inteviewing for my second AE role and want to gauge if company's expectations are off the mark. I'm interviewing for a couple of sales roles that have $1 million quota with an average deal size of $20 to $30k. One of them with a sales cycle of 3-6 months, which means there is no way that you're going to hit that number unless you've got a insane pipeline. Is this normal in this market or am i being gaslit? separately from that, is there a good framework you all use to evaluate how realistic opportunities?
I mean that’s $25k deal size on average with a $1M annual quota comes down to closing 40 deal in a year. That’s just 3.3 deals per month. So I’d say ask them how many deals per month the average rep is closing and what % of reps are hitting quota. But that itself isn’t a crazy quota.
Assuming those companies aren’t on RepVue… Consider asking the hiring manager about team quota attainment. And maybe have them walk you through the math on your own plan a bit to help you understand how they got there - no judgment, just seeking to understand. If they squirm, evade, then that’s a red flag. Also, ask to speak to the other reps and when you do ask them how the team is tracking to quota. What’s revenue? Revenue growth rate? If they’ve got $2m in rev a few years with slow growth, absent any big catalyst (i.e. huge product break through) how realistic is their plan? Is it wishful thinking? Or planning rooted in reality?
yes seeking to do that next. they currently dont have AEs.
average number of deals in their reps funnels, percentage that close, at what stage do they fail, % of reps hitting the number, how many have turned over in the last 18 months., from there you can back into the numbers, then ask what sales tools they provide, bots?, AI, something besides LI and laptop
i'd be the founding AE and they've changed things a million times so not a lot of comparison
I was in a similar position lately. The company I was working for had no presence in the market I was assigned to. Nobody knew us. Had to create brand awareness and source deals on my own. On top of that sales cycles are 6-9 months long. Surely I couldn’t close anything. 9 months later I was let go. If you were selling to SMB’a and the sales cycles were a little shorter, like let’s say, 2 weeks to a month, this would have been achievable. You would have seen results in the third quarter. If you have a good inflow of inbound leads, even then this does not look very achievable. Ask the company, if the one million is negotiable. I would say 500,000 sounds doable. But you need to have some inbound leads assigned to you. Otherwise forget it. That’s my humble opinion.