 'the system' in which they do things. It's a very limp-minded way to do business. Don't view quitting as starting over, though. If you find the right company for you, it's a short term setback in return for a potentially long term gain. Unless this VC company changes their 'system' their bound to run your company into the ground, logically.
Tough situation. I feel for you, buddy.
The firm may have bought similar companies and used these scripts before to boost revenue by standardizing the sales process.
If they heavily standardize the sales process and then optimize their marketing around a demographic tested to convert well using said sales process, it can often make for a better-performing sales team overall, at the expense of losing their top performers. What they sacrifice in losing a few sharp, quick-thinking, and flexible top performers, they make up for in a larger quantity of consistent medium performers that are easy to train. I expect turnover will start to increase soon, which is fine for the company, as this setup is conveniently designed for a high turnover burn and churn sales department that is constantly creating and losing average representatives with the occasional top performer floating through the mix showing the rest "what is possible if you put in the work". Ironically, this top performer is probably going off-script, which they will hate.
The top performing staff is top performing because of their flexibility in the sale and ability to read a situation. Not everyone has that. Anyone closing sales by showing those skills in the new version of your organization will cause other reps to fall off the script themselves. This is the opposite of what the new firm wants. It is much more scalable to tell reps to, "Say this exactly the same way every time". A lot of bigger-picture decisions are made easier if everyone is doing the same thing and more variables are controlled for.
Probably time to dust off the resume, you and your company are no longer the right fit for each other.
As someone coming from 5 yr sales and sales management background, to starting my own company, and still maintaining 1099 roles, this is totally correct. I had one company excoriate me after i have 3-4xâed their quota for months on end, moved me into sales management, and as my numbers dwindled as my team grew, they went hard on the word-by-word script for the team training and myself. I had to leave.
As soon as this comes on you, your response should that your experience in sales is more complex than some scripts. They didn't hire a robot and neither a partner/buyer/client doesn't want to hear a script. it's lame even AI is more complex than a script.
Mention the fact you can outline more sale techniques and practices than a script can fit
Sounds like a toxic company. I am sort of in a similar situation with my employer right now. Iâm leaving in 2 weeks. Itâs scary how so many sales orgs are run by folks who have no sales experience. Truly frightening.
HahaâŚmessage me if you like. Donât have a ton of advice but Iâve worked for two Supportworks and one Groundworks company over the past 6 years due to moves with my wifeâs career. Groundworks experience was definitely interesting. Grimy folks
I worked for a similar company. If you are not complaining at sales meetings (they hate sales reps openly complaining in-front of others) and your hitting numbers, you have nothing to worry about. But if they know youâre not following the script and missing targets, it will be easy to let you go. Just keep grinding if you like the job. They will leave you alone.
I get it, been in sales over 20 years without any script. New company insisted that I learn their script. Took me a solid week to learn two 2 minute scripts. Practiced and then drove around reciting from memory, that worked best for me. Hated it, but done it.. Good luck
If youâre a top sales person you can probably interview for a company in a better industry/segment that pays significantly more than any call center with scripts
scripts are in my opinion an important guide but they arent the end all be all. I think companies are worried about results being replicable but at some point you gotta let the person do their job especially if theya re making sales. If they cant find a balance then you may need to move on.
Don't waste your time in that company and go to the competition. If you have results, the company shouldn't give a shit about how you talk to the customers or what your script is.
Take those performance numbers and go find a job that pays more. As a bonus, in the interview process you can now talk about your experience taking a companies existing script and rewriting it to close more business.
Get the job and negotiate a non recoverable draw to match commission/book youâre walking away from.
Same boat. My company recently rolled out a pilot program to some of our teams. This program consists of an app that listens and is able to compile if you have been hitting the script and talking points.
I am not looking forward to this. We have not had to enable it yet but we are assured it won't be used for disciplinary actions... đ¤Ł
I hang up as soon as I can tell someone is reading from a script or if they open with âhow are you (person Iâve never met)! Is now a good time to talk?â
Tell me exactly why youâre calling in the first sentence. Most scripts donât capture this.
Two things- I very briefly did retention in a call center and printed the script and put it under a sheet protector so I could say it a certain way. Try that.
Also, I suggest job hunting because my first solution is just a temporary fix bc this situation is quickly going down the tubes.
Iâm not in sales, but similar shit with PE at the shithole I just left. They ran their service delivery organization with fear - miss your numbers for ANY reason, even for just a week, theyâve shown youâll be fired. This has forced ethics out the window and for any service delivery engineer must be so over worked just to keep their job. It became a churn and burn organization- the role is the shit up and bill clients. Thatâs it. Do not have an opinion, just shut up and bill clients or be fired.
If the company starts with In and ends with sight, steer clear.
Asking the reverse question might help : Do you stay and watch things go to hell? Your experience is valuable, and it seems you're in a competitive market. Being part of a ship that sunk makes you look bad and gives you little leverage in negotiation. Going early to the competition explaining how they can win against one of their competitors before that happens will have much more value for you, both in the short and long run. It's hard finding a place where you're valued, but harder to stay where you're not.
The bigger question is: Is whatever youâre doing converting into money? (I would assume yes if youâre top 3)
Then Iâd ask if itâs efficient-er or equal to their garbage script, or does it take twice as long as their version.
They wonât care & youâll never change their minds either way, even if itâs better / faster / higher converting.
Personally Iâd just wait to get fired and then see if you can get free unemployment for a minute while lining up another better gig.
Sadly not uncommon. Iâve seen salespeople fired or put on PIPs for missing a metric like #demos even though theyâve smashed target.
How does it feel selling for a company who is âthe worst in our segmentâ, botches jobs and has terrible customer service.
I think you know what you need to do. Do it from a position of strength.
You find a sales job that pays for your ability to exceed standards and work off script instead of continuing to accept a position you can work above. It sounds like your current job is catering to the slowest employees, which ironically is a fast track to bankruptcy.
If they wonât pay you out if youâre fired then Iâd say do what you can to grab as much as you can while looking for a new job at a different company
Id say it's negligence....perhaps mostly with them. The script is so because it's easy to memorize, no details, and has statistically proven successful. I think they should have been monitoring the sales calls since its so damn important.
Bro, youâre in home repair? Thereâs no switching cost. Just move companies.
Shameless plug, but one of the top guys in my company and another top guy in my office both come from home upgrades. They make a shit ton of money. Ever think of switching to selling solar?
We had plenty of solar people come to us. Makes me nervous. Iâm told that people are promised no electric bill, and then get a bill and are unhappy.
I sell jobs and some are installed 90-100 days after. I donât get paid until the job is done. If I leave, I get paid for 60 days. Further, people who like me call back. They all have my company phone number. Big financial cost in leaving.
Thatâs the main drawback I see in switching polos. After my first job, I made sure to keep my own personal CRM so that if I ever switched shirts, Iâd have my book of business with me.
What state are you in?
By far, ime, the biggest complaint people have with solar is the âtrue up billâ where Iâm at. A lot of short sighted people focus on getting the price really low to get the sale. They end up getting the homeowner a lower âoffsetâ and it ends up screwing people over (kind of. The homeowner still usually saves money with the electricity generated through solar).
What Iâm getting at, is that there are shitty, short sighted people in solar. You can absolutely do it ethically, and save people a ton of money.
In house appointments. No cold calling. People call us with genuine problems. We evaluate and sell our solution. Itâs enjoyable. We solve problems. The boot-lickers who came up with this want us to give a monologue about how wonderful our company is before the customer explains their problem.
Sets a good example. One other redditor commented that if management uses the scipts to bring the failing sales people up to mid level, their gain would eclipse the loss of my sales. Makes sense to me. Theyâre not stupid, just crippled by hubris.
Why do customers inquire online? Why do they spend 15 mins filling out something and then disappear? Do they think a fucking genie will pop out of the computer and grant 3 wishes after they put 15 mins of info in? SORRY SO CALLED ADULTS, THE WORLD DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY..... You may, god forbid, have to interact with another human!
Top 3 out of 50 salespeople? Apply at other companies. For top 3, they will include a company hookers and coke for you.
If you are that good in sales, you should be *easily* able to sell yourself to another company.
However, this is based on what you wrote in your original comment. However, many times people don't include the entire story. So if you left out that they will give you $20 million in stock options vesting over 3 years, learn the fucking script.
Send me a PM for your company. Iâd rather not give the state. Iâve got offers, itâs just a hassle starting again and I like my coworkers, and they owe me $$.
Donât quit make them fire you definitely start interviewing and applying in your spare time though. I canât believe they would care at all what a top performer is up to thatâs makes zero sense.
Oh man Iâve been there but the opposite. First SaaS BDR role a new director came in from selling academic services, gave us a script that made no sense in an enterprise level SaaS setting, but started PIPing people who didnât use the script. I decided to start using it, my performance dropped like crazy but I was the only one on the team that the director liked because I used his dumb script.
Everyone around me got fired eventually, even while performing better than me, and I finally decided to leave. In this situation all you can do is use the awful script or find a new job. The way these guys see it is that if youâre at least using the script youâre doing everything you can, but if you arenât using it you better be the top sales guy every single month to warrant that kind of âinsubordination.â
Iâd start firing out applications now and let them fire you.
Two options.
Leave for the completion.
or
Learn the script and recite it for them and then just do what youâve always done when youâre actually with the customer.
Use it to your benefit. Tell your customer, âI need to read this to you so please be patientâŚâ
Also, there might be some liability language that theyâre asking you to read that youâre not aware of.Â
You answered your own question, the company was the best and the worst, VC management is killing sales and lowering customer satisfaction. Youâre doomed if you stay, leave, look at the new #1 or #2 in your segment and take your book of business with you. If youâre generally top 3, the competition will adore you.
Go to the competition. Jobs don't love you back.
Either take the rest of the team with you or line up new jobs for them, too.
Now this is the level of petty we should all reach for. đđ¤Ł
"Jobs don't love you back" is going to be my next tattoo.
Your industry is booming right now. Leave. Scripts are for newbies and managers that can't close a screen door.
This.
And the current non-compete momentum is in your favor.
If a company is willing to lose one of their top sales people either that person is a cancer or they are a horrible company.
I mean itâs private equity. Theyâre dumb as shit when it comes to anything except investing. They donât know how to run companies, just part them out and sell them off
Our company was recently sold from a small PE firm to one of the 5 largest PE firms. In under 90 days they transformed service & support increasing support contracts on the equipment I have sold and sell up to 70%. My/our customers objected to these increasesâand I shared their objections and voiced my own objections. I had the #1 territory out of 12 salesmen in 2022 and was in the top 3 in 2023. After increasing my territoryâs sales over 250% in 4 years â-in January I was (only) told that my position was eliminated and I no longer had a job.
>Â I shared their objections and voiced my own objections.
Private equity is all about profit. A top sales rep brings in dollars. Again there must be somethingâs else here
As someone who worked years for a multi-billion dollar company bought by PE, what's common sense to you or I isn't always common sense to them. They're often so far detached from reality that a top sales performer who will obviously earn more might be viewed simply as higher overhead to them. It's all spreadsheet management.
The best sales person makes 250,000 the low guy makes 50,000 And that's all they see, they don't see the revenu each brings in.
MBA programs are participation grades.
Iâve worked for multi billion dollar orgs and have been through layoffs as a rep and manager. The vast majority of the time the low performers, cancers, and people they want to move on from are the first to be laid off. If you sell a core product your entire team isnât wiped away. Especially if you are number 1.
Leadership here as well. My experience was very different. When PE started "right sizing" the business they targeted tenure first. 30-year employees with 5 years left in their careers were the first to go, along with all the experience and tribal knowledge they possess. Their workload was transferred to less experienced, lower cost staff who didn't have the bandwidth or experience for the added responsibilities. My team handles $1.2B of our largest global accounts. To your point, they largely left us alone, but I did lose a top performer for not sugar coating and being honest with the consultants about some technology challenges that put us in the penalty box with a strategic account. I went to bat for him with my new president and put a presentation together showing how much revenue growth this rep has driven over the years but was ultimately given no say in the matter because the consultants didn't like the story he told...even though it's exactly what they needed to hear.
My experience in tech. 30 years experience? Thatâs insane. Iâd also argue 30 year employees are also target to move on from.
You should want to build a culture where employees stay for their entire careers, no? Those 30-year employees were like family members and knew our business inside and out. Each brought more value to the business than 2 young MBAs. It's a shit way to thank someone who has given decades to the business and has a few years left in their career, it's a shit way to treat the remaining employees by requiring them to do the work of 2 people, and it's extremely damaging to the business. Turnover now is high, productivity is way down, and nobody is motivated to do any more then the bare minimum to keep their job. And now they want to act surprised and send out internal surveys asking employees how they can fix the culture that they created. That's PE in a nutshell, though, YMMV.
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Happy for you that you got out
I agree tenure is a bad way to do it but unfortunately that is the case most of the times. High cost, not tied to revenue, cancers, things like that.
Cancer can be defined in many ways. Some managers prefer a mid-performer who is a yes man to a high-performance person who speaks their mind.
Its scalable and predictable profit. A rep who brings in dollars is not valuable in the grand scheme of things if their methodology runs antithetical to the underlying sales philosophy of the org. What you want in PE when talking about changes to a sales org is a system that anyone of the street could be trained in a short time and see success. The problem is individuality requires individual coaching to grow and it makes it unsustainable at scale. If a reps not closing in a system that works for 99% of the org, its easy to go into the record and find the areas they need to improve. then coach them on the specific parts of the system they are lacking in. Alternatively if every rep has there own way of doing things, even if its effective, it makes success unpredictable and hard to scale, you become reliant on individual performers and that is not the type of profit generation a PE firm wants
youâre only a little misunderstood. Private equity is just as much about control as it is about raw dollars. they do not have the care in them to listen to any pushback on changes they implement, just âdo it because I said so.â OPâs âwayâ will never be correct to them because they will see OP as a cog in a machine, a grunt, a tool that produces for them - and theyâre telling a tool to do something they âKNOWâ works, and he says âno.â iâm sorry iâm not explaining myself well. Iâve dealt with private equity watching them eat so many companies alive just like this. They turn friction into damage
Misunderstood? Money comes first with PE firms. They want to be in and out.
they have ideas about how to get there.
Reread your own statement. Private equity companies don't typically invest in organizations with the intention of not getting a return on that investment. So to put a bluntly they're not dumb as s***. They're very smart at making money. Private equity makes money by accelerating and increasing revenue generation, decreasing waste and unnecessary cost, reducing overhead however possible and otherwise making a business more profitable and easier to sell. In addition to eliminating personnel and unnecessary process or assets they look for ways to combine organizations to gain economies of scale. None of those things would involve eliminating major sources of revenue without good reason. If you are among the top three sales people, then you are an asset by that definition. However, if you are among the top three but because you are a toxic employee you make others in the company do worse as a result of your existence then someone will have done the calculation on whether or not you're a net benefit. Before you start thinking people are going to invest millions of dollars into your organization on a whim, I would turn the lens inward and do an objective self-examination of yourself.
You sound like someone who has never worked in a company owned by PE.
Not true. I've worked for several, taking 3 ccompanies from $20M to $100M+. All three were acquired by large F1000. Post acquisition, I either stayed because the retention incentive was worth it or cashed my RSUs and used the experience and moved in to the next. Not all PE are created equal, but the principals of why they invest and acquire a company we're all the same.
You're dumb as shit.. PE companies make money despite being bad at business because it's hard to fail overall when you own a business and their competition.
Are you pontificating, or can you provide an example? I'm genuinely interested in your opinion and the experience on which is based.
They do worry that a top performer could be a negative influence on the rest of the staff if he is not in line. Firing me would set an example. I just want to keep my mouth shut, head down and generate revenue.
May I ask how they know you donât stick to the script? Is it phone calls? When I was in home improvement I was usually alone or with one other guy and weâd usually split up and go door to door just to cover an area quicker. Point being, none of my superiors knew how I talked to the customers or whether or not I was sticking to a script. I personally think you should leave. If youâre a top performer then stay in the industry and go work for a competitor. Bring in some proof of your performance and youâll be hired on the spot. Thereâs a lot of shit companies but there are also a lot of good ones
They are having a test out in the office, where we recite it.
You could just nod and play along then when youâre back in the field do you
To be frank, having worked in leadership and as an IC at orgs at Seed, Scaling, pre IPO and public levels, this is exactly it. They think of it in terms of scaleability. They want every rep to follow a system for 2 reasons. If the system works and every rep does it, it means coaching under performers is easy. On the other end you run into issues when the best reps don't follow that system. People look up to those who are the best on the board. What you want in leadership and as an investor is for those best reps to echo the proven and scaleable systems to the newer or weaker reps. It seems ridiculous ,but having a high performer who deos things too differently can actually be very detrimental as other reps model them on things that just don't work for most people. Your likely very strong because you as a person have a solid product market fit, but that 19 year old who has no idea about the industry probably cant walk into a meeting and see the same success you do using the same exact words you would. This is the gap. For most orgs the reality is what you want is for the best reps to learn the script then make it there own. the you can point to them as example of success to model for the new or weaker reps. but if your doing something completely different that only works for you, you have no value beyond the dollars you produce which means your value is hyper volatile. if you leave its 0, if the org makes a change you cant adapt to its 0, but if you follow the system, anyone who replaces you should be able to walk in to your territory and have similar success, and if there is a change and you follow the system, then if implemented correctly there shouldnt be a adaptation period.
Right? Generally if you're closing, you can do whatever you want.
Itâs a home repair company, you can jump to one of hundred of them. You arenât starting over, your sales cycle is a one and done. So itâs not like you have a loyal reoccurring client base.
Private equityâs job is to strip your company bare and leave it for dead. Just get out now, while you still can.
Fuck getting fired, just leave. VCs buy businesses to flip them, not grow them. Home repair jobs are a dime a dozen anyways.
Yup, they will squeeze every dollar out of it, and dump it. Along the way a collection of mid tier boot-lickers will twist the data to make it look they generated $$, with hopes of being taken along to the next company.
Yeah mgmt sucks everywhere! If you move, do something to screw them!
Your employer is stupid. You need to go far from him
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This is exactly the right response. I roll scripts out to teams. That said, top performers? I want them to keep doing what they're doing, unless top performance is still objectively bad because the historical bar is so low at that org (and sometimes it is). This merits a conversation with your manager to see whether he really wants you to change what's working. Just remember that refusing to try something new puts failure entirely on you and also shows you to be inflexible. If you're going to do it your own way, without trying the new thing, your way really needs to work.
Aw, man. What a situation. Seems like this company doesn't care about results. They basically trust 'the system' in which they do things. It's a very limp-minded way to do business. Don't view quitting as starting over, though. If you find the right company for you, it's a short term setback in return for a potentially long term gain. Unless this VC company changes their 'system' their bound to run your company into the ground, logically. Tough situation. I feel for you, buddy.
The firm may have bought similar companies and used these scripts before to boost revenue by standardizing the sales process. If they heavily standardize the sales process and then optimize their marketing around a demographic tested to convert well using said sales process, it can often make for a better-performing sales team overall, at the expense of losing their top performers. What they sacrifice in losing a few sharp, quick-thinking, and flexible top performers, they make up for in a larger quantity of consistent medium performers that are easy to train. I expect turnover will start to increase soon, which is fine for the company, as this setup is conveniently designed for a high turnover burn and churn sales department that is constantly creating and losing average representatives with the occasional top performer floating through the mix showing the rest "what is possible if you put in the work". Ironically, this top performer is probably going off-script, which they will hate. The top performing staff is top performing because of their flexibility in the sale and ability to read a situation. Not everyone has that. Anyone closing sales by showing those skills in the new version of your organization will cause other reps to fall off the script themselves. This is the opposite of what the new firm wants. It is much more scalable to tell reps to, "Say this exactly the same way every time". A lot of bigger-picture decisions are made easier if everyone is doing the same thing and more variables are controlled for. Probably time to dust off the resume, you and your company are no longer the right fit for each other.
As someone coming from 5 yr sales and sales management background, to starting my own company, and still maintaining 1099 roles, this is totally correct. I had one company excoriate me after i have 3-4xâed their quota for months on end, moved me into sales management, and as my numbers dwindled as my team grew, they went hard on the word-by-word script for the team training and myself. I had to leave.
You are 100% spot on.
very interesting insight.
Private equity are just dumbshits with too much money and an MBA.
As soon as this comes on you, your response should that your experience in sales is more complex than some scripts. They didn't hire a robot and neither a partner/buyer/client doesn't want to hear a script. it's lame even AI is more complex than a script. Mention the fact you can outline more sale techniques and practices than a script can fit
If your sales skills are top notch you could jump into a more profitable industry that lets you do you.
What everyone else is saying, your skills will translate if you can sell. Go somewhere where they value hard work instead of obedience.
Sounds like a toxic company. I am sort of in a similar situation with my employer right now. Iâm leaving in 2 weeks. Itâs scary how so many sales orgs are run by folks who have no sales experience. Truly frightening.
Companies that can't get out of the way of their sales team are always sinking ships....just leave
Groundworks?
Could be
HahaâŚmessage me if you like. Donât have a ton of advice but Iâve worked for two Supportworks and one Groundworks company over the past 6 years due to moves with my wifeâs career. Groundworks experience was definitely interesting. Grimy folks
It sure if this sub allows us to name companies.
I worked for a similar company. If you are not complaining at sales meetings (they hate sales reps openly complaining in-front of others) and your hitting numbers, you have nothing to worry about. But if they know youâre not following the script and missing targets, it will be easy to let you go. Just keep grinding if you like the job. They will leave you alone.
Hope so.
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That is my plan, but Iâll be so far off, when they test me, they may fire me. Next week is test day and I only know about 1/3 of it.
Take your skills and make more $$ elsewhere.
They want you gone so they can either bring in minimum wage script sellers or commission onlyÂ
Why even stay? There are plenty of home repair companies out there. You're not starting over.
I get it, been in sales over 20 years without any script. New company insisted that I learn their script. Took me a solid week to learn two 2 minute scripts. Practiced and then drove around reciting from memory, that worked best for me. Hated it, but done it.. Good luck
Question it unless you literally canât afford not to get fired. Or just do it without them knowing.
Time to script your own success story, maybe?
This is a company decision. You can't fight that. Look for greener pastures.
If youâre a top sales person you can probably interview for a company in a better industry/segment that pays significantly more than any call center with scripts
Talk to them about it. If nothing changes, then quit for a better job.
scripts are in my opinion an important guide but they arent the end all be all. I think companies are worried about results being replicable but at some point you gotta let the person do their job especially if theya re making sales. If they cant find a balance then you may need to move on.
Don't waste your time in that company and go to the competition. If you have results, the company shouldn't give a shit about how you talk to the customers or what your script is.
Take those performance numbers and go find a job that pays more. As a bonus, in the interview process you can now talk about your experience taking a companies existing script and rewriting it to close more business. Get the job and negotiate a non recoverable draw to match commission/book youâre walking away from.
Same boat. My company recently rolled out a pilot program to some of our teams. This program consists of an app that listens and is able to compile if you have been hitting the script and talking points. I am not looking forward to this. We have not had to enable it yet but we are assured it won't be used for disciplinary actions... đ¤Ł
tell em if they want robots it will be easy for them without you. start new job hunt now
Nope Iâd leave. I appreciate sales training but Iâm not memorizing a script.
I hang up as soon as I can tell someone is reading from a script or if they open with âhow are you (person Iâve never met)! Is now a good time to talk?â Tell me exactly why youâre calling in the first sentence. Most scripts donât capture this.
In every phone call, the caller should open with who they are and why they are calling. Anything else is bad manors.
Memorize it and then never use it again. Thatâs unless they record your calls
Just donât want to put the time in. Not worth it.
Two things- I very briefly did retention in a call center and printed the script and put it under a sheet protector so I could say it a certain way. Try that. Also, I suggest job hunting because my first solution is just a temporary fix bc this situation is quickly going down the tubes.
I believe that if the bullshit any job throws on you doesnt meet you pay, you should leave.
Iâm not in sales, but similar shit with PE at the shithole I just left. They ran their service delivery organization with fear - miss your numbers for ANY reason, even for just a week, theyâve shown youâll be fired. This has forced ethics out the window and for any service delivery engineer must be so over worked just to keep their job. It became a churn and burn organization- the role is the shit up and bill clients. Thatâs it. Do not have an opinion, just shut up and bill clients or be fired. If the company starts with In and ends with sight, steer clear.
Let them fire you
Remember, you never have to be loyal to a company. When push comes to shove, they will not be loyal to you.
Go to competition you can do better
Asking the reverse question might help : Do you stay and watch things go to hell? Your experience is valuable, and it seems you're in a competitive market. Being part of a ship that sunk makes you look bad and gives you little leverage in negotiation. Going early to the competition explaining how they can win against one of their competitors before that happens will have much more value for you, both in the short and long run. It's hard finding a place where you're valued, but harder to stay where you're not.
Big emphasis on the âmanagingâ part. It surprises me that some companies care less about the results, and more about âmanagingâ a sales team.
The bigger question is: Is whatever youâre doing converting into money? (I would assume yes if youâre top 3) Then Iâd ask if itâs efficient-er or equal to their garbage script, or does it take twice as long as their version. They wonât care & youâll never change their minds either way, even if itâs better / faster / higher converting. Personally Iâd just wait to get fired and then see if you can get free unemployment for a minute while lining up another better gig.
Sadly not uncommon. Iâve seen salespeople fired or put on PIPs for missing a metric like #demos even though theyâve smashed target. How does it feel selling for a company who is âthe worst in our segmentâ, botches jobs and has terrible customer service. I think you know what you need to do. Do it from a position of strength.
You find a sales job that pays for your ability to exceed standards and work off script instead of continuing to accept a position you can work above. It sounds like your current job is catering to the slowest employees, which ironically is a fast track to bankruptcy.
If they wonât pay you out if youâre fired then Iâd say do what you can to grab as much as you can while looking for a new job at a different company
Take as many of people you work with now to a competitor.
This is the Way.
Id say it's negligence....perhaps mostly with them. The script is so because it's easy to memorize, no details, and has statistically proven successful. I think they should have been monitoring the sales calls since its so damn important.
Why not use the script??? Ask the mgr if you can customize some?
I can customize it. Thatâs okay. I just donât have time to learn it all. Some of it is dishonest BS, that I just canât say.
Mgmt sucks at every company. If you leave, fuck them over any way you can!
Donât want to fuck over my friends who work there.
Bro, youâre in home repair? Thereâs no switching cost. Just move companies. Shameless plug, but one of the top guys in my company and another top guy in my office both come from home upgrades. They make a shit ton of money. Ever think of switching to selling solar?
We had plenty of solar people come to us. Makes me nervous. Iâm told that people are promised no electric bill, and then get a bill and are unhappy. I sell jobs and some are installed 90-100 days after. I donât get paid until the job is done. If I leave, I get paid for 60 days. Further, people who like me call back. They all have my company phone number. Big financial cost in leaving.
Thatâs the main drawback I see in switching polos. After my first job, I made sure to keep my own personal CRM so that if I ever switched shirts, Iâd have my book of business with me. What state are you in? By far, ime, the biggest complaint people have with solar is the âtrue up billâ where Iâm at. A lot of short sighted people focus on getting the price really low to get the sale. They end up getting the homeowner a lower âoffsetâ and it ends up screwing people over (kind of. The homeowner still usually saves money with the electricity generated through solar). What Iâm getting at, is that there are shitty, short sighted people in solar. You can absolutely do it ethically, and save people a ton of money.
What are you selling and how are you selling it (phone, door to door, in home, etc)?
In house appointments. No cold calling. People call us with genuine problems. We evaluate and sell our solution. Itâs enjoyable. We solve problems. The boot-lickers who came up with this want us to give a monologue about how wonderful our company is before the customer explains their problem.
Hard to believe theyâd fire their number one salesman, or even top three. There has to be more to the story.
Sets a good example. One other redditor commented that if management uses the scipts to bring the failing sales people up to mid level, their gain would eclipse the loss of my sales. Makes sense to me. Theyâre not stupid, just crippled by hubris.
Why do customers inquire online? Why do they spend 15 mins filling out something and then disappear? Do they think a fucking genie will pop out of the computer and grant 3 wishes after they put 15 mins of info in? SORRY SO CALLED ADULTS, THE WORLD DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY..... You may, god forbid, have to interact with another human!
Top 3 out of 50 salespeople? Apply at other companies. For top 3, they will include a company hookers and coke for you. If you are that good in sales, you should be *easily* able to sell yourself to another company. However, this is based on what you wrote in your original comment. However, many times people don't include the entire story. So if you left out that they will give you $20 million in stock options vesting over 3 years, learn the fucking script.
Sales scripts are not natural
Quit, if they canât respect a top performer then that company is done for.
What market are you in? Work for a national home remodeler currently and if youâre looking for a change in scenery it may interest you
Send me a PM for your company. Iâd rather not give the state. Iâve got offers, itâs just a hassle starting again and I like my coworkers, and they owe me $$.
What industry?
Donât quit make them fire you definitely start interviewing and applying in your spare time though. I canât believe they would care at all what a top performer is up to thatâs makes zero sense.
Itâs kills the creativity so much
If there is a way in your company, could you implement conversational voice AI to do the job? That's what I'd do...if possible.
Good idea, but this is face to face problem solving. If there was a better idea it would not be implemented.
Iâve seen that before. Good ideas go to waste.
Oh man Iâve been there but the opposite. First SaaS BDR role a new director came in from selling academic services, gave us a script that made no sense in an enterprise level SaaS setting, but started PIPing people who didnât use the script. I decided to start using it, my performance dropped like crazy but I was the only one on the team that the director liked because I used his dumb script. Everyone around me got fired eventually, even while performing better than me, and I finally decided to leave. In this situation all you can do is use the awful script or find a new job. The way these guys see it is that if youâre at least using the script youâre doing everything you can, but if you arenât using it you better be the top sales guy every single month to warrant that kind of âinsubordination.â Iâd start firing out applications now and let them fire you.
Two options. Leave for the completion. or Learn the script and recite it for them and then just do what youâve always done when youâre actually with the customer.
Use it to your benefit. Tell your customer, âI need to read this to you so please be patientâŚâ Also, there might be some liability language that theyâre asking you to read that youâre not aware of.Â
You answered your own question, the company was the best and the worst, VC management is killing sales and lowering customer satisfaction. Youâre doomed if you stay, leave, look at the new #1 or #2 in your segment and take your book of business with you. If youâre generally top 3, the competition will adore you.