I did a poll on LinkedIn to the other week prove a point.

It was proven in spades.

Throughout my 20 year career as an individual contributor enterprise seller, I was obsessed with finding the secret to personal financial success. Over the top, ludicrous personal income.

My search over that 20 year period led me to several aha moments.

Here are the top four:

1. We are players in a game we don’t control

The vast majority of my LinkedIn audience are sellers who sell for VC or PE backed companies. They are the majority owners and they call the shots. Know it or not, they are our masters. They set the goals, make the rules and hire operators who will carry them out faithfully. VC and PE firms both want different flavors of the same thing: growth and profitability. They want them to be achieved through predictable revenue growth.

2. The game is rigged against us

The killer word in this game is predictability. Through years of experience, our masters have found the science of predictability and how to execute it via our comp plans. The owners set the revenue goals for the year, the CRO hands down numbers to her VP’s, they do the same to the directors who ultimately hand down final quotas to us.

At each level they add a buffer of safety by adding quota to the next tier down to give them a margin of error so they will make their personal number. The impact is that the folks at the end of the chain - individual contributors - have a quota that has been massively inflated against the original revenue goal - sometimes 50% higher or more.

We have no control or recourse over this process.

This is the game we are in.

3. There is only a small window of opportunity

Most institutional investors want to pay us as little as possible. This is the beancounter mentality. Reduce the cost of sale. Our quotas are set such that achieving 100% of our number will yield an OTE (On Target Earnings) of $250k-$350k. This is meant to look good on paper but not so much in reality.

Firstly, less than 50% of sellers achieve their quota. Quotas have been rising on a per rep basis for years. This is the number one way our masters keep us poor. Dangling appealing OTE’s in front of us but jacking up the quota to levels which makes OTE unachievable for most sellers.

Second, they add eye-watering accelerators for overachievement. Sellers can earn 25-100% or more commission on revenue they bring in over and above their quota. This looks amazing when we run ‘what if’ scenarios at the beginning of the year, especially when we are new to a role. But nine times out of ten, we realize the difficulty and time required to hit this and our dreams come crashing down.

Statistically, comp plan management is similar to casino or lottery management. Big payouts have a very small statistical chance of being made. But they are great for pulling people into the game.

Third, our companies train us in sales motions that are designed to make the goal - have 45% of sellers achieve no more than 100% of our targets. That way the VC/PE revenue goal gets hit, close to exactly - leaving us at the bottom of the chain below or at our number, minimizing the number of reps who hit expensive accelerators.

4. The few who win do it through big deals

So these few sellers, the ones who overachieve and hit the big accelerators, how do they do it? The answer for me personally was simple: do massive deals. I closed three deals in the last eight years of my career that were at or over $50 million each and with the commissions I earned from just those three deals I was able to retire last year.

But that’s just me....

What about all sellers?

Is doing uncommonly large deals the path for them?

I asked my 40k seller audience on LinkedIn how they overachieved their numbers throughout their careers. Here is their answer.

Virtually 60% of respondents said that they overachieved only by closing at least one deal that was more than 100% bigger than their average deal size.

The implication is clear.

Outsized deals lead to outsized commission checks.

But let’s get clear on your ultimate financial goals. I ask every seller who comes to me for coaching what their financial goal is.

I have never had a rep say that their goal was to achieve OTE. Nor have they wanted an incremental improvement over OTE.

Most ambitious sellers want to blow away their number and make between $600k - $1M.

To do this it becomes as clear as day that doing deals a little bigger than average or even 100% bigger than typical deals will not get you there.

The punchline here is that

The only way for you to hit your financial goals as a B2B seller is by closing mega deals.

Your masters don’t want you to do them.

Your VP’s haven’t enabled you to do them.

Your managers don’t know how to coach you in the field because they’ve never done them.

The game is rigged against you but there is a way to punch through and beat the odds.

Join my Mega Deal Coaching Program and get me on your deal team for an entire year.

​Schedule a call here to see if you're a good fit.​

Jamal

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When You Are Ready There Are 3 Ways I Can Help You Get To The Next Level In Your Selling Career.

1. ​Mega Deal Secrets​ – Get a free copy of the book that started the mega deal movement.

2. ​Enterprise Sellers​ – Surround yourself with the most ambitious enterprise sellers in the game.

3. ​Mega Deal Accelerator​ – Get me on your deal team by investing in my coaching program where I personally help you close the biggest deal of your career in the next 12 months.

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