Is making more than OTE mainly based on luck with good clients, sales skills or hard work/ grinding longer hours?

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Accepted Answer

A lot of it has to do with luck and having a good territory. I’ve seen some extremely lazy and ineffective reps land in accounts organically growing that require very little effort and hit OTE. I’ve also seen fantastic reps work extremely hard and fall short due bad territories.

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Without a doubt its largely luck for reps. Some absolutely terrible behind the scenes in sales ops. Poorly allocated territories, reshuffles, and restructuring of accounts.
I moved from a very cold (frankly terrible) greenfield patch q4,to a high spending larged territory the next FQ.Through luck.

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It's a mix of luck of clients and sales skills/knowing how to uncover opportunities. Working longer hours doesn't translate into more sales. Most people make close to or over OTE in my experience.

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It's all about territory.  I saw few reps hitting higher than 110%.   Those hitting higher is mostly based on an account with heavy migrations to the cloud.

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So what the other person who answered is talking about is your “variable” . The luck of your territory is a big factor but you’re just about guaranteed to get at least 80% of it. That said, there’s a ton of money in SPIFFs so you’re going to make more than your OTE either way

Answer

All sales success contains a component of luck. There's also a component of being customer-obsessed and identifying opportunities that aren't easily marked and earning trust with your customer while combining the appropriate resources to drive customer wins. People overly focused on luck don't make it far in Amazon if they even get in at all.

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Anonymous Q&A

Is making more than OTE mainly based on luck with good clients, sales skills or hard work/ grinding longer hours?