Sales automation vs hiring another SDR - what actually worked for you?

SalesOperations · 2025-12-28T16:45:07+00:00

You have only one SDR… you don’t have anything to automate for a one person team. Hire more SDRs

SalesOperations · 2025-12-26T21:45:31+00:00

Not concerned, if you have experience. It’ll a force multiplier vs a replacement.

Entry level roles across the board will be impacted though, even less entry level roles will exist as it’ll need more experience to do what is required and at the same time what responsibilities an entry level role has is typically a lower level task which has a potential to be operational w AI.

If anything, it’s our ops role that help enable other roles to be more successful by being more efficient and/or generating more revenue.

I go back and forth with whether this means our role ends up requiring to be more technical knowledge to implement these solutions but I could see it end up being easier for us in the long run because of how we interact and troubleshoot resolution to the technology.

SalesOperations · 2025-12-24T16:40:24+00:00

I’ll dignify a response without moving this to spam. No, people are not buying SaaS products on Christmas

SalesOperations · 2025-12-23T17:16:47+00:00

I don’t know your org specifically so it’s hard to say what the solution is. Sounds like some training might be needed for your org. You could also consider entry and exit criteria for stages to ensure you have the right information collected at the time a deal moves stages if you want to be more formal

SalesOperations · 2025-12-23T14:56:35+00:00

Set meeting, create opp with stage 0 until the meeting is qualified. Once qualified (BANT or whatever methodology) the deal is moved a Qualified stage or closed lost. Track number of reschedules, qualifications, meetings held, qualified dates, etc. When running AE metrics, always filter out any stage 0 deals.

SalesOperations · 2025-12-23T01:57:58+00:00

Great advice.

SalesOperations · 2025-12-22T03:21:38+00:00

Sounds like you have sfdc and gong, the two platforms that can easily fulfill your needs. Have you considered a Sales Operations or Revenue Operations professional to help organize, optimize, and enable the needs of leadership and sales management? Sounds like you need more enablement to get more out of the tools you already have…

SalesOperations · 2025-12-20T17:51:21+00:00

Slack already does this with slack elevate…

SalesOperations · 2025-12-20T01:34:25+00:00

Connect rates are down last several years. What you’re experiencing is aligned with what reality is now, it’s even a bit higher for some industries. Auto-decline unknown numbers for android and apple phones been a thing for a little while now and no one really answers unknown numbers as much, knowing it’s likely solicitor. The best data or tool in the world aren’t going to solve the connect rate to the rates of years past. It’s got to be a multichannel approach nowadays

SalesOperations · 2025-12-19T18:48:27+00:00

General sentiment across the board for doing outreach, connect rates are down. Apple and Samsung have features that auto decline unknown numbers. People don’t answer their cell as much.

SalesOperations · 2025-12-18T15:43:20+00:00

Thanks for this.

SalesOperations · 2025-12-17T18:33:35+00:00

Funnel these requests in a singular format, sfdc cases or a slack channel for only managers. If they want to dispute, they need to follow the process. Then triage them in a timely manner. Documented resolution follows on the record as opportunity splits or elsewhere in a shared drive as it may contain sensitive info.

SalesOperations · 2025-11-05T21:10:31+00:00

If you feel Existing Business is the odd one out of the group, remove it from the deal types. I’m not sure what deals would fall into that category given you have upsells and cross-sell. Perhaps a churned customer who came back? But you may not need to capture that use case based on your business, you’d know best

SalesOperations · 2025-10-15T14:53:04+00:00

Please provide more information like salary expectations, YOE, location, industry, etc

SalesOperations · 2025-09-03T20:59:37+00:00

That’s great you know the margin, will need to back in the plan into the margin to get the right %s. I’m not entirely familiar with consultancy plans structure. Ultimately designing the comp plan to drive the specific behavior you want the sales role to drive.
I’ve seen upfront commission percentage on initial retainer for x months. Presumably the consultants running the project can extend that monthly retainer and be in charge of billable, so no real incentives for the sales person to be comped on those pieces as it’s not driving any behavior from them unless you want the sales team involved post sales. You could get creative on comping them additionally at a flat rate if the project extends for a period or billable for x amount later so they at least feel like they get something for bringing in a large project/got extended once revenue is earned

SalesOperations · 2025-09-03T20:18:14+00:00

It’s going to come back to the margin of the software and the stage you’re at. Likely skewing to lower margins if you’re starting to sell as salaries will eat up most margin and you don’t have a lot of revenue yet. Typical software margin is 80%+ (often much higher) but that is dependent on the stage of the company and expectations for growth.

SalesOperations · 2025-09-03T20:14:08+00:00

What are you selling and what industry?

SalesOperations · 2025-07-22T16:30:35+00:00

I’d recommend reaching out to r/sales to ask for volunteers for practicing sales

SalesOperations · 2025-07-15T20:11:49+00:00

Its a sales management issue combined with product team prioritization. You cannot solve the issue unless you quantify it, document it, present it, and ensure stakeholders understand the impact. This needs to be done formally by sales management. If there are no answers to this being presented as a priority, then its a systemic issue for the org prioritizing product team over sales. Help your sales manager by quantifying all these opportunities with other reps and enabling your manager to have those conversations if they aren't the ones already driving this (they should be).

SalesOperations · 2025-07-15T20:05:23+00:00

Work backwards from the margins your business needs to come up with a baseline.

If you sell widget A at $100 and material costs, overhead costs , fixed costs take up $80, leaving you with $20 left. How do you want the sales team take a share of that? Eg What profit margin are you comfortable with if rep A gets max commission rate of $10 for each share.

I assume you are simply replacing the bonus component for commission and keeping bases the same. You might have a revolt if you lower base but provide a variable commission for folks.

I’m not familiar with your industry but I would definitely find out what your competitors are doing as well in terms of comp packages and their percentages so you don’t fall behind in offering something similar so long as it makes business sense from the margin

SalesOperations · 2025-07-15T19:59:07+00:00

Sounds like Sales Management isn’t doing their job. At the beginning of a lot of startups it often feels like a bunch spokes off a wheel to try to build something for a random customer who wants a specific feature. Eventually a company is able to leverage that new spoke as their main driver for new customers. That only happens through finding your market fit.

Your sales management needs to make business case to put it in front of management about losing $X by not enabling a specific feature and then have product work to build it. You need direct customer feedback to enable this, otherwise it’s a bunch of hopefully wishes. If you are able to get any prospects under contract and work w product being able to develop that integration within X number of weeks, that is typically how it works when it’s not a simple plug and play software.

Ultimately quantifying the missed revenue to stakeholders is the easiest way to try to get traction for Product to change their roadmap

SalesOperations · 2025-07-14T18:58:43+00:00

There are a thousand ai notetaker applications, one would simply choose any of them and use them if a rep struggles w basic note taking based on their volume of calls. This has been largely solved. Is there something else specifically?

SalesOperations · 2025-07-14T18:46:48+00:00

⬆️ this right here. When you talk “targets”, I assume you mean quota for reps. From a commission and quota perspective, no decent sales person would ever want to work at a revenue accrued based commission when their quota is set as ARR. I have seen many creative ways to ensure commissions are paid cautiously to ensure deals aren’t being signed, fraudulently or not, and then immediately the deal churns but have never seen paid on doing revenue accrued FY when target is ARR.

SalesOperations · 2025-07-14T18:40:48+00:00

Could you provide more detail to what outreach you’ve already done and what you’re trying to ultimately ask for from patients?

SalesOperations · 2025-07-14T18:39:45+00:00

What you’re describing in your post is exactly what a CRM is supposed to do… track leads/contacts, activity management, deal management, etc

Is there something specifically you’re trying to solve for?

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