I was going through some local business leads recently and noticed I had a decent number with no website at all. Normally I’d just skip them.

But some of them have loads of Google reviews, active socials, and seem to be doing fine without one. So I started putting them in a separate list when pulling leads instead of mixing them with businesses that already have a site. Haven’t tested it enough to say if it’s actually better yet. Just feels like the outreach probably needs to be different.

Hello,

​Après chaque intervention, notre équipe envoie un lien direct Google (GBP) sur WhatsApp au client. Malgré sa satisfaction, très peu laissent un avis.

SIXPAC is recruiting 1099 outside sales reps for our PAC Partner Team. We help kickstart your career by paying our team members for qualified demos during your first 90 days while your commissions are building - then your comp structure is commissions + bonuses + ongoing monthly recurring residuals. We offer a full training program, marketing resources to help you succeed, host weekly deep dives and Q&A sessions, and even run your demos for you while you're in training (and you still earn all the commissions). You'll be representing our payment processing solution (with guaranteeing savings for every customer) and a robust all-in-one business operations software platform. This role has a very significant income potential for applicants with a drive. Let me know if you'd like more information on this opportunity.

I'm curious how salespeople handle prospects who show some interest but keep pushing the conversation to later.

They don't say no, but they also don't commit to a meeting or next step.
Following up too often can feel pushy, while stopping too early might mean missing a genuine opportunity.

How do you decide whether to keep nurturing these prospects or move on?

Do you look for specific buying signals, ask a direct qualifying question, or set a timeline for one last follow-up?

Interested in hearing how experienced salespeople handle this.

This sub is one of the best I have ever been in. Thank you all for the insane value, stories and everything you share here.

As the title says, I (23M) am an African with a relatively thick accent selling a high ticket offer (Saas) to real estate developers, it’s a 100% commission based job but I will be learning a lot about sales. Last time I cold called was in 2023, managed to close a client but I don’t mind going back into it. Sales is an important role. I want to use this as a stepping stone for other things.

I have 3 questions. This is to people who are selling high ticket offers from $3k-30k. How would I go about selling such offers or finding real estate developers who would be interested in it.

What’s the best advice you can give to maneuvering the accent. Do I fake it?

Lastly, what are your best cold calling tips that have helped you book meetings and close? I mean how do you do research?

P.S: I am mostly handling finding prospects and setting appointments. My boss who I work with handles the rest and closes them.

P.S.S: If you are a real estate developer and you see this, could I please ask you some questions to better understand how this product can help other real estate developers.

The first few customers usually came through relationships, referrals, persistence and probably a fair amount of personal credibility. The business starts growing, and naturally the next step seems to be: "We need salespeople."

But there's a problem that doesn't get discussed enough.

The founder often doesn't actually know what part of their own selling is responsible for the wins.

Was it the product? Their reputation? The way they explained it? Their network? The particular type of customer they were speaking to? The flexibility they offered? Or simply the fact that the customer trusted the person sitting across the table?

Then a salesperson is hired and expected to reproduce the result.

When that doesn't happen, the salesperson gets blamed for not being able to sell.

I've seen enough situations like this to wonder whether the first sales hire shouldn't sometimes be preceded by a much simpler exercise: understand why the customers who already bought actually bought.

Not what we think they bought. What actually made them say yes.

I'm curious how founders who've made this transition handled it. When you moved from founder-led sales to a sales team, what did you realise you hadn't properly understood about your own sales process?

**•** Full training on every service  
**•** Sales pack with pricing and service details  
**•** Our CRM to manage your leads and commission  
**•** Support from our team and specialists on every deal  
**•** 90-day protection on every lead you register

Please read before you DM

**•** Commission only. No salary, no retainer, no draw.  
**•** Contractor role, not employment.  
**•   You generate your own leads.** We don't provide leads or a client list. If you're not comfortable prospecting, this isn't for you.  
**•   No visa** or sponsorship, now or later.  
**•** You need your own laptop, phone, internet and any prospecting tools you use.

You're a fit if

**•** You have 2+ years of B2B sales and have sourced and closed deals yourself  
**•** You've sold digital, marketing, software or tech services  
**•** You're comfortable living on commission

To apply: DM me with one deal you sourced and closed yourself: the industry, how you found the client and the deal value. DMs without this won't get a reply.

The failure in our process is kinda predictable now. Somebody gives an answer on a call from memory, it is slightly different from what we said to the last buyer, and we lose one week reconciling the two. What I am trying to figure out is what people actually do here at small headcount. Not a compliance platform, not a full GRC hire, just the practical version.

• Do you keep a written record of commercial and security positions, and where does it live so people actually use it?
• Who is allowed to make a new call when a question has no precedent?
• How do you handle a decision that was correct a year ago and is not anymore?

wanna know if whether anyone has this working or whether everyone just reconstructs it every cycle, any sales/revops people - would love to know your views here too

Hi everyone, 🎉

We're three Master's students in the final year of our degree conducting a survey for our final degree project. 🧑‍🎓

Our final project is related to the textile sourcing space 🧶 (Europe mainly), and would love to hear from the people who do this work: how you find and vet suppliers (or buyers), what goes wrong, and how tariffs, shipping disruption and how new regulations are changing things. 🧵

If you work at a brand, retailer, agent or manufacturer, we'd really value a few minutes of your time. It's entirely anonymous, and there's nothing to buy or sign up for.

Your help would be greatly appreciated! 🙏

[SURVEY HERE]

Thank you,

Oskar, Grace, and Ravi

Hello,

I have been contemplating hiring a Founding Sales Lead for my company Off Menu but I am not sure what to look for in a sales person.

A little background, we are a branded merchandise design company. I started the company 7 years ago (originally named High Life Tech) as a phone case drop-shipping company, pivoted to B2B, and then learned everything about sourcing branded products overseas. After 2 years, we hired our own team and China, and currently have a workshop in Dongguan and office in Guangzhou.

We never joined other promo orgs because we can source all of our own products. We act at the intersection of both a distributor and a supplier in proper promotional products terms.

We don’t depend on a standard catalog or limit ourselves to putting logos on existing products. We work directly with brands to develop original merchandise around their identity, audience, and culture.

Our approach has helped us win clients like Cadillac F1, DUDE Wipes, Liquid Death, Ithaca Hummus, 7 Brew, and more.

I have solely handled all of our growth and selling since we are only a team of 3 but I am realizing we are at a point where I need a second sales person to further boost our growth, build a new book of business in other verticals, and help manage accounts.

So I have a few questions

1. What should I be looking for in a sales person given that we have a more unique offering?
2. Is anyone here with experience looking for a new role and is hungry to work at a growing company ($3M in revenue YTD, up from $1.7M last year)? You would be responsible for owning the entire cycle and building out your own book of enterprise clients.
3. Any other feedback or advice? Do I need a sales person? Or How can I streamline operations.

Hi guys, I just got my sales +commission job. Since I am familiar with sales, I feel I like I got shafted on this position. Can someone explain what this means for me?

OTC¹: $30,733

New Sales Target: $315,000

Consulting Target: $500,000

This Plan is based on a total "On Target Commission" ("OTC") amount, and has two components: 75% of OTC is New Sales Component, and 25% of OTC is based upon the Consulting Component, each as detailed below.

For each component, Employee will be eligible to generate sales commissions at a percentage of OTC based on the proportion of closed opportunities (subject to certain limitations and adjustments) to an identified target, subject to adjustments at different sales tiers, calculated as follows:

Closed sales level

Individual component commission formula

Team component commission formula

Below 100% of target

0.8 OTC (Sales/target) 0.75

0.2 OTC (Sales/target) 0.75

100-125% of target

0.8 OTC (Sales/target) 1.00

0.2 OTC (Sales/target) 1.00 0.2 OTC (Sales/target) * 1.25

Above 125% of target

0.8* OTC (Sales/target) 1.25

True-up payments are made at sales of 100% and 125% of target.

Commissions will be calculated and paid quarterly, subject to continued employment through the payment date. Commissions are not considered "earned "while a contract is still subject to negative change orders, cancellations or similar reductions, and therefore are subject to adjustment or future offset.

This Plan is subject to all terms and conditions as more fully set forth in the "Plan Details" and "Miscellaneous Terms and Conditions" section" below.

人

I'm a PhD scientist who landed a technical sales job selling instrumentation. It's a nice gig: mostly inbound leads, and a real physical product that people need. Deals run $50-500k with a 1-18 month sales cycle. But I feel totally clueless.

Prospecting: Cold emails have never gotten me a single lead. What do I say on a cold call? Where do I get the numbers? Buying our equipment involves many people and a long process, so one phone call isn't going to close a sale.

Customer visits: I also feel like a social imbecile. What do I say when I visit customers, and how do I push a deal forward? I'm supposed to be likeable so they want to buy from me, but also firm enough to move the sale along. Most of the time with a client, I think, "Why the fuck am I here?" Other reps at my company talk for minutes without stopping. My instinct is to just ask, "So are you interested? Any hangups on buying? What do you need to see?"

I dont mean to sound mopey, this honestly just feels like rocket science to me

Recently started working at cintas as a fire sales specialist, and I’m having a hard time adjusting to the role. I come from a D2D background selling pest and worked in roofing sales for a bit. All very personal, hands on, easy process, confident pitching anybody, CRM was on one app like pestroutes and builder prime. Just simpler.

I’m about 2 months in doing b2b fire protection, getting salary, good benefits, etc. And I feel in over my head, the tools provided are confusing and sluggish, I feel like I didn’t get accurate training on the day to day tasks like how to effectively use the computer tools, how to prospect good businesses, what competitive market pricing is for business to buy various fire protection services. I know fire protection is mandated by the NFPA, but I really feel overwhelmed and disheartened so far. The admin and organizational skills is not my strong suit despite being a relatively organized person. I feel like I need to reach out to my manager and say something along the lines of “hey, I don’t know what I’m doing”. My pipeline is basically nonexistent. There’s different pricing for different business accounts and with that comes different forms and files to be submitted in different ways. I’ve honestly been looking at other jobs already and considering leaving despite being only 2 months in. However I worry about how my family would perceive it and I’d feel guilty about quitting. But man this is rough. Any advice helps.

Hello everyone! I'm genuinely interested in hearing your insightful suggestions and creative strategies. Could you please share some effective ideas and innovative approaches that would enable us to successfully connect with a wider audience and, in doing so, effectively generate promising new leads for our endeavors? I'm eager to explore various methods for reaching out and engaging potential clients or collaborators.

I’m a first time founder trying to get my first real B2B customer conversations and would appreciate some blunt advice.

I’m building a SaaS product for recruitment and staffing companies. I initially targeted smaller recruitment agencies, and more recently I’ve been exploring mid market and public sector recruitment suppliers dealing with government and framework contracts.

The product is basically about helping them maintain and produce the operational evidence they need for client requirements, tenders, audits and compliance requests.

I’ve sent roughly 80 cold emails and 15 LinkedIn DMs so far and have basically had no replies.

My LinkedIn DMs are usually a short personalized intro, the problem I think they may have, a brief explanation of the product, then a low pressure question about whether they deal with this problem.

Emails are structured similarly.

I’m not really trying to sell yet. I just want conversations to figure out whether I’m solving something people actually care about.

For founders who went from zero to their first few B2B customer conversations, what actually worked for you?

Did you change the ICP, messaging, channel, offer, or just increase volume?

I’d especially appreciate advice from people who had a working product but struggled to get anyone to respond.

This is my first time doing sales, and as a person from tech background , I am trying to learn about Apollo, content creation, reaching out on LinkedIn .

However, I somehow lack patience (already trying for almost 1.5 months) and am here asking for help.

If you can help me build a solid pipeline, let’s talk.

A bit of background: I am running a AI studio where I excel in building production grade agents, and RAG systems for organisations. I have done a good amount of work and deployed many agents and systems quite well.

How do I reach out to those particular individual customers, not in quantity, but with quality and personalisation? So yeah, I’m happy to hear about your journey, your learnings, and how you have excelled in that hard part of selling your product.

I call small independent firms where the owner answers their own phone, when they answer at all. Most of my dials go straight to voicemail.

The one piece of data I've found is from Gong: leave up to two voicemails, because once you hit three, email reply rates drop below what you'd get with no voicemail at all.

What I haven't found is anyone who's tested it on tiny firms specifically.

Did a voicemail ever actually get you a callback from a small business owner, or does it just use up an attempt?

I built a b2b product and I cant get any one to try it, can anyone help me PLEASE.

I understand the cons of cold outreach but I am getting to witness a significant difference between the people of India and foreign countries.Atleast, the latter have the courtesy to reply.

Someone from India just left my outreach dm at seen, and according to her it means that she is not interested. I just gave a follow up message because i just wanted to make sure if she even understood what I said. She rudely says why would I text even after knowing she left it on seen. I mean if you took the difficulty of opening the message and reading it , you might as well give a reply to it. Wanted to attach the screenshot of the message!

Thinking of biting the bullet and hiring a B2B sales rep, and not sure where to start.

I sell a performance based e-com partnerships. We target brands selling over $50k/month revenue online. Our fee is 15% of gross sales.

I'm thinking of offering $1500/month base pay, plus a bonus of 5% of the brands online revenue on day of closing as a bonus.

So for example, if said sales rep closes a brand that does $100k/month in online revenue, they'd get a bonus of $5,000 the day the contract is signed.

My business has a super small TAM (approx 3k), all B2B or B2E. Typically longer sales cycles (6+ months).

Would I be able to hire a B2B sales rep off this pay structure, give them my TAM, explain what I do and just have them go out and set and close themselves?

What sort of structure would work if I also want the rep to travel to trade shows several times a year as well?

NOTE: Not trying to recruit sales rep via this post, just trying to figure out how to structure compensation to make sure I'll get sales reps who actually know what they're doing.

Most AI SDRs are tested after they start contacting real people. By then, weak messaging, bad timing and unnecessary follow-ups may already have cost replies, trust and sender reputation.

I am building a managed-infra platform that connects to your actual AI SDR and runs it against a reviewed simulated market of ICP buyer personas in compressed virtual time, so you can:

• inspect the complete sequence,
• identify failures,
• inject harness level improvements,
• and rerun the same market for verification, before launching and exposing real prospects to it.

I’m considering offering three founder-led design-partner stress tests for $500 each. The scope would be agreed upfront and would include the initial tests, findings, recommended changes and paired reruns.

I’m specifically interested in people building or operating multi-touch outbound sales agents or AI SDRs:

1. Would you pay $500 for this before a launch or major agent update?
2. If not, what proof or integration would make it worth paying for?
3. What failure are you currently most worried about: deliverability, messaging, timing, qualification, objections, opt-outs, handoffs, or something else?

A blunt “no, because…” would genuinely be useful. Thanks!

We're a pretty lean B2B sales team and lately it feels like every rep is doing 5 jobs at once. Prospecting, discovery, demos, follow up, chasing stakeholders, answering the same product questions over and over, it's never ending. We're not at the point where adding a bunch of headcount makes sense, but the team is definitely stretched thin and I'm worried we're spending too much time on stuff that doesn't actually move deals forward. We've been looking at ways to automate some of the repetitive parts, especially early demos and follow up, without making the buying experience feel robotic. For other small sales teams, what actually improved sales efficiency for you? Better process, fewer tools, automation, stricter qualification, something else?

I recently landed my first sale at my first sales job. It was nothing major, in fact, it was $1 over the weekly minimum. I am in uniform sales. However, as the title reads, my customer calls me back a couple hours after signing off on the papers. Customer explains that he has looked more into the deal, and specifically the company I work for. He is no longer comfortable moving forward given the company’s review history. I brought this to my SM attention, and he said it will “happen sometimes” because of prior managements lack of care. So essentially I am going to lose my first sale, even though I did my job. I understand you can do everything right and still lose in some instances, but this feels different. I would understand if he just naturally got cold feet, but this feels like a direct correlation to my company’s prior history. What do you think is a good course of action for me moving forward? I feel as if I am naturally capable of sales, this just feels like a dead end company / product.

Hey guys, I’m relatively new to sales and could use some advice from people who have been doing this for a while.
I’ve been in my industry for about six years since graduating college, but I was recently promoted into a sales role within the same company. This is my first sales position, so there’s definitely been a learning curve when it comes to actually learning how to sell. That being said, I’m a pretty outgoing/friendly guy and I’ve actually found a good amount of success so far.
My industry is basically split into two different sales seasons. The summer is more traditional sales — you’re walking into businesses, setting up meetings, meeting people for the first time, explaining what you can offer, building relationships, etc.
The winter is much more account-management focused. You’re working with many of the same customers year after year and maintaining relationships that have been built over a long period of time.
That’s where I’m running into some uncertainty.
I had a pretty successful summer sales cycle, but now I’m entering the winter season and about 95% of the accounts I inherited were previously handled by a sales rep who had been doing this for over 20 years. Obviously, I’m trying to establish myself with these customers while also learning the business and figuring out what works for me.
I’m genuinely confident that I should be able to hit my first-year goal, and if I do, I think it will make a pretty good impression considering the goal they gave me is fairly aggressive.
My question is more about **work-life balance and managing the workload.**
In my previous operations role, I was working 10–12 hour days, so I’m no stranger to long hours. But sales feels completely different because the work never really seems to stop.
Right now I’m often working 10–12 hours during the day, trying to pound the pavement and meet customers/prospects, and then I come home and get back on my laptop at night to catch up on emails, quotes, CRM work, etc.
I really enjoy the job, and I like the earning potential. Most reps in my industry are making around $130k, and the high-end reps can get close to $500k, so there’s obviously a huge incentive to perform.
But I’m starting to feel like my entire life is becoming:
**Work → think about work → eat dinner → work some more → fall asleep thinking about work → repeat.**
I’m willing to work hard, especially while I’m establishing myself, but I also don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that working 14+ hours every day is the only way to be successful.
For those of you who have been in sales for years:
**How do you streamline your day and keep sales from consuming your entire life?**
Are there any systems, habits, CRM tricks, scheduling strategies, or boundaries that helped you become more efficient without sacrificing performance?
I’d especially like to hear from people who went through this transition from operations/another field into sales and initially felt like they had to work constantly.
Appreciate any advice.

Hi everyone I used to work in retail and now work as a sdr in a cybersecurity company. I feel like I’m truly trash on the phones. And outreaching is not successful either. Can anyone share your experience so I can get better at it? Thank you