Item: Salesforce
Rating: 4.0
Author: RepVue

Salesforce is the world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. 

Salesforce unites your marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams from anywhere with Customer 360 — one integrated CRM platform that powers our entire suite of connected apps. With Customer 360, you can focus your employees on what’s important right now: stabilizing your business, reopening, and getting back to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

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I don't think so in established accounts. In "strat," which is the large established accounts, the quotas are not in line with reality and most of your job is managing around shelfware. Salesforce's sales motion is to bring in renewals early and bring in additional demand with a dramatic discount. This leads to people inheriting territories with customers with a lot of shelfware and great expectations. I'd avoid having one large account. The other problem with that is that you only get paid on growth, not renewals. However, you get penalized with "attrition" if a customer doesn't renew. Inside large accounts with multiple "orgs" (instances) of Salesforce there is always some attrition going on and you have to sell your giant quota over and above the draw-downs you're getting from attrition... They need to be more realistic with the quotas they set for core AEs in enterprise. "Co-primes" happen to have lower quotas. Don't really do any of the work and can make 6X as much as a core seller on a deal. So maybe choose to be a co-prime who benefits from the work a core AE does because the core AE will do all the work and get paid the least. 

I hear this all the time. Great question. As an Account Executive at Salesforce,  I will say yes 100%. Salesforce is divided into "business units" i.e. Retail/Consumer Goods, Oil & Gas, General Business, Nonprofit/Foundation, Financial Services, etc. Some are overall more successful than others as those customers havent all gone through "digital transformation" yet ( nonprofit and fin serv are the highest growth right now). But at Salesforce, we sell to both current customers and greenfield as an AE. So you have lots of upsell potential ( i.e. license add-ons, they have CRM but not marketing cloud, etc). Lots of room for growth and truly couldn't be happier to work here!

Salesforce is constantly evolving with the overall goal of providing a business with a complete 360 degree view of its customers.  There are always opportunities to consolidate a company's tech stack with Salesforce products, no matter what vertical or segment you find yourself working in.  Every IC role comes with its ebbs and flows, but at Salesforce you'll never feel like you're on the chopping block after a down month or quarter.  Quota is certainly a factor when being vetted for promotions, but there are so many other factors as well and as long as you work hard management will support you with endless resources to get you to the next level.

There will always be opportunities to sell. But if you haven't worked in a prime/co-prime world, this is something very different. You will do more internal selling if you are a co-prime with your Account Directors than you will with clients. If you're looking to make a million dollars, you aren't likely to. If you're ok making 2-250k, going through the motions and being in a big safe co, this is a great place to be.

Short answer - yes.  Salesforce has evolved beyond just CRM to a platform story; most companies (i.e. 95% of them) only have 1-2 solution lines, the ability to cross-sell using the value of a common data model still holds true.  Salesforce is innovative; between this + its acquisitions there is plenty of room of growth.

Salesforce has a ton of products to sell, so broadly speaking, yes there's still a fair bit of upside. But from a practical perspective, it really depends on your territory. This is especially true in the enterprise segment, where most territories are 1-3 accounts and the quotas keep going up year over year. You'll need to ask good, hard-hitting questions about the account/s you expect to take on and get multiple perspectives on the culture & opportunity within those accounts. You can make great money at Salesforce but you can just as easily get stuck pushing a rock uphill for 2+ years. Great place to work, but your income and reputation ride on your ability to hit your number, so do your due diligence!

I'll offer a differing opinion for balance.... Every year, the territories get smaller and smaller, but the # products in the bag of an AE grows (due to R&D, acquisition, new features that they're charging for). In terms of new logo deals, most companies that were going to buy Salesforce have already bought Salesforce by now..... so lots of add-on/up-sell, new logo is usually into dinosaur/laggards.

Not a ton. Current accounts are pretty saturated and you have to navigate over a ton of shelfware. Also, in the big companies "strat," the quotas are ridiculous. They seem to put these enormous quotas on core reps. I think there is an opportunity if you are to be a "co-prime" (specialist) because those folks have smaller quotas, don't really have to do much of the selling and get paid 6X what the core seller does on the work that he or she ends up doing. After the layoffs, they ended up keeping the most redundant organization "service primes" still in place. You should be a "service prime" because you get to just roll up the core AEs numbers, take credit for it and get paid and make it appear like you're selling something. 

Salesforce is such a massive company, I feel like I've missed out. Is there is still a lot of room for growth and a lot of opportunities to sell?

It certainly helps to have SaaS experience, but it's not a deal-breaker by any means.  Definitely helps as well to be referred in by an existing employee, and that goes for any large company (not just Salesforce).  One very important note - if you're going to apply for a role, apply for the one that best matches your experience and skillset.  Don't apply for more than one position right away unless otherwise instructed by a member of the company's recruitment team.  That may seem like common knowledge, but you'd be surprised how many people apply to multiple roles right away.  It's not looked upon favorably.

They absolutely hire people like that. You may not get into a top tier AE position with zero software background, but with a proven background in sales you can probably leverage into a lower position.

Foundationally they want experience selling to business and understand/grasp business impact.  SaaS is a method of how you transact, doesn't impact the ability to craft a vision.
SaaS does help a lot (churn, renewal metrics, pricing) but I don't think is paramount.

You would most likely be looking at a Business Development Role with no background in tech sales.  If that goes well, you can become an AE within a year or so.

I'm just in onboarding but I've been really surprised by the number of people coming in from other industries. The ent/strat BDR org is full of 30-somethings who are transitioning to SaaS

Yes and I work with AEs who came from recruiting, finance, retail telco sales (kiosks in Costco kid you not), ex military, and HVAC OEM sales. Some spent time as a BDR but most of them went straight to AE because they have the business acumen and real world experience to sell and most importantly, handle the complex contracts that SF’s multiple products, discounting model, and time/usage based saas licensing produce. Also this is downmarket in SMB, as others have noted you probably won’t get in to sell to larger customers without some background in sales.

I have a lot of technology sales experience, and Salesforce user experience, but no SaaS/software sales experience. Does SF hire candidates like this?

Purely my opinion, but 
SIZE = 500-2500 employees (mid-market or Commercial segment) because this is where the organizations that are growing largely resides
SEGMENT = Service Cloud (lowers cost), Platform  and Revenue Cloud (focus on CPQ - streamlines Q2C efficiency) are good. My friends in other segments (Marketing Cloud, Pardot, AI etc) aren't making any $ or getting much traction.

Being a Core AE (regardless of industry) is the best because you can sell any product. Look out for the product-specific AE roles.

I can attest to this. I'm an SMB AE in Marketing Cloud and it's rough...

Is there an org or sector within Salesforce that people look at as THE best to sell for or customer base to be selling into right now or for 2021?

We are mostly virtually meeting clients, as there is an air travel ban.

Even pre-covid, face to face was fairly minimal.  Depends on the role.  The higher level the sales role, the more travel involved.

Pre-covid, time in the office vs. onsite client meetings was 70/30. Usually 3-5 meetings in person a month

Are you out in the field meeting clients or is it mostly inside sales?

The interview process is extremely thorough with an initial interview by recruiting followed by an interview with a manager from that team or business unit, next is a panel interview, and finally, for sales, you will have a presentation. The recruiting team wants to set you up for success, so they provide you with tons of information to prep, questions to have answers to, etc. No real cons to speak of. It's a standard interview process that can be challenging, but they seem to care.

How would you describe the interview process for the role you applied for, and what should others expect, pros and cons, etc?

Depends on the year but as of right now financial services and human life sciences are being invested in and growing the most YoY

Which divisions, regions, or business units may be more or most advantageous to sell for and why?

They are field sales. Mid Market is the middle of the 5 AE levels at Salesforce 

Is Mid Market Account executive position inside or field sales?

Definitely SMB and Mid-Market are bread and butter. ENT accounts mostly go with larger players for marketing automation specific orgs

Disagree re: the person above who said SMB is bread & butter for Marketing Cloud. I'd say Pardot is the most SMB-compatible B2B marketing automation platform that Salesforce offers and certainly the easiest to use. Marketing Cloud is more of a B2C, very high volume product (typically used in Retail, Enterprise).

For selling Marketing Cloud, which vertical(s) are the most successful? Additionally, which segment(s) (ie. Enterprise, Commercial, SMB etc.)

What is the income potential for an Account Partner role (selling professional services within the existing customer base) compared to a Core AE role?

Will there be extra upsell or cross-sell commission for sales/AE?

Interviewing for Enterprise AE role - Tableau to FinServ.  Any insight if this is a good opportunity or is being product specific not ideal?

Any truth to these rumors of 'performance' layoffs of 2,500 this week? maybe Friday? - what's the word within the org?

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Salesforce

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