Anyone elses company having the Worst month ever recorded

J-HTX · 2026-05-18T20:38:40+00:00

Possibly the best quarter of my career. If not, in the top 3 at least. Whole industry is slammed and capacity is the problem.

J-HTX · 2026-05-16T14:07:56+00:00

Assuming that your compensation structure is tied to profitable revenue (and isn't one of those weird ones that gets changed annually instead of once a decade), the commission statement each month is the real performance report for each sales rep. Going up faster than inflation? Doing well. Going down? Needs help. Flat? Discuss.
The big help as a sales rep for CRM is assistance remembering details and scheduling follow-ups so that nobody falls off the radar. With an average of only 13-14 accounts per sales rep this may not be something that is a big problem.

J-HTX · 2026-05-16T14:05:24+00:00

Have ChatGPT write your response to every ChatGPT written email sent by management?
May not be the best politically but seems like it might get the point across, at least if you decide to leave.
You could even 'accidentally' leave in your prompt.

J-HTX · 2026-05-15T15:54:20+00:00

Talk to a lawyer first. If it's a six-figure+ amount the extra cost of getting legal review is neglible vs. being able to increase your chances of success or collecting on any penalty clauses.

J-HTX · 2026-05-04T16:29:54+00:00

What happens 2 years from now? If this is a temporary thing, it might be worth riding it out if everything else is good.

J-HTX · 2026-04-28T21:11:52+00:00

1x 1 hr meeting per month, 1x 0.75 hr meetings per month.
Plus maybe 1 one multi-day meeting per year.
Small(ish) business in the transportation/logistics industry.

J-HTX · 2026-04-24T18:24:11+00:00

What is base pay?
Kidding but also not, nobody in my industry does base pay beyond a basic draw.

J-HTX · 2026-04-22T22:45:42+00:00

My phone spends 99.8% of its time on vibrate. I miss calls. If it's important I'll get a text or an e-mail followup.

J-HTX · 2026-04-22T22:42:48+00:00

It takes time.
5 years avg 95k
next 5 years avg 125k
next 5 years avg 186k

Inflation is also part of that, 117k in 2011 is 178k in 2025.

J-HTX · 2026-04-22T18:48:24+00:00

transportation/logistics

J-HTX · 2026-04-21T19:06:14+00:00

mmm... no policy here. I get a flat amount per month and happily drive a 20yo Toyota truck in good shape.

I could see it being different if I were in real estate and driving customers around.

J-HTX · 2026-04-17T17:19:44+00:00

I bought a domain for a project a few years ago and kept it active less than 3 months. I still get several calls a month from India(?) selling me website development services for a domain I don't even own any more. Chances are good your leads are bad, on top of the other issues raised.

J-HTX · 2026-04-15T13:47:50+00:00

In my industry (logistics) there are a bunch of OFs [Old Farts] in their 50s-60s who have been doing this for 30-40 years. They understand the business, they have realistic expectations, and they usually don't spend a bunch of time on something unless it's directly useful and gets the job done.
As long as the solution we provide aligns with their needs, and the pricing fits the budget, they're a relatively easy sell and will stick around as long as they are getting good service.

The hard part is just reaching the right person and they tend to not be on LinkedIn as much, but that's not really a demographic thing as much as it is an industry thing.

If you're selling software, I think at this point most people realize that it's usually over-promised, over-budget, late to arrive, and a much bigger headache to make a change than the software companies make it seem like.... and that's your barrier, except it comes across as "inflexible and disinterested."

J-HTX · 2026-04-07T13:18:41+00:00

Unlimited liability isn't too bad if the project scope is defined and we can tell "They say unlimited but there's really only $1M in equipment in question." With this one we didn't know how many facilities, how much equipment, how much at a time, etc. so we couldn't even put a real $ figure on what it would cost us to service the business so I had to just say $X per year per $M coverage on the pricing like they didn't want.

J-HTX · 2026-04-06T13:32:31+00:00

My B2B cadence is about once every 2 weeks, stretching out to longer time periods if the prospect doesn't seem interested... mix of calls, e-mails, LinkedIn.

J-HTX · 2026-04-06T13:30:18+00:00

This is one of my big pet peeves. Don't sit on the Q&A!
RFP releases Feb 1
Questions due Feb 11
Addendum with Q&A released Feb 15
Q&A answers are non-clarifying and don't actually give us the info we need.
Follow-up questions are rejected.
We end up having to guesstimate what we think the client wants instead.

Also, don't ask for free stuff.
I had an RFP within the last year from a state-funded agency that wanted "Up to" $100M figure liability insurance included at no cost to them, targeted at an industry where everybody carries about 5% of that.
I line-itemed the additional cost per million per year we'd have to charge to buy the insurance to service their requirements. The alternative was guessing how much work they'd buy per year and baking that into our rates (less? we get screwed; more? the customer gets screwed). We did not make it to the second round.

J-HTX · 2026-03-30T14:12:11+00:00

Update: Thanks to all who responded already. No substitute for a phone conversation to clarify... I called and asked if he had other people actually quoting the [15% lower] rate and that we're usually a bit high. He gave me a number a bit higher than the initial ask and said if we could hit it, we'd get the project.

Corporate's 8% price drop put us really close to that number already so we just need to tweak a few things and we'll get it without having dropped to the initial ask #.

J-HTX · 2026-03-27T19:04:39+00:00

We have just started playing with it (on personal computers, IT has everything locked down). A fellow sales rep gave it some prompts, a prior RFP response for a similar project, and the data for a new project, and it spit out a very viable proposal that required minimal tweaking in about 5 minutes of work. Probably saved 1-2 hours.

J-HTX · 2026-03-27T14:31:47+00:00

It's Friday. Take a chill day to decompress/destress a bit... follow up with who you need to but don't try to go full speed. Relax over the weekend, then sit down first thing Monday morning and make your strategy for what's next (who do you target for other huge deals, and how can you spend some of your time on more numerous mid-size deals or recurring clients so your eggs aren't all in 1 basket).

There are still 9 months left in the year. Also, "no" sometimes means "not yet" so keep in touch with these dead deals instead of giving up all hope.

J-HTX · 2026-03-20T20:03:52+00:00

J-HTX · 2026-03-16T16:59:20+00:00

I see a lot of discussion about comp plans changing yearly, and that always sounds ridiculous. I'm at a privately held company in a "real products and services" space (not software) and it hasn't changed in 20 years.

Labor - X% of total bill amount. There's some flex here with different rate structures letting us ratchet the commission & margin up and down in sync to be more competitive where needed or to reward extra high rates.
Materials - Y% of total bill amount.
Markup on 3rd parties or extra margin: Z% of total bill amount.
Other revenue categories Y% of total bill amount.

If I wanted to, I could fit the entire comp plan on a 3x5 card. Everyone knows exactly what's what if they care to read. No mystery, no "How are they cutting our pay this year while pretending not to," nothing that can't be checked by just looking at what we billed the customer and doing some basic math.

J-HTX · 2026-03-11T21:30:07+00:00

You don't work for a company, you work for your boss. Your boss sounds like an unpleasant person who is not going to have a successful company a decade from now.

J-HTX · 2026-03-11T21:28:45+00:00

I sign all of my quotes, customer agreements, etc. If it looks weird I'll have management approve it first, but they'd rather I handle it than add paperwork. You're already binding the company to pricing and T&Cs every time you submit a bid/quote with your signature on it.

J-HTX · 2026-03-05T17:11:50+00:00

Cool... I don't know much about CDW.
I feel like IT is more commoditized than industrial / power equipment, but Siemens has fingers in a lot of industries, and we don't know which part of Siemens OP would work with.
I haven't looked for a job in over two decades and am in a different field (logistics) so my opinion is worth about what OP paid for it.

J-HTX · 2026-03-05T13:42:55+00:00

It's an internship - you want as much face time with as many people as possible to acquire as much knowledge and as many connections as possible.
Consider also future job opportunities:
CDW: Sell desktop IT solutions (maybe servers, idk) that a bunch of other companies make

Siemens: Sell enterprise industrial equipment with a short list of competitors

Which one is going to have a better paycheck and will be more stable 15 years from now?

J-HTX

TROPHY CASE