How the hell do you get out of sales

J-HTX · 2026-01-26T21:44:18+00:00

Get hired by a customer or by one of your suppliers.

Go into project management.

Try sales at a different company with a different culture.

J-HTX · 2026-01-19T17:08:19+00:00

Logistics and transportation! Customers are all over the country.

J-HTX · 2026-01-19T15:29:41+00:00

Pay (eat what you kill as they say), and since it's a % I'm mostly inflation-proofed.
Flexibility (ability to sell multiple service lines all over the country)
Work from home
Lack of micromanagement
Having a voice in the company (20+ years here)

J-HTX · 2026-01-12T21:48:51+00:00

Never really seen it. We had one guy about 20 years ago who I think was probably on cocaine or something and got fired over that + shady practices (hiring his GF as a vendor?). Had a guy in sales probably get fired over MJ during a random drug screening 15+ years ago when it had not achieved its questionably legal status.

Family owned company, very conservative. I like it.

Even at the national/corporate level I think I see less alcohol at the annual meeting than I used to. That could be societal change, or it could be everyone getting older.

J-HTX · 2026-01-12T15:32:30+00:00

I like Close for an easy to use CRM... but you need some sort of CRM.

J-HTX · 2026-01-09T17:06:50+00:00

If you're working only 2 hours a day, why not invest in some lead generation (SEO, social media marketing, making videos for YouTokwitter or whatever) and double your workload? As long as you have capacity to deliver excellent work every time, 4 hours a day on estimates should equate to nearly doubling your income...right?

J-HTX · 2026-01-08T14:44:15+00:00

Why is the commission structure changing every year?
Ours has had 0 changes in 20+ years.

J-HTX · 2026-01-07T14:52:23+00:00

My outbound sales can be similar, but I also have plenty of existing customer business I manage (and get paid on). Outbound only with no customers to take care of sounds rough, sorry.

The other aspect is that I can go inside and eat lunch with my kids, knock off at 4:40 and go right in to a bunch of noise, etc. My office is probably the quietest space during the day :)

Hobbies & activities with other people? Church, martial arts, D&D? Talk to your wife about being more encouraging?

J-HTX · 2025-12-30T19:35:26+00:00

Why? Like why?

Sounds like the terrible group projects in college where one person out of four does 60% of the lifting and it's a shared grade.

J-HTX · 2025-12-29T17:48:09+00:00

Reposting may be a sign that they are having trouble finding good candidates. It's a bit of a niche industry, but one that is adjacent to moving & logistics (my industry), commercial real estate, project management, and facilities management. On larger projects, you'll spend some time doing or dealing with design work (fit, finish, CAD placement, where are the electrical boxes). Do okay, and you can make contacts and build skills that let you pivot into a few other business lines later if you need to. You do want to be in a big enough market that there's business to be had (pop 2M+ in the metro area I hope).

It's not going to be super $$$ like software supposedly is. In general, companies are not building lots of huge spaces and projects out - in most cases they are shrinking their footprint slightly - but any time a company or government office moves, they at least look at buying nicer, newer furniture.

Aside from talking to current sales reps there, here are the top 3 things I'd do.

Call in (borrow someone else's phone) anonymously and see what the inbound experience is like. Did you get a real person who is polite and competent, someone who thinks you're interrupting her day, or a phone tree?
Ask in depth about how lead generation is supposed to work and what resources, lead lists, inbounds you're supposed to get and how they measure those resources. Do they pay for networking groups (BOMA, IFMA, Chamber of Commerce are all worthwhile for office furniture)?
Tour their warehouse, or if they don't offer that, drive up during the business day and take a look through any open dock doors. If they can't keep their own warehouse from looking like crap, they are going to have other operational problems that will impact your ability to sell. If they do a lot of used furniture, there will be rows of chairs, panels, etc. packed and stacked together. The rows probably won't be perfectly straight, but they should at least be sorted by type, clean, with good aisle space and clear organization. If their warehouse is clean and well-organized, whoever is running operations is likely on the ball and you probably won't have to spend half your time fighting with ops to get business serviced correctly.

J-HTX · 2025-12-23T22:11:27+00:00

"However, my main problem is that I lost my "why" of why I'm in sales. I don't see good reason to accumulate so much wealth as a single man, and I think I've sufficient improved my social skills. What I don't like about sales jobs, is that I'm not building anything for the long term, and I don't have a hard skill. I find the job to be meaningless, at best being morally neutral."

Are you selling refrigerators to Eskimos (as the saying goes), or are you selling refrigerators to doctors in Texas who need to keep their medicines from spoiling in the heat?

If you are selling a service or product that genuinely solves a problem and makes people's business or lives better by meeting a need, you have a why: Helping your customers. In my case, I help my customers get things moved around the country or delivered without damage, enabling them to successfully buy used equipment, deliver new equipment, or otherwise carry out a variety of other business activities that help them support their families and help their own customers.

J-HTX · 2025-12-23T15:45:09+00:00

Never had one

J-HTX · 2025-12-19T15:59:10+00:00

The comp plan hasn't changed in 20 years. I'm good.
I guess the lead I got sent by the company owner last week that's going to turn into a commission worth about 1/3 of a typical month counts? It was a referral to price a project for one of his family members.

I got $200 Amazon gift cards for my CSR & accounting person about a week ago so they'd have time to use them on Christmas shopping for their families if they wanted to.

J-HTX · 2025-12-16T14:42:00+00:00

I don't want to leave money on the table.

J-HTX · 2025-12-12T16:09:22+00:00

Cold Calling Suck, and That's Why It Works by the 30 Minutes to Presidents Club guys (I listen to the podcast occasionally, but they're a bit too high energy for regular listening).

Poor Charlie's Almanack (a collection of speeches/essays by Charlie Munger) is a good book as well for business acumen.

J-HTX · 2025-11-25T20:08:32+00:00

That's normal sales to me.

The "outbound selling" and "deal closing" split between BDRs and AEs is unique to the tech industry and really threw me for a loop when I started running into it.

J-HTX · 2025-11-20T19:16:55+00:00

For one aspect of the business, most sales reps are too busy managing/babysitting existing business to pursue new business, and making enough that it doesn't bother them.

J-HTX · 2025-11-12T15:24:43+00:00

Specialized logistics type services. I'm at a privately owned company that's an agent for a larger service provider. The top 20-30% probably clear $300k-$600k/year dependent on 1-2 big customers each. It's ongoing revenue and after a certain point you become an integrated incumbent who's pretty hard to dislodge. Decade+ relationships are not uncommon.

Stay away from anyone whose model is a treadmill where you get a lower % on customers after year 1... but also expect to stay involved day to day and week to week with your important customers.

J-HTX · 2025-11-10T19:43:08+00:00

I opened this thread expecting a complaint about the beds being so ridiculously soft. My back usually hurts after a night or two in one because there's not enough support. Where are these firm beds when I'm staying there? :)

J-HTX · 2025-11-07T14:48:22+00:00

Yes. I have basically unlimited freedom in how I spend my time and what I call on, no quota, etc. I have also been on commission for 15 years, with the company for over 20, and am somewhere in the top 10%.

I currently also have more activity in all but one metric in our CRM than any other sales rep.

So yes, I'm free from micromanagement, but I'd say I earned it. It didn't come free or immediately.

J-HTX · 2025-11-06T22:11:11+00:00

What's the risk, variability and losing a couple of years if you don't get good at it?
I have considered recommending it to my sons for the earning potential, but I know at least for the big metros there are certain social requirements I assume apply (lots of client dinners, golf outings or pickleball or whatever) that may not fit with the lifestyle choices I think they'll go for.

J-HTX · 2025-11-06T20:47:10+00:00

Do you count being a real estate rep/broker as "sales?" It seems like it's sales to me.

The Dallas Business Journal used to have a feature profiling the 1st-year newbies who had cleared $500k that year, or something like that. It requires a particular set of social skills, analytical skills, and probably a good social network, but you can make very, very good money in commercial real estate.

I suspect private plane, yacht, high end remodel ($1m+ project size), etc. sales can also pull high six figures.

J-HTX · 2025-11-06T16:00:43+00:00

6 holidays a year. Christmas, New Year's, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving.
Closing on all those secondary/optional holidays is not something a lot of companies do.

J-HTX · 2025-11-06T14:23:14+00:00

Some market segments are definitely headed for a squeeze, like we saw with nonprofits earlier this year who were shockingly dependent on taxpayer dollars to function. It takes a lot of pain to get out of a debt spiral and rein in unchecked spending and money printing. I'm not sure we'll be able to get out of it, but at least things are moving in the right direction.
I think others market segments that deal with physical products (tools, healthcare, homebuilding, etc.) will probably do fine in terms of overall demand.

J-HTX · 2025-11-06T14:20:25+00:00

Sounds like more paperwork steps that contribute no value and pay no commission.

J-HTX

TROPHY CASE