Any Enterprise AE's been fired for missing quota? How did you bounce back/explain in interviews?
I would say that you need to make sure you understand what led to you missing quota. There are always multiple reasons why a rep misses quota and that could be a mix of poor onboarding, bad product, poor market fit, bad pricing, over saturated territory, economic factors, the rep not doing their part to get educated or ramped correctly -- the list goes on and on. Biggest thing. Understand the reasons why. Own the ones you are responsible for and explain the ones you weren't responsible for. Any org worth working for will be happy to hear you out (and respect it) as long as you take ownership over what you control and can explain other factors beyond your control.
Strongly consider lying about hitting your quota. You know the hiring managers are going to be lying about how well their own teams did.
Honestly, I've had to start to lie. It's the only way I've landed interviews.
Know your patch and real TAM for each account and measure against that - that will likely reveal a rather different performance
Thanks. Can you elaborate on how to do that?
Be sure you reflect the numbers on your resume' so maybe the interviewer doesn't have to ask. For example, did you finish any year in the company at 100% or even the top 5% of your peers? If you were let go after a short period of time, like after one year that is not the type of company you want to work for. Don't fall down the interview trap of explaining away the "over ambitious" quotas that companies are handing out. Also, I agree with other comments to highlight what you did to try and get to your number. What failed? I had a $1m deal one year that would have put me way over my number and my company walked away from the deal, not the customer (and it was a fair deal and I later found out the company I was at was up for sale). So, I ended up not hitting my number but coming in at 90%.
Here's a wordtrack that's worked for a client of mine that was fired after a PIP. Hope this helps. /BowtiedCocoon --- 🤡 Hiring Manager: "I see you’ve missed quota for a few quarters in your previous role?" 🐲: "I’ll be transparent with you I did not hit my numbers 1-year ago, but so didn't70% of the sales floor during that period of time. Only 30% of the team hit our number leads me to think there were some quotas put in place that were not completely in phase with the market and maturity of the business. With that said, I understand quotas are tough to determine, so instead let me share what I did to ensure that I came very close to my number. I made sure I worked with my cross functional partner like the AE and my manager to review my script and expand new accounts. I came up with new prospecting techniques and booked meetings with executives in new verticals to drive net new opportunities forward. While I didn’t achieve 100% of my number, and managed to get to x%, putting me in the top 40% reps on the floor. Don't get me wrong. That’s not the results I wanted, but I did not make any excuses and I was pretty proud of the fact I was able to navigate that."