I think I’m starting to understand why the phrase “may you live in interesting times” is considered a curse. 

A global health crisis, an unscripted pivot to work from home, and an accompanying economic fallout--times are certainly interesting.

If you’re like me, you're keenly interested in what this all means for outbound prospecting today and tomorrow. One of the best sources of real-time data is Chris Beall, CEO of conversations on demand company ConnectAndSell. He is (and has been for years) sharing data on dials, conversations, and meetings.

Earlier this week, he shared their “top couple hundred customers' results since mid-Feb 2020.” I’ve taken the liberty of charting out the data.

Conversation to Booked Meeting Rate

Over the past 4 days, I’ve seen a lot of amazing work from home content from the broader Sales community. I particularly want to call out GitLabs Guide to All-Remote, this post from Laura Guerra (ringDNA Sales Director), and Matt Heinz’s how to work from home (when your kids are there too).

We wanted to share a few thoughts targeted to the SDR leadership community. Note: this isn’t an all or nothing platform - you take pieces and leave others as you see fit. 

Steps you can take over the next 20 days for SDR teams working remotely
 

Step 0- close your office.
If you have not, please do it now. Social distancing is highly effective at flattening the curve. If you have 25+ people in a room and/or a large number of your reps take public transit to work, closing your office will have a huge impact on flattening the curve of infection.
 

Step0(b)- take a moment to appraise where we are….and breathe.
We’re in uncharted waters here. Many on LinkedIn are treating the situation as if a bunch of companies, by sheer coincidence, decided to adopt work from home - with little to no planning. This is a public health crisis combined with a supply-side and demand-side shock. It doesn’t seem likely that, in the near term, work will be “like before, but at home.” 

Don't forget to be kind to yourself. Sales leadership is a hard job in the best of times. Take care of yourself, your team, your family, and your community.
 

I like to spend time on the r/Sales sub over on Reddit. It gives an unfiltered and anonymous perspective on what future, current, and past SDRs are asking and advising.

Questions around compensation and timing of the Entry-level SDR to Enterprise AE path are common. So I  reviewed 236 LinkedIn profiles of current Enterprise Account Executives that also contained a stint in Sales Development.

What does the path look like?

There are as many paths to an Enterprise AE role as they are routes into Sales itself. Let’s be honest, very few kindergartners express a desire to carry an enterprise bag someday. I noted many profiles dipped in and out of the straight line career path. This includes stints as:

• SDR Team Leads
• Channel Sales Reps
• VP/Director of Sales

That being said, the most common career path looks more or less like this:

We’ve just released the 2020 SaaS AE Metrics Report. This marks the 7th round of this research project. Leaders from 287 SaaS companies shared their key metrics--growth rate, ACV, model, quota, comp, tech stack, and more.

You can get a full copy of the report here, but I wanted to share one finding that really stuck out.

AE comp soars to new highs

Last year, I wrote about SaaS AE compensation continuing to outpace the broader US economy.

That’s a 52% increase since 2010 (~5% compounded annually). Compare that to SDR compensation, which has been flat since 2010 when adjusting for inflation. 

In this report, we find median SaaS AE on-target earnings of $158K. More than 70% of respondents report OTEs in excess of $120K. Wow.