In the US, our approach to vacation is unrecognizable to much of the rest of the world. In Sales & Sales Leadership, our approach to Paid Time Off (PTO)  is incomprehensible to many of our own non-sales colleagues.

A quick trip to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis tells me that workers in the US work ~11% more hours annually than our peers. That’s roughly an extra half day. Every week. 52 weeks a year.

I suspect you wouldn't argue against the benefits of time away--improved concentration, replenished performance, refreshed attitude-to name a few. But a quick trip to LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Slack, and LinkedIn tells me that taking PTO and making the number are in conflict in many sales organizations.

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Over the last few months, we published our latest research reports on the Account Executive role (AEs, ISRs, etc.). Both the SaaS and non-SaaS versions are currently available. The reports provide base and on-target earnings for the AE role—both averages and broken down by specific factors.

A number of readers have emailed in and the top three requests have been:

1. Update the 2015 calculator with the latest data (allow tailoring by geography, rep experience, ASP, etc.)
2. Add a sheet for manager, director, and VP compensation as well
3. Port the calculator over to Google Sheets
    

Well, we've done all three. Welcome to our new and improved AE & Inside Sales Leader Compensation Calculator (now available both in Excel and Sheets formats).

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You know when you read something and it really sets you off? Something you disagree with so deeply that you can’t help not responding? That happened to me when I ran across Emails Only Please - 10 Reasons Why Phone Calls Are a Waste of Time shared on LinkedIn as a reason to not make sales calls.

Let me save you a click and offer my rebuttal.

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Daily, I hear sales leaders commenting how hard it is to find great candidates in this market. A search I ran on LinkedIn this morning bears this out.

In just the last 15 days, 468 companies posted “Account Executive” openings in Boston alone. That’s a rate of five new postings per business hour. Beyond the sheer volume, we’re also missing the mark in messaging (see below). It’s no wonder the majority of posts on LinkedIn get fewer than 10 applicants.

While there’s no silver bullet, there is a relatively simple step that too many companies miss:

Build and share a role elevator pitch.

We tackled this idea in our ebook, The Sales Hiring Hourglass, but I want to expand on the topic a bit.

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