So one thing gets a lot of folks upset in sales when I say it, but 100% of all CROs I know agree:
You can’t get most SaaS / B2B sales reps to do anything other than respond to warm, qualified inbound leads. From home.
There are many exceptions:
- Most Toast sales reps are out in the real world, selling restaurants
- Most big enterprise deals still get done in person, by classic field sales reps
But …
95% of sales rep that have only done inbound … won’t start doing outbound, even if they are missing quota. Not really. They’ll pretend a bit, send a few emails, but that’s about it.
- 95% of sales reps that will do outbound … will stop once they have enough inbound leads to hit their comp goals.
- 95% of sales reps don’t really want to visit customers in person. Even many “enterprise” reps. And most will visit the fewest possible. Not all, but most.
- Most B2B sellers want to just work warm, qualified, in-bound leads and renewals. From home, ideally.
- Most sales reps — not all, but most — don’t really want to come into the office if they don’t have to
The point that many founders miss: the full stack AE does exist, but in SaaS, it remains a rarity. At least, most folks you interview from other B2B companies won’t really want to do this.
So be aware — if you want your sales team to do more, you have to hire exactly that:
- If you want to do outbound well, you really need to hire a team that just does that.
- If you want folks to go visit customers in person, you have to hire folks that have done that and are only comp’d for that.
- If you want sales reps to follow up on lower probability leads, you probably have to get them to a more junior exec that wants them
- If you want folks to work out of the office, you have to mostly hire only folks that commit to doing it
Founders hiring their first sales execs often expect them to do it all. But 95% of them don’t. The “full stack AE” does exist. But mostly, it’s a myth.
A related post here:
And more here:
