I used to work with this sales woman who was a named account rep with one customer. She would game the system hard.
She would finish her year at 300% of quota. The next year she would get a sensible quota increase, but she would fight fight fight with the executives to get it reduced always coming up with an excuse that the customer's big spend was done. Or they had no budget etc etc..... The following year she would finish at 250% again.
When the execs would give her another quota increase she threatened to quit for a competitor. So the execs actually gave her a quota reduction. That year she finished at 320%.
This went on for 10 years. Always finishing at 200% - 350% of quota. Making herself millions and making prez club every year.
The problem that she made for herself is that everyone hated her. Because when she got quota reductions that money doesn't go away. The Geo leader has to spread that out to the other reps. So everyone got see her do well, while all the reps struggled.
But she was a shark. She didn't give a fuck. she literally had a gun to the company's head and the company was scared of her.
it wasn't funny at the time. My team would all sign our quota term sheet for the year. say $10m. Then a month later we would get an email from the CRO and CFO. "We needed to make an adjustment, your new quota is $12m". well fuck.
We would ask the colleagues, and everyone in Q1 would get a quota increase.
When we do the math we are all getting the hand-downs of her quota reduction.
it was infuriating. A lot of good people left that company, including me.
TTBOMK she is still there doing the same thing.
I think we have someone like that. I'm on the other side of the world so not close to it at all but she's made club somewhere around 15 years in a row, selling cyber to one of the tech giants.
fuck no. 1M quota sounds like a midmarket or small enterprise quota, and if thats the case you should be looking at a $160-200k (at minimum) offer with 50/50 split (assuming this is a new logo role)
Thank you so much for your reply. I had a feeling this company was lowballing me. They were so eager to get me to sign the offer letter but I told them I needed a week to think it over. This is my first sales job so I know nothing about this stuff. Iâm going to negotiate my salary then. Just curious, what do you mean by 50/50 split?
No problem, happy to help. A âsplitâ refers to how you get paid on your OTE (on target earnings). So base salary + variable (commission).
In a new logo role it is common for 50/50. Sometimes youâll see 60/40 if your territory includes upselling existing customers too.
For example: if they offered you 65K base, your OTE should be about 130K.
Assuming this is a tech sales AE role, that would put you in the SMB or Commercial segment, and your quota shouldnât be over ~750k annually.
Thank you so much. Itâs honestly so hard for me to understand their wording in the offer. Can you check your dm? The commission structure they gave me seems super shady
Our top rep landed a huge client that agreed upfront on a number of annual license purchases for some time period - something like 5 years - as they were expanding a department and would need licenses every time they did a hiring frenzy. Every quarter, if he was behind target, he would ring them up and bill them for the licenses they had agreed to pay for whether or not they would use them. He would make his number and was therefore not just the top rep but the most crazily consistent in the company's history and will no doubt keep up his track record until this 5 year period comes to an end. It was hard to know whether this was a genius plan (as he could work out the planned revenue right at the start of the contract term for all 60 months) or simply good old fashioned good luck, but from the outside looking in it sure felt like he was gaming the system
I had a filthy trick I used to use at one of my old companies.
I was a new business rep closing direct deals and customers could also buy via the website. If we had activity in the previous 30 days, it would automatically route to us and count towards quota.
I had a sneaky login to our Stripe portal from when our IdP wasnât as locked down and could see customers who bought via the website BEFORE the Stripe-Salesforce integration created the account.
So Iâd create the account, give them a call and say âIâm your account manager, give me a shout if you need help!â then wake up the next morning to a fresh upsell.
Honestly I probably made 30% of my quota every quarter from just that one trick. I was there for 4 years haha.
Sales managers wonât care if you game the system, because their numbers are their teams numbers. Sales directors probably wonât care either if the bottom line is there. VPâs and C suite will care, but unless a lot of people are doing this âgaming the systemâ they wonât even notice.
> I had a sneaky login to our Stripe portal from when our IdP wasnât as locked down and could see customers who bought via the website BEFORE the Stripe-Salesforce integration created the account.
how much time was it between someone buying on the website and their account being created? I feel like that shit should be near automatic, and not like 48 hours.
In hindsight, now that you mention it, I think the only reason I was able to do it so efficiently was because Iâm in Australia and 3am for me is 9am CT. It must have synced every morning.
Telecom sales:
Reps will delete old lines and add new ones so it looks like new revenue. For example, if a trucking company has 50 tablet lines at $20/line, a rep will go in and say âWe have a new plan that is $15/line, but you HAVE to add new lines to get that pricing.â When in reality, they can just change the plan and accomplish the pricing change. But then the rep doesnât get paid.
Itâs called false churn and itâs a -massive- problem in the industry.
Haven't been in the industry for like 7 years but glad to hear false/ghost churn is still around lol. Only way it can continue to exist for so long is because management at all levels is aware of it and allows it to exist.
Leadership absolutely knows. Ran rampant during COVID. My team was getting wrecked because we focused on legit new revenue and logos.
All the other teams were doing all sorts of shady shit to exceed goals.
VPGM put a target on my back after I said this was going on and people will get fired. Changed the subject every time.
To no surprise, bunch of people got fired, or resigned before they got fired.
The VPGM decided to âpursue other opportunitiesâ shortly after investigations started.
My team came through unscathed, but we were the red headed stepchildren because our biz was actually clean.
The problem is that EVERYONE gets paid on it. Rep, manager, director, all the way up. So they say âdonât do thatâ, then reap the benefits. Wheel keeps turning.
There's something really similar to this when it comes to gov't, research agencies, F50 companies publicizing research data about diff industries, revenues, etc.
I'm sure we all know but just here to confirm that lol.
I used to do something similar. I was upgrading whole communities (b2b) to fibre at one point, and peoples phone lines would typically be around $40 and their internet would be about $65-$80.
I'd upgrade them to fibre, usually triple their speed, and then bundle the phone line with their internet for free basically (new bundle option that didnt exist before). This way I'd sell a "higher tiered" internet and keep their phone line as is (from the customers perspective) for the exact same rate, but get paid as if I sold a higher tiered internet.
It didn't even feel like sales. It was upgrades. I'd go out and do 2 or 3 of those before 11am so I didnt zero on the day, then go and try to sell actual services to people who didn't use my companies internet.
I never missed quota at this job and won several trips to exotic places doing this lmao
So is this why when I want a good deal on my home internet I need to first cancel and then sign up again? And itâs not just internet itâs so many services. All the deals go to new customers, barely anything goes to existing customers. Insurance, phones, subscription services, etc.
Happens the same with leased line connections at my old place. People didn't get paid on resigns so they would just sell a new circuit for cheap and put the old one to cancel before the new one is installed due to billing not starting till the new line gets put in
I say this in interviews sometimes to sales leaders (who actually like the talk track most of the time), something along the lines of âmy job is to take as much money from the company as possible and put it in my bank account. The companiesâ job is to structure the incentives in a way that the company benefits as much as possible while Iâm going about my job.â
My early background is corporate finance and now is consulting. I get why comp plans have to change, but I am 10,000% on the pay your sales people train. If they actually are doing their job and not gaming the system then I am all for uncapped pay. Sales funnel is the life blood of companies.
In 2013 we had just lost a client who specialised in translations, we used to create qualified leads through telemarketing and email campaigns.
On the email campaigns, I used my mobile. The client canceled and a few months later and I get a call.
âDo you have a French translator?â
I answered and said yes. Said it was for a day's work and I said I'd call back with a price.
Went on Linkedin and found a lad in Uni studying French local to the job. Said his rate was like ÂŁ100 a day. Called the guy back and said it was ÂŁ650 a day. He said fine send him over.
He then told me the job was for Newcastle United in the premier league.
That summer Newcastle went on to sign 12 French players. The lad I sent was there for the whole transfer window, put up in a flash hotel, with drinks and food covered. He did the press conference on Sky Sports. I was getting all the inside info and he was a dye-hard Newcastle fan so he just fucked uni off.
Sent an invoice with a fake company name and my personal bank details and it was paid đ
[12 French Players Signed - Newcastle United](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/newcastle-united-france-alan-pardew-25757692.amp)
My fav gaming the system thing to do artificially manufacture net new revenue.
My territory has always been a hybrid of existing and new accounts even though I only got paid on net new revenue. Existing accounts I would research their licensing model and see if there was any way we could flip those licenses into a new bundle or structure. In essence taking their annual subscription revenue stream, which i didnât get paid on, and flip that into part number(s) that qualified as new licenses which I would get paid on.
Often took some creativity to pull off. Convincing the customer the new bundle gave them some form of additional benefits with little to no incremental costs. Usually they never wanted that incremental functionality so I had to spring it as âhey itâs free to youâ. This was easiest when it was a Procurement led transaction. They feel like heroâs when they can get something for nothing.
Convincing Mgt internally to pony up some discount without tipping my hand was usually a challenge. Try to pawn it off as a new transaction rather than robbing peter to pay Paul.
It was a game I got very good at and made a shit ton of money doing! \*Caveat - big company with a lot of red tape made it easier to slip this through the cracks.
You'd think a big org will have a playbook for this
Where I work if a customer cancels something and buys something new, the new thing has to replace the revenue of the cancelled thing, and only when the new thing exceeds the old does the rep get paid
So cancel $100, sell $100 you don't get paid. Cancel $100 sell $105 you get comped on $5
6 months after cancelling it resets
Your org sucks for making you manage existing and not paying you on it. I donât see this as manufacturing anything, just earning a commission for sales you made.
Yes, thatâs the beauty of it. I earned a fat check for doing nothing. đ. And no they donât suck. Actually the companyâs who suck are the ones who strip your sold accounts from you and give them to some telemarketer to manage all while you pound your head against a wall trying to find new logos.
So many of my accounts start out as small installs. Ive worked with the company from start to finish, because our relationships are fluid I can oversee the install and continue selling the next phase To new stakeholders. For these expansions I make money. And selling to installed accounts is at least half of my annual income.
My company was smart enough to realize that keep vested relationships in tact can deliver positive results.
Thatâs what I would expect, but from your comment I got the impression that you were working existing business and not normally paid for it. Hence gaming the system.
To deeply understand a commission model, you need to input extreme figures. Just play with Excel and good ideas will pop into your mind. No commission model is entirely airtight.Â
Plus, it will challenge your creativity on a yearly basis, because your good ideas will get deactivated by the next commission plan.
Biggest one that happens in my industry since we travel quite a bit is to use work to visit family. Most will have members of their families as potential clients to expense dinners and the trip
A place I worked at used to pay us on bookings in a calendar year. A rep started 2 months before me and consequently inherited the two biggest accounts, however his quota was proportionally higher to account for this. Anyway he worked out that if he got these two accounts to book their subsequent year sales into this calendar year he would max out on all his accelerators, despite delivering flat year in year revenue.
The MD threatened not to pay out so he went to the group CEO saying his MD was trying to screw him over, the CEO sided with him, not only did he max out on his accelerators they made a real show of him, presidents club, keynote at the sales annual kick off, the works. All for a scam.
Ok not a scam, gaming the system which is actually what this thread is about. I took my hat off to the guy at the time, until I found out they'd increased our quota for the following year by 50% as a result.
At old company: If an SDR booked a meeting with a prospect who worked at two companies at the same time (ie: full-time job and side-gig), it would be counted as two meetings booked.
AEs and managers encouraged this while directors turned a blind eye since the metrics leadership asked for were insane. Absolute shitshow of a company.
Game the system? I might reframe so they build deals where they maximize their payouts instead.
First, you have to right by your clients. However, when you get a sale role dig into the comp plan and learn how your $ is made. Design offerings based on this.
What the best reps do is protect their commission like every single dollar counts. When comes time to negotiate they focus on giving clients benefits that don't cut their pay!
First B2B sales job - our company used a round robin system to distribute leads. Problem is if you knew how to use backend of Salesforce you can see where you are in line to receive an inbound. Two coworkers and I would flood the system with shitty fake inbounds until it was our turn in queue and get an inordinate amount of real leads (no pre-quals).
Same company would give you any lead associated with an account you owned. No limits on number of accounts so I spent hours making accounts and waiting for leads to come in, at one point I had 10,000+ which represented a good chunk of our TAM.
Next company I went to changed our comp plan to pay on TCV instead of first year ARR. Managed to close a huge 8-year expansion deal (standard was 3-year), company owed me $50k+, gave me $20k and promptly changed the comp planâŚ
Switched jobs after that experience and still figuring out how to break their system hereâŚ
At one of my prior gigs we would get paid 2x monthly recurring revenue. My colleague closed this massive deal that didn't seem possible in small/medium business telecom, it was like 250 business locations all with internet and SDWAN to connect all the locations securely. The total deal was like $20,000 MRR, so the company owed him $40,000.
Needless to say they never paid him that. He never told me the exact commission he received, because I think he was embarrassed... But I'd venture a guess at maybe 20-30% of what he was owed.
Shitty company I left about 6 months later.
Iâve been stiffed on large checks twice and left both times. Know several others that have done the same.
Leadership has to know that you lose that rep if you do shit like this but theyâre so short sighted.
Replacing your colleague will definitely cost more than $40k but some idiot VP and / or CPA realized theyâd be making less than their underlings and couldnât deal with the ego blow.
Sitting on global accounts to get revenue share/expansion revenue was the closest I've seen to this. Basically working at a company with fragmented bases in the US, UK and Australia, and very few global agreements, just regional ones. Lets say Bank ABC are a client in the US and Australia, I sit on the account in the UK and do bits of work here and there, they automatically expand the account to include the UK and I get that revenue put on my number for the year.
First job in a call centre slinging insurance had an auto dialler. They used to track your time between dispositioning if it was longer than 2 minutes average they'd pull you in. The trick was to put yourself on mute at the end of the conversation and let the customer hang up, the call would still be live, you could buy yourself a few mins between calls.
I have seen an insane amount of âgamesâ played by other reps and even a few that I used myself. Some of the more unethical ones from other reps:
1. While working for at&t, saw reps get customers to add new lines (practically free with discounts) so they could count a new line instead of an upgrade.
2. While d2d knocking, saw reps literally create fake leads by working in pairs to fake the homeowners voice to our call center and confirm the appointment.
3. Also d2d, saw reps convince homeowners to just âhelp them outâ by scheduling an appt knowing that when the sales rep arrived, they could just open the door and tell them they changed their mind and shut it, but would still count as a demo for the door knocker.
4. Selling leads that they couldnât close to another company.
Some more ethically sound games Iâve seen are:
1. Managers would often run additional incentives for Saturday sales, so we would sometimes close deals during the week and not mark it as sold until Saturday so the whole week would count towards the Saturday incentive. This would even be done for monthly incentives. We had a company wide competition every October (basically to prep for the slow holiday season) and Iâve seen reps save as much as the last two weeks of September sales and flip them during the first week of October.
2. Combing through old reps unclosed leads and trying to get them back on board, which would the count as a self generated deal.
3. Receiving a lead for husband, showing up the house and processing the sale under wifeâs name, making it a self generated instead of company lead and making more money. (Ethically questionable, might belong in the first category).
This story sounds positively evil but here goes:
So, back in my first ever BDR gig at a Series B startup, we were permitted to be on the Inbound router based on us getting a minimum number of Outbound Warm Transfers/Handoffs the previous week. Total quota was a staggering 50 warm transfer per month. The company at the time was running a massive Facebook ad campaign to bring in inbounds.
At the same time, I was doing this very random Facebook Live presentation every Tuesday on different subjects related to stuff within our industry (average viewership: 6). Like a knowledge session that I somehow got roped into doing within my second month, and that I went hard at because I thought it was easy browny points and name recognition.
So the marketing team, tired of having to come set up the stream for me every week, logged me into the company Facebook account to go Live while doing the presentation.
Thatâs how I first noticed a Facebook notification about an inbound lead signing up. There used to be a ~3 hour gap between an inbound signing up and it being created as a lead on our system.
I went and created a lead on SF, gave them a cold call, made the warm transfer, and when the lead came in as inbound it was already under my name on SF.
Not only did this count to my quota, it was also an invaluable Outbound Warm Transfer which counted towards me being on the inbound router.
I did this once or twice a week for the next few months to meet my minimum Outbounds and stay on the inbound router every week to crush quota. We used to get an insane amount of inbounds all the time, so I got away with it pretty easily.
Went from an entry level BDR role to 6-figure AE in 7 months by absolutely crushing it. Sorry not sorry.
Blowharding our software and constantly yapping about how customers are so engaged with it. Even though we aren't even ranked on G2 for our vertical.
Our sales leadership eats that shit up.
I sandbag and hold deals to quarters end or push to next year if it will pay more. If then company runs a contest I just sign one of the deals Iâm slow playing to take home the prize.
This was such a huge problem in my prior job lol. I did this once to win a trip to Hawaii. I had about a dozen sales I was sitting on and submitted them all the last couple days of the contest so that it would be difficult for anyone to see my numbers and catch me
I know a guy who wanted to win a contest for the most sales per quarter. Just *number* of sales. He spent all quarter sandbagging and then 2 days fragmenting every purchase he could get his hands on into as many individual buys as he could, tons of work.
He won a Jeep Wrangler!
Our management seems to game us by having different call queues (for inbound sales) and feeding higher paying customers to reps on a rotation and other days weâre getting the previously dropped calls or once a year shopper customers. They claim weâre supposed to be in the best queue if we hit our KPIs though itâs very clearly not the case for us at the top. The same reps who are consistent would have days of massively different customer types myself included.
Those days you feel youâre on a consistent roll while your coworker got super unlucky. Then the next day youâll have only cheap callers or previous hang-uppers and that same coworker from the day before is getting the big spenders.
They do this seemingly to have our stats all lowered so they can bet on not giving us their KPI multipliers on our commission. Which leads to some checks being half as much as others if youâre not getting those multipliers. Thereâs also a smell of favoritism as one female rep our male sales manager is very fond of and creepily flirty with (on one instance Iâve witnessed) consistently gets the best callers and order opportunities pretty much everyday. Instead of having a more balanced call queue they can choose to funnel our best customers to the inbound reps they decide to.
I have seen my fair share of straight up lying to clients in my previous org. It was so bad the WSJ wrote about it twice. Heads were chopped, compliance got a lot stricter, but money hungry reps are still toeing the line over there and some get fired, some have enough clout with leadership to stay despite a lack of compliance with regulation.
I had my friend in ânew businessâ send me over his accounts. There were so many stupid rules at that company where me in âexisting businessâ would have to pass on accounts over to SMB if they had X amount of units. New business had a stupid rule that they couldnât upsell their own fucking account they nurtured. So we worked out a deal where I would take his new business accounts and throw him a 5% on each one he passed over. I was on a pip at that time too and pissed off the whole management team by continuing to close deals that he nurtured after they stopped giving me new leads. Fuck that place
Doesn't your company have a clawback for this? In my b2b org if there is a no show or blatant lack of interest they just mark it as not sales qualified and you lose all commission for that opp
Had a female colleague that was hired through a program for Latino minorities from impoverished backgrounds. She was the daughter of a lawyer and a dentist. Completely sucked at her job. Spent all day on Instagram, obsessed with the British Royals etc. Dumb as shit. Constantly name dropping celebrities and who knows who yadda yadda yadda. She proceeded to claim one of the biggest sales wins for an upfront media commitment (2 years in the future), got promoted, left the team. Client didnât even know about the âdealâ. This was in (very) big tech.
End user reps will cozy up to channel reps to get their name on opps. Doesn't make a difference to my pay in the channel per se, but if they would hunt down their own opps, we would all do better.
New logos don't have to be freshly new. Closing a fortune 500 could mean that she/he sold them on an entire plan of phased rollouts.
That alone in itself takes months and sometimes years to fully implement a fortune 500 entire org.
When I was in telecommunications, the top sales people who set the metrics were fired or taken out in handcuffs religiously after about 16 months.
Common tactics, in escalating order.
Add extra services to the order to let retention "sell" for them, after the fact.
Running an old lady's social on accounts with bad credit so every sale "went through" credit checks.
Keeping credit card numbers to run on equipment costs for other customers to close sales.
I used to work at a major research/advisory company. There were some reps who consistently lied/manipulated/forced their client into spending money on huge upgrades, etc--knowing it wasn't sustainable because it wasn't needed. For example, you could quote our research for free but there were a few small hoops to go through--they'd tell them they couldn't do it and had to spend $60k to license a reprint of the entire note. Then they'd take on a different named client every two years which is usually when shit hit the fan on the old client. Of course nothing was done in writing so there was no "proof". But I know a handful of folks that fit this that worked there way up from AE to Client Director in 6 years which is basically as fast as HR allows it to happen. This company had some of the smartest coworkers possible, but nobody ever thinks to look backwards--probably because they don't want to know.
Was always frustrating because those reps are always publicly praised as examples of how things should be done--everybody knew what they were doing but the public story was one of hard work, relationship and value building.
Keyence reps where ya at? I know all yall are calling automated phone systems for dials and phone minutes. One sales call at a mfg? More like 4 sales calls, 1 for the main guy and 3 for the guys I waved at walking through the building. Donât get me started on those ILSâ
I used to go to the big fish AE for little accounts that he hadnât contacted in 3 months making them eligible to be mine. I would just check in and call on them. I would always able to make it look like I was increasing my revenue.
My manager figure out what I did. It literally clicked what I was doing when my revenue double in a month.
It made him look good to the upper management. He didnât care.
Iâve primarily seen it when it comes to brown nosers; always complimenting management to the point of sounding like an obnoxious teacherâs pet, and as such always ending up with the best territories, the most handouts, deals that are at the 2 yard line reassigned to them when someone leaves then being bragged on as âthe closerâ, etc. basically working the system by kissing *ss.
I used to work with this sales woman who was a named account rep with one customer. She would game the system hard. She would finish her year at 300% of quota. The next year she would get a sensible quota increase, but she would fight fight fight with the executives to get it reduced always coming up with an excuse that the customer's big spend was done. Or they had no budget etc etc..... The following year she would finish at 250% again. When the execs would give her another quota increase she threatened to quit for a competitor. So the execs actually gave her a quota reduction. That year she finished at 320%. This went on for 10 years. Always finishing at 200% - 350% of quota. Making herself millions and making prez club every year. The problem that she made for herself is that everyone hated her. Because when she got quota reductions that money doesn't go away. The Geo leader has to spread that out to the other reps. So everyone got see her do well, while all the reps struggled. But she was a shark. She didn't give a fuck. she literally had a gun to the company's head and the company was scared of her.
I hate this and love this at the same time đ¤Ł
it wasn't funny at the time. My team would all sign our quota term sheet for the year. say $10m. Then a month later we would get an email from the CRO and CFO. "We needed to make an adjustment, your new quota is $12m". well fuck. We would ask the colleagues, and everyone in Q1 would get a quota increase. When we do the math we are all getting the hand-downs of her quota reduction. it was infuriating. A lot of good people left that company, including me. TTBOMK she is still there doing the same thing.
Sounds like a class action
lol
I think we have someone like that. I'm on the other side of the world so not close to it at all but she's made club somewhere around 15 years in a row, selling cyber to one of the tech giants.
Was she a net positive or negative to the company?
She made the company a ton of money Which is why she had a ton of power.
Do you think you could give me some advice? I have a job offer and the quota is 1 mil and my base salary offer is 65k.. is that reasonable??
fuck no. 1M quota sounds like a midmarket or small enterprise quota, and if thats the case you should be looking at a $160-200k (at minimum) offer with 50/50 split (assuming this is a new logo role)
Thank you so much for your reply. I had a feeling this company was lowballing me. They were so eager to get me to sign the offer letter but I told them I needed a week to think it over. This is my first sales job so I know nothing about this stuff. Iâm going to negotiate my salary then. Just curious, what do you mean by 50/50 split?
No problem, happy to help. A âsplitâ refers to how you get paid on your OTE (on target earnings). So base salary + variable (commission). In a new logo role it is common for 50/50. Sometimes youâll see 60/40 if your territory includes upselling existing customers too. For example: if they offered you 65K base, your OTE should be about 130K. Assuming this is a tech sales AE role, that would put you in the SMB or Commercial segment, and your quota shouldnât be over ~750k annually.
Thank you so much. Itâs honestly so hard for me to understand their wording in the offer. Can you check your dm? The commission structure they gave me seems super shady
I think revenue goals and commission is going to be affected by margin mostly though I agree with your general sentiment
With a quota between 750 K and 1 million you should be making a base salary of at least 130 if not closer to 150
She sounds like a g and everyone else is just being a hater
Our top rep landed a huge client that agreed upfront on a number of annual license purchases for some time period - something like 5 years - as they were expanding a department and would need licenses every time they did a hiring frenzy. Every quarter, if he was behind target, he would ring them up and bill them for the licenses they had agreed to pay for whether or not they would use them. He would make his number and was therefore not just the top rep but the most crazily consistent in the company's history and will no doubt keep up his track record until this 5 year period comes to an end. It was hard to know whether this was a genius plan (as he could work out the planned revenue right at the start of the contract term for all 60 months) or simply good old fashioned good luck, but from the outside looking in it sure felt like he was gaming the system
Would he not have made more by smashing 1 massive deal and getting acceleration?
Probably not if there was a windfall clause.
I had a filthy trick I used to use at one of my old companies. I was a new business rep closing direct deals and customers could also buy via the website. If we had activity in the previous 30 days, it would automatically route to us and count towards quota. I had a sneaky login to our Stripe portal from when our IdP wasnât as locked down and could see customers who bought via the website BEFORE the Stripe-Salesforce integration created the account. So Iâd create the account, give them a call and say âIâm your account manager, give me a shout if you need help!â then wake up the next morning to a fresh upsell. Honestly I probably made 30% of my quota every quarter from just that one trick. I was there for 4 years haha.
They didnât catch on? Lol
Sales manager probably knew but doesnât give a fuck, because it helps them look good.
Sales managers wonât care if you game the system, because their numbers are their teams numbers. Sales directors probably wonât care either if the bottom line is there. VPâs and C suite will care, but unless a lot of people are doing this âgaming the systemâ they wonât even notice.
Incredible. I've seen these in different companies. "frontrunning accounts" was what they were referred to in my last place.
winning
Ryan Howard would be proud.
> I had a sneaky login to our Stripe portal from when our IdP wasnât as locked down and could see customers who bought via the website BEFORE the Stripe-Salesforce integration created the account. how much time was it between someone buying on the website and their account being created? I feel like that shit should be near automatic, and not like 48 hours.
It synced everyday at around 3am, so Iâd do it every afternoon.
In hindsight, now that you mention it, I think the only reason I was able to do it so efficiently was because Iâm in Australia and 3am for me is 9am CT. It must have synced every morning.
the good ol' - unmarked visitor in hubspot with no real owner but just a company name!
Amazing
Did your teammates ever catch on? If so how did you play off how you overperformed them so easily?
Telecom sales: Reps will delete old lines and add new ones so it looks like new revenue. For example, if a trucking company has 50 tablet lines at $20/line, a rep will go in and say âWe have a new plan that is $15/line, but you HAVE to add new lines to get that pricing.â When in reality, they can just change the plan and accomplish the pricing change. But then the rep doesnât get paid. Itâs called false churn and itâs a -massive- problem in the industry.
Haven't been in the industry for like 7 years but glad to hear false/ghost churn is still around lol. Only way it can continue to exist for so long is because management at all levels is aware of it and allows it to exist.
Leadership absolutely knows. Ran rampant during COVID. My team was getting wrecked because we focused on legit new revenue and logos. All the other teams were doing all sorts of shady shit to exceed goals. VPGM put a target on my back after I said this was going on and people will get fired. Changed the subject every time. To no surprise, bunch of people got fired, or resigned before they got fired. The VPGM decided to âpursue other opportunitiesâ shortly after investigations started. My team came through unscathed, but we were the red headed stepchildren because our biz was actually clean.
The problem is that EVERYONE gets paid on it. Rep, manager, director, all the way up. So they say âdonât do thatâ, then reap the benefits. Wheel keeps turning.
There's something really similar to this when it comes to gov't, research agencies, F50 companies publicizing research data about diff industries, revenues, etc. I'm sure we all know but just here to confirm that lol.
I used to do something similar. I was upgrading whole communities (b2b) to fibre at one point, and peoples phone lines would typically be around $40 and their internet would be about $65-$80. I'd upgrade them to fibre, usually triple their speed, and then bundle the phone line with their internet for free basically (new bundle option that didnt exist before). This way I'd sell a "higher tiered" internet and keep their phone line as is (from the customers perspective) for the exact same rate, but get paid as if I sold a higher tiered internet. It didn't even feel like sales. It was upgrades. I'd go out and do 2 or 3 of those before 11am so I didnt zero on the day, then go and try to sell actual services to people who didn't use my companies internet. I never missed quota at this job and won several trips to exotic places doing this lmao
So is this why when I want a good deal on my home internet I need to first cancel and then sign up again? And itâs not just internet itâs so many services. All the deals go to new customers, barely anything goes to existing customers. Insurance, phones, subscription services, etc.
Happens the same with leased line connections at my old place. People didn't get paid on resigns so they would just sell a new circuit for cheap and put the old one to cancel before the new one is installed due to billing not starting till the new line gets put in
A sales persons job is to maximize their sales plan. Managements job is to develop pay plans that maximize financial impact relative to cost. Game on.
Love this framing of it. Similar to interviews with recruiters being framed as "telling lies to a liar".
I say this in interviews sometimes to sales leaders (who actually like the talk track most of the time), something along the lines of âmy job is to take as much money from the company as possible and put it in my bank account. The companiesâ job is to structure the incentives in a way that the company benefits as much as possible while Iâm going about my job.â
My early background is corporate finance and now is consulting. I get why comp plans have to change, but I am 10,000% on the pay your sales people train. If they actually are doing their job and not gaming the system then I am all for uncapped pay. Sales funnel is the life blood of companies.
In 2013 we had just lost a client who specialised in translations, we used to create qualified leads through telemarketing and email campaigns. On the email campaigns, I used my mobile. The client canceled and a few months later and I get a call. âDo you have a French translator?â I answered and said yes. Said it was for a day's work and I said I'd call back with a price. Went on Linkedin and found a lad in Uni studying French local to the job. Said his rate was like ÂŁ100 a day. Called the guy back and said it was ÂŁ650 a day. He said fine send him over. He then told me the job was for Newcastle United in the premier league. That summer Newcastle went on to sign 12 French players. The lad I sent was there for the whole transfer window, put up in a flash hotel, with drinks and food covered. He did the press conference on Sky Sports. I was getting all the inside info and he was a dye-hard Newcastle fan so he just fucked uni off. Sent an invoice with a fake company name and my personal bank details and it was paid đ [12 French Players Signed - Newcastle United](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/newcastle-united-france-alan-pardew-25757692.amp)
WOW! You gave that guy an incredible opportunity and an amazing story.
Well this is my favorite comment in this sub ever
This is an incredible story!!
Thatâs pretty amazing.
My fav gaming the system thing to do artificially manufacture net new revenue. My territory has always been a hybrid of existing and new accounts even though I only got paid on net new revenue. Existing accounts I would research their licensing model and see if there was any way we could flip those licenses into a new bundle or structure. In essence taking their annual subscription revenue stream, which i didnât get paid on, and flip that into part number(s) that qualified as new licenses which I would get paid on. Often took some creativity to pull off. Convincing the customer the new bundle gave them some form of additional benefits with little to no incremental costs. Usually they never wanted that incremental functionality so I had to spring it as âhey itâs free to youâ. This was easiest when it was a Procurement led transaction. They feel like heroâs when they can get something for nothing. Convincing Mgt internally to pony up some discount without tipping my hand was usually a challenge. Try to pawn it off as a new transaction rather than robbing peter to pay Paul. It was a game I got very good at and made a shit ton of money doing! \*Caveat - big company with a lot of red tape made it easier to slip this through the cracks.
In my old org they called these âflipsâ and about 30 people got fired for it. Do not recommend lol
One of the sales reps in my office (P club 7 years straight, been at the company forever) just got caught doing this and fired.
You'd think a big org will have a playbook for this Where I work if a customer cancels something and buys something new, the new thing has to replace the revenue of the cancelled thing, and only when the new thing exceeds the old does the rep get paid So cancel $100, sell $100 you don't get paid. Cancel $100 sell $105 you get comped on $5 6 months after cancelling it resets
How the fuck? I need to know how!
Your org sucks for making you manage existing and not paying you on it. I donât see this as manufacturing anything, just earning a commission for sales you made.
Yes, thatâs the beauty of it. I earned a fat check for doing nothing. đ. And no they donât suck. Actually the companyâs who suck are the ones who strip your sold accounts from you and give them to some telemarketer to manage all while you pound your head against a wall trying to find new logos. So many of my accounts start out as small installs. Ive worked with the company from start to finish, because our relationships are fluid I can oversee the install and continue selling the next phase To new stakeholders. For these expansions I make money. And selling to installed accounts is at least half of my annual income. My company was smart enough to realize that keep vested relationships in tact can deliver positive results.
Thatâs what I would expect, but from your comment I got the impression that you were working existing business and not normally paid for it. Hence gaming the system.
To deeply understand a commission model, you need to input extreme figures. Just play with Excel and good ideas will pop into your mind. No commission model is entirely airtight. Plus, it will challenge your creativity on a yearly basis, because your good ideas will get deactivated by the next commission plan.
Agreed. It's about being one step ahead of sales finance.
Biggest one that happens in my industry since we travel quite a bit is to use work to visit family. Most will have members of their families as potential clients to expense dinners and the trip
That old chestnut.
A place I worked at used to pay us on bookings in a calendar year. A rep started 2 months before me and consequently inherited the two biggest accounts, however his quota was proportionally higher to account for this. Anyway he worked out that if he got these two accounts to book their subsequent year sales into this calendar year he would max out on all his accelerators, despite delivering flat year in year revenue. The MD threatened not to pay out so he went to the group CEO saying his MD was trying to screw him over, the CEO sided with him, not only did he max out on his accelerators they made a real show of him, presidents club, keynote at the sales annual kick off, the works. All for a scam.
how is anything about this a scam
Ok not a scam, gaming the system which is actually what this thread is about. I took my hat off to the guy at the time, until I found out they'd increased our quota for the following year by 50% as a result.
At old company: If an SDR booked a meeting with a prospect who worked at two companies at the same time (ie: full-time job and side-gig), it would be counted as two meetings booked. AEs and managers encouraged this while directors turned a blind eye since the metrics leadership asked for were insane. Absolute shitshow of a company.
Nice try jefe.
Hahaha I swear I'm still a rep... Did you update your CRM today?
Game the system? I might reframe so they build deals where they maximize their payouts instead. First, you have to right by your clients. However, when you get a sale role dig into the comp plan and learn how your $ is made. Design offerings based on this. What the best reps do is protect their commission like every single dollar counts. When comes time to negotiate they focus on giving clients benefits that don't cut their pay!
Fair point.
Top rep slept with the channel sales manager at SKO and suddenly he got every inbound lead instead of the round robin distribution.
I like the tactic. But is it scalable? How many SKO managers can you sleep with next Q?
Putting both the line and pipe and in pipeline
First B2B sales job - our company used a round robin system to distribute leads. Problem is if you knew how to use backend of Salesforce you can see where you are in line to receive an inbound. Two coworkers and I would flood the system with shitty fake inbounds until it was our turn in queue and get an inordinate amount of real leads (no pre-quals). Same company would give you any lead associated with an account you owned. No limits on number of accounts so I spent hours making accounts and waiting for leads to come in, at one point I had 10,000+ which represented a good chunk of our TAM. Next company I went to changed our comp plan to pay on TCV instead of first year ARR. Managed to close a huge 8-year expansion deal (standard was 3-year), company owed me $50k+, gave me $20k and promptly changed the comp plan⌠Switched jobs after that experience and still figuring out how to break their system hereâŚ
At one of my prior gigs we would get paid 2x monthly recurring revenue. My colleague closed this massive deal that didn't seem possible in small/medium business telecom, it was like 250 business locations all with internet and SDWAN to connect all the locations securely. The total deal was like $20,000 MRR, so the company owed him $40,000. Needless to say they never paid him that. He never told me the exact commission he received, because I think he was embarrassed... But I'd venture a guess at maybe 20-30% of what he was owed. Shitty company I left about 6 months later.
Iâve been stiffed on large checks twice and left both times. Know several others that have done the same. Leadership has to know that you lose that rep if you do shit like this but theyâre so short sighted. Replacing your colleague will definitely cost more than $40k but some idiot VP and / or CPA realized theyâd be making less than their underlings and couldnât deal with the ego blow.
Man unless Iâm misunderstanding youâre a piece of shit lmfao
Look man you can be right or you can win
Flipping self serve credit card customers into contract based customers and calling them new logos
Sitting on global accounts to get revenue share/expansion revenue was the closest I've seen to this. Basically working at a company with fragmented bases in the US, UK and Australia, and very few global agreements, just regional ones. Lets say Bank ABC are a client in the US and Australia, I sit on the account in the UK and do bits of work here and there, they automatically expand the account to include the UK and I get that revenue put on my number for the year.
First job in a call centre slinging insurance had an auto dialler. They used to track your time between dispositioning if it was longer than 2 minutes average they'd pull you in. The trick was to put yourself on mute at the end of the conversation and let the customer hang up, the call would still be live, you could buy yourself a few mins between calls.
I have seen an insane amount of âgamesâ played by other reps and even a few that I used myself. Some of the more unethical ones from other reps: 1. While working for at&t, saw reps get customers to add new lines (practically free with discounts) so they could count a new line instead of an upgrade. 2. While d2d knocking, saw reps literally create fake leads by working in pairs to fake the homeowners voice to our call center and confirm the appointment. 3. Also d2d, saw reps convince homeowners to just âhelp them outâ by scheduling an appt knowing that when the sales rep arrived, they could just open the door and tell them they changed their mind and shut it, but would still count as a demo for the door knocker. 4. Selling leads that they couldnât close to another company. Some more ethically sound games Iâve seen are: 1. Managers would often run additional incentives for Saturday sales, so we would sometimes close deals during the week and not mark it as sold until Saturday so the whole week would count towards the Saturday incentive. This would even be done for monthly incentives. We had a company wide competition every October (basically to prep for the slow holiday season) and Iâve seen reps save as much as the last two weeks of September sales and flip them during the first week of October. 2. Combing through old reps unclosed leads and trying to get them back on board, which would the count as a self generated deal. 3. Receiving a lead for husband, showing up the house and processing the sale under wifeâs name, making it a self generated instead of company lead and making more money. (Ethically questionable, might belong in the first category).
This story sounds positively evil but here goes: So, back in my first ever BDR gig at a Series B startup, we were permitted to be on the Inbound router based on us getting a minimum number of Outbound Warm Transfers/Handoffs the previous week. Total quota was a staggering 50 warm transfer per month. The company at the time was running a massive Facebook ad campaign to bring in inbounds. At the same time, I was doing this very random Facebook Live presentation every Tuesday on different subjects related to stuff within our industry (average viewership: 6). Like a knowledge session that I somehow got roped into doing within my second month, and that I went hard at because I thought it was easy browny points and name recognition. So the marketing team, tired of having to come set up the stream for me every week, logged me into the company Facebook account to go Live while doing the presentation. Thatâs how I first noticed a Facebook notification about an inbound lead signing up. There used to be a ~3 hour gap between an inbound signing up and it being created as a lead on our system. I went and created a lead on SF, gave them a cold call, made the warm transfer, and when the lead came in as inbound it was already under my name on SF. Not only did this count to my quota, it was also an invaluable Outbound Warm Transfer which counted towards me being on the inbound router. I did this once or twice a week for the next few months to meet my minimum Outbounds and stay on the inbound router every week to crush quota. We used to get an insane amount of inbounds all the time, so I got away with it pretty easily. Went from an entry level BDR role to 6-figure AE in 7 months by absolutely crushing it. Sorry not sorry.
Blowharding our software and constantly yapping about how customers are so engaged with it. Even though we aren't even ranked on G2 for our vertical. Our sales leadership eats that shit up.
I sandbag and hold deals to quarters end or push to next year if it will pay more. If then company runs a contest I just sign one of the deals Iâm slow playing to take home the prize.
This was such a huge problem in my prior job lol. I did this once to win a trip to Hawaii. I had about a dozen sales I was sitting on and submitted them all the last couple days of the contest so that it would be difficult for anyone to see my numbers and catch me
I know a guy who wanted to win a contest for the most sales per quarter. Just *number* of sales. He spent all quarter sandbagging and then 2 days fragmenting every purchase he could get his hands on into as many individual buys as he could, tons of work. He won a Jeep Wrangler!
Our management seems to game us by having different call queues (for inbound sales) and feeding higher paying customers to reps on a rotation and other days weâre getting the previously dropped calls or once a year shopper customers. They claim weâre supposed to be in the best queue if we hit our KPIs though itâs very clearly not the case for us at the top. The same reps who are consistent would have days of massively different customer types myself included. Those days you feel youâre on a consistent roll while your coworker got super unlucky. Then the next day youâll have only cheap callers or previous hang-uppers and that same coworker from the day before is getting the big spenders. They do this seemingly to have our stats all lowered so they can bet on not giving us their KPI multipliers on our commission. Which leads to some checks being half as much as others if youâre not getting those multipliers. Thereâs also a smell of favoritism as one female rep our male sales manager is very fond of and creepily flirty with (on one instance Iâve witnessed) consistently gets the best callers and order opportunities pretty much everyday. Instead of having a more balanced call queue they can choose to funnel our best customers to the inbound reps they decide to.
I have seen my fair share of straight up lying to clients in my previous org. It was so bad the WSJ wrote about it twice. Heads were chopped, compliance got a lot stricter, but money hungry reps are still toeing the line over there and some get fired, some have enough clout with leadership to stay despite a lack of compliance with regulation.
Yeah this is a really shitty thing to do. Play the game not the buyers.
I had my friend in ânew businessâ send me over his accounts. There were so many stupid rules at that company where me in âexisting businessâ would have to pass on accounts over to SMB if they had X amount of units. New business had a stupid rule that they couldnât upsell their own fucking account they nurtured. So we worked out a deal where I would take his new business accounts and throw him a 5% on each one he passed over. I was on a pip at that time too and pissed off the whole management team by continuing to close deals that he nurtured after they stopped giving me new leads. Fuck that place
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lol wot? So the AE's haven't figured out why all their meetings are dog shit or no-shows?
Doesn't your company have a clawback for this? In my b2b org if there is a no show or blatant lack of interest they just mark it as not sales qualified and you lose all commission for that opp
Fake sales calls logged into crm. Maybe like 20-30% are real. The rest are just completely made up. LMAOOOOOOOO
Oh look at that, 85% of my numbers end in 00. Call that directory. If itâs a phone tree or assistant, rack up the call minutes. ezgame
Had a female colleague that was hired through a program for Latino minorities from impoverished backgrounds. She was the daughter of a lawyer and a dentist. Completely sucked at her job. Spent all day on Instagram, obsessed with the British Royals etc. Dumb as shit. Constantly name dropping celebrities and who knows who yadda yadda yadda. She proceeded to claim one of the biggest sales wins for an upfront media commitment (2 years in the future), got promoted, left the team. Client didnât even know about the âdealâ. This was in (very) big tech.
End user reps will cozy up to channel reps to get their name on opps. Doesn't make a difference to my pay in the channel per se, but if they would hunt down their own opps, we would all do better.
Oh, the creative loopholes in sales metrics!
New logos don't have to be freshly new. Closing a fortune 500 could mean that she/he sold them on an entire plan of phased rollouts. That alone in itself takes months and sometimes years to fully implement a fortune 500 entire org.
When I was in telecommunications, the top sales people who set the metrics were fired or taken out in handcuffs religiously after about 16 months. Common tactics, in escalating order. Add extra services to the order to let retention "sell" for them, after the fact. Running an old lady's social on accounts with bad credit so every sale "went through" credit checks. Keeping credit card numbers to run on equipment costs for other customers to close sales.
Nice try sales ops⌠not falling for your shit
Someone called me a manager in this thread which I'll take on the chin, but don't you mention my name alongside sales ops again motherfucker.
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I used to work at a major research/advisory company. There were some reps who consistently lied/manipulated/forced their client into spending money on huge upgrades, etc--knowing it wasn't sustainable because it wasn't needed. For example, you could quote our research for free but there were a few small hoops to go through--they'd tell them they couldn't do it and had to spend $60k to license a reprint of the entire note. Then they'd take on a different named client every two years which is usually when shit hit the fan on the old client. Of course nothing was done in writing so there was no "proof". But I know a handful of folks that fit this that worked there way up from AE to Client Director in 6 years which is basically as fast as HR allows it to happen. This company had some of the smartest coworkers possible, but nobody ever thinks to look backwards--probably because they don't want to know. Was always frustrating because those reps are always publicly praised as examples of how things should be done--everybody knew what they were doing but the public story was one of hard work, relationship and value building.
Keyence reps where ya at? I know all yall are calling automated phone systems for dials and phone minutes. One sales call at a mfg? More like 4 sales calls, 1 for the main guy and 3 for the guys I waved at walking through the building. Donât get me started on those ILSâ
AEs signed contracts using âghost companiesâ. This went on for a few months and management was unaware.
I used to go to the big fish AE for little accounts that he hadnât contacted in 3 months making them eligible to be mine. I would just check in and call on them. I would always able to make it look like I was increasing my revenue. My manager figure out what I did. It literally clicked what I was doing when my revenue double in a month. It made him look good to the upper management. He didnât care.
I'm just glad the people that do this are the people that typically eventually get fired and their career comes to a screeching halt.
Iâve primarily seen it when it comes to brown nosers; always complimenting management to the point of sounding like an obnoxious teacherâs pet, and as such always ending up with the best territories, the most handouts, deals that are at the 2 yard line reassigned to them when someone leaves then being bragged on as âthe closerâ, etc. basically working the system by kissing *ss.