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Dear Quota Team,
I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, even though I’m making more money than I’ve ever made before in my life. Here’s the deal: I’m about four years out of college and working for a financial services firm in the midwest. The job has a great base of 80k, with OTE of about 158k, which have been extremely attainable over the last few years. Pretty much everyone here is hitting quota, and if they’re not, they probably don’t belong in sales.
Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the problem: my manager is beyond awful. Like, possibly a psychopath. He’s an old-school guy who is probably just a few years away from retirement, but he runs the place like he’s a headmaster at a boarding school. He monitors when we log into our systems, how long our lunch breaks are, and, if anyone is late or takes too long, he’ll send a team-wide email explaining that the person has been written up and why. He’s also not shy about screaming at somebody in front of the team, and basically has everybody terrified to question anything he does.
I know it’s a terrible environment, but given my work experience, there’s almost no way I’ll be able to find a sales job with comparable pay. Everything else in my industry has a much lower base and a much longer ramp up period, so I would 100% have to take a huge pay cut if I wanted to leave. There’s also not a ton of job opportunities where I live, so finding this role was a bit of a godsend (I grew up fairly poor), and I feel like I might be walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Switching managers isn’t an option (we’re the only sales team) and there’s nowhere else to move within the company. What should I do?
Conflicted in Michigan.
Dear Conflicted,
It’s clear that you want to leave, but you’re afraid to walk away from a great money-making opportunity because you think another one might never come your way. This is the real problem.
Here’s what you should understand: there’s always another opportunity. It’s the same thing as going through a difficult breakup: at first, we think we’ll never find somebody like our ex again. But eventually, we meet someone, and usually, (at least in some ways), they’re better than the person we were with before. The same goes for jobs, especially for sales jobs! There’s never a shortage of companies looking for talented salespeople, and now is a better time than ever to find great opportunities.
According to Ryan Walsh, CEO of RepVue (a platform with 1000s of peer rated sales orgs) “We are currently in the most candidate friendly market for sales professionals in history, and my recommendation is to look for remote sales roles in some of the hottest sectors, particularly technology... Many sales professionals don't believe their sales skills will translate to other industries. They will, and many sales orgs are more and more open to it.”
The truth is that you have nothing to fear. You’re young, you know how to sell, and if you put in some effort, you’ll find something that’s a better fit. And if you want to play it safe, stay where you are until you get an offer you’re comfortable with. But don’t sell yourself short -- because unless that manager quits, gets fired, or dies, it’s probably not going to get better.
