This will be from the lens of someone in sales (lower tier Account Executive):
1)
What happens when you have success and you are really cheap? You promote from within. Make sure to label it as a ‘strength’ though versus a weakness. This is something Qualtrics has excelled at on multiple accounts.
Sometimes promoting from within can be great. If you are in a static market, it makes sense. There is little change in the everyday business and sales process. However, if you are in a startup environment where everything is constantly changing, you're setting yourself up for a bad time.
That bad time is in full effect right now. These homegrown legacy sales managers and region leads have no idea what or why the customers of today are purchasing Qualtrics (especially as it relates to SMB, Mid-). To sum it up, their mindset is outdated. This is more than a problem. These same individuals are the people who are doing ALL of the training.
I would love a competent leader from an outside organization to sit in on one of these sessions. I do not remember the last training that was well received. It’s comical at this point. This communication gap needs to be resolved.
2)
Attrition is high. Not sorta high - I mean extremely high. Out of a group of 9 or 10 sales reps on my team from when I started, only two of the are left. Also, two of the most tenured reps in the company have also left in the last few months, too.
This is caused by many different factors, namely 1) account allocation 2) hiring too many quota carriers and 3) data in our CRM. The only individuals who hit are ones who either got really lucky with account allocation or the reps who have been here for eons and have great accounts.
While leadership says that they don’t care if attrition is high as long as their ‘best’ reps stay, that’s unproductive. The only way someone gets promoted is if they have a solid territory. The problem is that these territories are divided up arbitrarily. I've seen so much potential talent walk out that door because of unfair circumstances.
But wait, am I just making excuses? I don' know - ask the 75% of the software sales team that didn't hit their quota.
