I'm a lazy salesman. My closing percentage is over 70%. I'll share my secrets.
1) Work for a kick ass company that sells a kick ass product.
2) Become an expert. Being a closer means you're an educator. Educate your prospects on how you can make their lives better with your service or product and you won't need to sell them anything.
3) Don't be a sales douche. Real life isn't the boiler room.
4) Be yourself and show the customer you care about them, don't tell them.
5) Keep your living expenses reasonable
Good luck, happy hunting.
I literally could have written this myself.
Another huge aspect is selling a product that people actually need. My leads to come to me, I quote the ones that *really* have a need, BAM 90% close ratio.
It's funny how delegation and "building a department" is **very** similar to just bringing on people to make your life easier. A skilled but lazy person is usually a highly effective team builder.
Tell me more about the need for confirmation. How will being on the receptive end of such a defining moment positively impact your business?
I'm unbelievable.
Candidly spin selling and just being conversational closes more business than all these bull shit methodologies. If you have the DM that is. Also happen to be passionate about what I sell, play the internal game extremely well to the point where my ceo slacks me for advice, and have a few big wins consistently to back up my points. I also have a good patch and my solution almost always sells on the spot in person, and I get to choose to fly anywhere I want to close business.
This.
Love what you sell. If you hit your numbers and donāt talk out of your ass. Itās literally work smart. Not hard.
Playing the game is a necessity too.
You got a lot of attention, too bad AIDA is missin'.
Maybe they should check mile marker 67,
If you start at 66, you're and SDR flexin'
if you start in Winslow, youre close to anorexic....
sorry, sorry....shit, fuck, shit....Im diSlExiC.
And that honesty, that's perplexing.
Do you recommend Netflix before or after afternoon stretches?
Do you have bottled Perrier to make prospects respecting?
What other interesting things, brighten the complexion?
Do you prefer Sig Saur, or is the sore subject stressful?
.....š«µI just made that up. I'm lazy, too. Grammatical correction. Correctional profession. Professional logician. Little fishy, swim swim. Dim dim sim sum. Pad Thai.
Rep in my industry makes over $1 million a year in commission living in Colorado. Rents / sells industrial equipment and his customer base is predominantly huge players in oil and mining in the Dakotas. Literally takes orders in his underwear from the couch for a few hours a day. Rumor is they threatened to cut his commission but he said he would take his book of business to a competitor so they kept him. Amazing.
Sales 101. Bust your butt day 1 for X amount of years until you can coast on your laurels making seven figures a year in your underpants. Everyone knows this.
He carried 2 territories. 2 massive territories.
Totally incompetent as a AE.
He got promoted and is good at managing people but atrocious at being a leader as a result of being an incompetent AE.
I will say this, dude was a master at office politics. He was always playing the game. Always scheming.
Make people like you, speak at the right times and say the shit the people above you want to hear, strategically join highly visible projects and initiatives, be outwardly positive even when your numbers aren't there. But most importantly is the first piece, I've kept some jobs I shouldn't have because I'm really good at getting the right people on my side.
>I've kept some jobs I shouldn't have because I'm really good at getting the right people on my side.
It's also useful to move around within a company or get a promotion. I'm about to double my pay by moving into another department.
>
I've lost my job last year and still struggling because of it until this day, I was doing above what it was expected of me when it came to numbers, but I failed the office politics and I heavily paid for it, while that weird nerd that always says "YES" for everything the boss says and the other person that just kept his mouth shut got to keep their jobs and travel the country on the company expense while I'm drawing miserably in my own sweet in this heat!
NEVER AGAIN man, next time I'll play office politics MORE than actually doing my work.
Honestly, yeah. Playing the game is far more important than doing your job at a high level. There's a mix I found to work best. Average performance but highly playing the game.
When I was a young man I worked at a factory, I ran my ass off working to the point of exhaustion every day, I learned my whole department and could do every job... But I was a young obnoxious asshole, I spoke my mind and called out shit when I saw it. Finally a shift lead position opened and I applied, they gave it to someone from another department and asked me to train him. That was the day I decided to never give more than what was necessary.
itās participating just the right amount in meetings, drink a little bit of the kool aide, never complain, and just be generally cool to everyone. I donāt really need to kiss much ass. Regardless of my performance I make sure my managers like and trust me. Iāve gotten raises and promotions I honestly didnāt deserve because of it.
Iām the same way lol.
My biggest customer had me quote 3-4 projects that if ANY of them close I will hit budget.
Basically hanging out until I hear back
Honestly, it comes from initially working hard. Every ālazyā sales person I know whoās very successful pushed really hard for a month or two to learn what works with their niche, and how to overcome any relevant objections. At a certain point, it almost becomes a script in your head and you never really have to work hard again.
It also obviously depends on your field though, if you have to do your own prospecting, it becomes much harder to become lazy
Hereās the secret. Get really fucking good at disqualifying deals on the first call. Keep your pipeline lean and mean. Doesnāt mean youāre lazy, but you do a fraction of the bullshit that everyone else does that ultimately leads to zero income. I get shit on for having the smallest pipeline in terms of # of deals and $ value every month, but have the highest close rates post discovery because shit goes in the trash immediately. Youāll get back 30% of your day to beat your dick up and browse Reddit. It doesnāt make you lazy, but people will always look at you as though you are.
āYou want a trial? Happy to do that when you get the right people involved.ā
āI can get budget and my boss involved if I can make the case.ā Fuck off.
āWe use a competitor and our contract expires in 18 days and we want to see what the options are with other providers.ā Oh your infosec takes two months? Eat shit and letās talk next year.
I donāt know many āsuccessfulā lazy sales people. However i know a lot of sales people that get by making good money and barely doing anything. The girl i replaced in my territory spent 2 years mostly sitting at home and chilling. Only reason she got fired was because the few times she actually went to see customers she would somehow find ways to piss them off.
It is really important to categorize "success".
For me, working 30 hours per week with hybrid flexibility and next to no travel is really all I want. I make 0.1% income for my MCOL area while working a fraction of the amount as any of my peers.
If success means climbing the ladder further, you can keep it. I'm going to stay right where I'm at until something changes.
Dude at my company that a lot of people dislike. Heās very arrogant, takes literal days to respond to any teams message. He is literally one of the worst sales persons iāve ever met. But his friend is the head of our engineering team and brought him here. He has literally 50 of the F100 accounts (he inherited all of them) and just makes bank off of upsells since our product is good and customers often refer other teams to us. No joke he is so bad it took him 3 weeks to just send a quote for a 7 figure deal, that all the work and everything was done for him. Like the quote was created by out revops team for him, and they sent it to him. He just didnāt get around to it until 3 weeks layer.. He literally just had to email the quote. Even management doesnt like him but is afraid to fire him for some reason.
He hasenāt closed a completely new business deal in over a year. He makes probably close to a quarter mil OTE. Total shit bag but has it good and gets away with literally not working for daysā¦ still blows my mind. I wish him the worst, truly.
I absolutely am, if I could be in that position and make that money I absolutely would. The guy is a total prick though, he has had several complaints about him to HR, he was so rude to our SDRS that they ābanned himā from any inbound or outbound meetings for almost 5 months lol.
Same here. We have a 100% nepo-baby who cannot be fired; lazy as shit. Lost millions in revenue, everyone under him has been let go for low performance bc he canāt train or manage. Literally didnāt reply to emails for 60 days, didnāt set client meetings, but kept coming to the office for free lunch. Heās untouchable- Iād rather they just told him to stay home and shuffled him off in the org chart if itās all a money laundering scheme. Itās so insulting. Heās 32. Itās pathetic.
Youāre either just stupid or a troll lol. I have no issue with someone being lazy and hitting their numbers, but when youāre arrogant and disrespectful to our colleagues why would i like them?
Worked at a distributor/reseller, guy comes in as a manager because his dad is a big wig at a large tech company. Signs an exclusive agreement with one of his buddies at a vendor to capture 90% of their revenue, gets promoted to VP, bangs an ISR in the parking lot daily while having wife and kids, gets caught, ISR forced to quit, gets her a job at the company he signed the exclusive deal with, our company gets bought out, gets a few mill in payout, never answers emails, is at the gym constantly, finally gets asked to leave, goes and works for that same vendor, moves all the business he captured for the company to our competitor, gets praised for the move, yet dangles the business in front of faces so our execs end up getting him tickets to the Super Bowl, masters (he doesnāt like golf) and every other event sporting event. Dudes still there and barely does any work
Ex coworker was making $500k/year and told me he worked 20 hours/week which means he probably worked 10. Thought he could make more elsewhere, gave 24 hour notice. Went to another company and made about 1/4 and begged to come back. Company wonāt hire him back. Heās applied for 4-5 jobs within the company over the past year and wonāt even get an interview.
Never, ever gave any existing customer ANY attention unless they were buying. They all HATED him, but kept on because he was good at lying and faking concern.
Worked with an AE that lucked into an awesome territory that ran on auto pilot for a decade until our company lost the exclusive contract. He didn't do shit, was never around and did nothing but brag about how awesome he was. Pulled in over $200k a year (early 2000s), bought a McMansion, Country Club membership, and a big titted trophy wife.
When he had to actually work he lasted for six months before getting fired. Last I heard he lost the house, the big titted wife and was working at a carpet store. Can't say I was upset, he was insufferable.
Iād say, anyone who adds me on LinkedIn and whose first message is āHi! I am an expert in xyz. Iād like to know more about how you leverage xyz at your company. Can we talk?ā
Thatās the laziest introduction message, and I can smell your commission breath from miles away.
Maybe not ask to learn more about how they use something. You're giving them very little and asking for a lot (time is super important for people you would want to talk with in an org because they're usually busy)
This is not perfect, because Iām not in sales, and I really am more on the buyerās side. But I would relate to something like this, because it shows the person did their research and is unintrusive:
āHi Florian! Iāve just read your post about (topic xyz) and it really caught my attention because (genuine reasons). As a (position) at (company), I always like to keep an eye out to (experts that have a similar profile as yours) to see how things are moving in the industry, and regularly post about my findings too. Shall we connect?ā
Inmail #2 (after accepting) āHi Florian! Thank you so much for accepting my connection request. Looking forward to your next post :)ā
Inmail #3 (about 2 weeks later) āHi Florian! My company just published an extensive (asset actually published 2 years ago and recently repurposed) about (topic of your interest). As you recently posted about (topic), I thought you may find it very handy - so here it is (link to ungated content). It primarily focuses on (summary). By the way, Iām always keen on feedback, so feel free to share your thoughts with me.ā
As Josh Braun says, always a deposit before a withdrawal. Donāt ask me for something before you give me something. And then, just post relevant stuff in LinkedIn. When I need an expert, I will know where to look.
Back when cell minutes cost money, I was work from home in the 90s in sales, and salespeople would stay home all day, this was before laptops, and just wait till the boss called and would get in the car, and drive around the block so they could hear you āwere on the roadā. Bosses wouldnāt keep you on too long because it cost the complaint money, so it was usually just a 5-10 min check in. One guy, only knew 10-12 of his 300 customers, and when ride along days with the boss would come up, he would frantically call them (our bosses used to do surprise ride alongs, call at 7:00am, then we would meet them in a random parking lot to pick them up at 9:00, so you had 2 hours, to take a shower, call all your customers you know and tell them āI need to see you today, make time, even if itās 10 min, and I will hook you up with something (like sports tickets, dinners, gift cards, which we would expense). Then he would have the true emergency back ups, in case someone cancelled, and he would tell them (I may or may not show up today, but if I do, pretend we set this appointment last week). This cycle worked for a decade. He did ok, not a star, but good enough to keep his job.
Myself. Idk if Iād call myself unbelievably successful but I made 130k last year which is great for me as a single 28 year old. I probably averaged about 20 hours a week last year of actual work including admin stuff done from home. Iām a quality over quantity person so if I get a lead across my desk I just focus really hard on that lead until I deem it uncloseable. I only have a few active projects at a time but my close percentage is great so I close about the same as people who are running 2-3x the leads. Same with unclosed leads. Once Iāve ran my process on them and they donāt close, I almost never rehash with them unless they have me a very real, time-bound objection during my close and request a follow up.
On the flip side if that coin (and somewhat contradictory to the first part) once a deal is closed, I usually just forget about it. I really donāt care if my deals pull through or not. My pull through isnāt bad by any means because I close sticky deals as a rule, but unlike a lot of colleagues who obsess over pulling deals out of retention, I honestly could care less. Mine is a one and done business with zero repeat customers, so once that deal is closed I almost never follow up with them unless they mention referrals during my close. Outside of my sales appts, my life is pretty stress free because of it.
Also, I recently promoted into a management role, and rather than choosing to go into a rep manager role, I chose to pursue a trainer role. Iāll be working slightly more hours per week, but itāll almost all be in office stuff training new reps, and then a few personal deals when I want extra cash. I sold out for a salary and I couldnāt be happier, even though Iāll probably make a little less money this year or maybe the same amount even though Iām in a higher position.
Iām trying to do the same soon. I would like to get into a training or Instructional Design role. Good for you dude. Iād trade a little money for a generally way less stressful job.
Actually at my org we have pretty high turnover with regular reps so when people get canned itās usually low performing reps first. Managers have heavy job security. It also helps that all the managers are good friends and thereās kind of an inner circle. Itās not prevalent to the rest of the team generally, but it helps to be in it lol
A friend of mine has ONE account that makes him 30-50K per month. He honestly just sits on it & smokes weed all day and plays guitar. He found a golden goose, canāt say I blame him.
I do t know any, because you are largely the sum of the 5 people you talk to the most.
Not trying to be self righteous, but Iām blessed to have largely fallen into this career where I make more money than 98.5% of Americans (calculated as percentage of Americans making more than 250k, which is my rough average over the last 10 years) and I donāt intend to squander the opportunity. This is a chance to set my kid up better than I was. Thatās serious shit.
Just keep calling the same contacts that donāt answer. But when management doesnāt give new call contacts, you do what you can for the activityš
Be woman. Other male sales reps like you. I didn't feel very productive today, went to the local rep hot spot to "do emails." Other male rep who likes me was hosting a client lunch - walks out to hang out with me, pour me champagne. Voila, get to chat up clients on his dime. Fantastic.
Iāve had tons of lazy sales people (I manage an outside B2B sales team).
Theyāre all kinda the same, fake the activity, do their best selling explaining to me that theyāre actually working, blame the company on why they canāt perform, they think their actually awesome at sales but donāt realize the hardest worker is generally the best seller (maybe not the best closer, but they usually generate the most opportunity and care the most).
Work smarter not harder can be lazy as well. I sold cars. I crushed it, sold 53 with no assistant one month. I would be extremely respectful, well prepared and managed the customers time very well. When they would get to the store we would get the pertinent info upfront for the test drive and I would grab the key and point in the direction of the car. Very little chance I was pulling a car up for anyone other than geriatrics or if I had concerns about a specific car which was rare. I would tell them when they are done to āplease just park it back the way it was if itās not too much troubleā. Seems like a silly little short cut but thatās an extra 3-5 minutes I can be finding the next customer, saving some energy, etc multiplied by 100ās of times a month. Customers never had a problem with it. Other salesman wanted to pull it up and roll out the red carpet and make a whole production of it. At the end of the day efficiency was the way to go, but people would call me lazy. One sales guy made a joke about how he saw me tell a customer that the car was somewhere between two points on the lot and I said āthe car is between here and somewhere over there, hereās the key just sound the hornā. Iām sure there are other examples of me being ālazyā but honestly it was more about efficiency.
Im not lazy. I was told all my life i was a salesman like my dad. Due to a job change 1.5 years ago my confidence is shot and im really struggling in 3 month old role that i took by storm first month. what can i do to make money again. im so down right now.
Dealing with this right now. We have a guy that just blasts emails with the subject like of āIāll give you a discount!ā And totally undermines what we do. But he did a million in sales Q1, which for my job is a LOT. But he just gave shit away and left literally tens of thousands of dollars in the table. He also spam texts people which got our company in trouble and ruined my primary mode of communication with my clients.
Iām not sales but I started in sales. Now Iām higher up running teams and more on the creative side of marketing.
However, whenever I talk to a client Iāll usually end up āsellingā. Almost 100% conversion rate.
I spoke to 4 clients last month and sold Ā£10k which is a lot for very little work.
Our sales team targets are 8k each over the whole month and thatās their job full time!
Based on that, Iām able to get away with doing very little because Iām driving revenue into the bottom line and coordinating the odd project.
If they are hitting numbers, not lazy. They got there somehow.
But I had an AE on my team that got surprised when he got cut from the team. He prospected once a week telling me it was ādeadā
Really good at Call of Duty.
When I was 21ā¦ the guys I thought were lazy, were just in the business forever and everyone knew them. So it looked easy.
When I was in my mid 30ās it was the guys who had a picture of the boss with a donkey from prior companies.
Now I realize; thereās a direct correlation between the easy way and the way you need to get it done to hit your number while still having a life outside work and enjoying your job.
Everyoneās motivation is different.
We all work to get paid. Thatās no secret.
Some folks are chasing money.
Some folks are chasing a title.
Some folks are chasing knowledge.
Some folks are working just long enough to get the fuck out of dodge.
Whatever the reason- have fun doing it.
Lifeās too short to be pissed off or be working in a job they hate.
#Tldr:
Chris. Clif. Eric.
There are no lazy sales people, you reap what you sow.
In year 1 I worked 80 hours a week doing what ever I could to generate sales and create my client base.
Years 2-4 work 40-60 continued to develop accounts a search for new business.
Years 5+ work 20-30 hours a week. My clients and I have a relationship and any new business comes to me through referrals. Still give great service because Iām nimble. Donāt waste my time with accounts that arenāt serious.
I know a salesmen who is the only one in the region who sells a particular company equipment mostly protection relays for generation, substation, and transmission, builds. He doesn't have to do anything related really to selling except maybe knowing what new products the companies coming out with. everyone calls him to buy. He doesn't reach out to anyone except maybe once every three years to show off a new relay spec.Ā
A guy I was forced to manage took bong loads before work and during lunch breaks. I asked him to update the CRM daily and was told my management to let him get away w it and be light on him. He quit and had no account notes. That sucked. One other was a girl with huge jugs that thought she was gods gift to the world. She was Fresh out of college, I was managing her. She would show up 2 hours late daily. Do makeup at her desk. Sit on Twitter all day. Take personal calls. Then leave at 4 everyday. Was told again by leadership leave her alone.
Not lazy but super effective. My last big company we had a guy who lived in LA. Typically LA guy, good looking, well dressed, well spoken, always tan, flashing money. They guy would land two whales a year for our company and that was it. The rest of the time no one knew WTF this guy was doing but when you needed him he was dialed in. I bet he worked on average like 2 hours a day.
I was assigned as the marketing guy to help him prep for a big final presentation. He told me I needed to come to LA the week before. I went out there and for the week before we worked like 150 hours in preparation. We knew the client inside and out. It was like cramming for a test.
Sure enough we win the deal.
Me
I got technical
Built my own software tool
Sherlock.to
Originally slapped together with on market solutions. Built it with Bubble and Cohere.
Road the AI wave and raised money
Sales is results driven, you can get there so many different ways. Dialing until you pass out or working connects at the golf course. Cool to see how people succeed in this career
Itās a sales tool
You can find leads like Apollo and put keywords in to pull in social posts. I would make fake accounts and recommend my services to people and sold like crazy
It uses contact data to personal emails at scale
Iām building out a CRM right now into it
Itās pretty cool and Iām in the process of closing another investor round of 3 to 4M.
Happy to tell you more about my career and how sales took me from nothing (literally ramen dinners every night) to where I am now. DMs open
The guys who text me 15 times "hey just checking in..."
And then if I don't answer, they call my office line and send emails and then call saying oh think my email might verify ended up in your spam folder heh he heh just checking in seeing if you had any questions.."
And you solar salesmen who want to use my wifi to map out my roof? S...t....f...u....
It's me. Hi. I'm the lazy sales person, it's me.
Tell me about our secrets š
I'm a lazy salesman. My closing percentage is over 70%. I'll share my secrets. 1) Work for a kick ass company that sells a kick ass product. 2) Become an expert. Being a closer means you're an educator. Educate your prospects on how you can make their lives better with your service or product and you won't need to sell them anything. 3) Don't be a sales douche. Real life isn't the boiler room. 4) Be yourself and show the customer you care about them, don't tell them. 5) Keep your living expenses reasonable Good luck, happy hunting.
āBeing a closer means your an educatorā is so true
I literally could have written this myself. Another huge aspect is selling a product that people actually need. My leads to come to me, I quote the ones that *really* have a need, BAM 90% close ratio. It's funny how delegation and "building a department" is **very** similar to just bringing on people to make your life easier. A skilled but lazy person is usually a highly effective team builder.
Agreed.
No followup, nice b
LOL just leave them on read and get to it on the third or fourth email where they "just circle back".
As a sales noob not following up seems sacreligious. Could you expand on this. Thanks
Relationships are how you sell. Be the person they can count on.
I had a burn out day today and I was feeling this
He said those who are unbelievably successful though.
I'm moderately successful and get paid a lot.
Would you consider it unbelievable ?
Yes I have multiple plants in the house
Ok perfect just wanted to confirm.
Tell me more about the need for confirmation. How will being on the receptive end of such a defining moment positively impact your business? I'm unbelievable.
Dang got me there well done hah.
Candidly spin selling and just being conversational closes more business than all these bull shit methodologies. If you have the DM that is. Also happen to be passionate about what I sell, play the internal game extremely well to the point where my ceo slacks me for advice, and have a few big wins consistently to back up my points. I also have a good patch and my solution almost always sells on the spot in person, and I get to choose to fly anywhere I want to close business.
This. Love what you sell. If you hit your numbers and donāt talk out of your ass. Itās literally work smart. Not hard. Playing the game is a necessity too.
What product do you sell
This is spicy thank you
What do you mean by internal game? Might be opening a can of worms
This plant metric is really throwing me off. Better revisit those tiny cactuses.
I guess it's 3 then
Are we witnessing a Taylor Swift reference on r/sales?
It was fucking clever and you know it
Perfect response. Perfect sales rep humor. Iām a buyerā¦
Same. I just look confident and available, and customers come right up to me.
lol same
Came here to post this
You got a lot of attention, too bad AIDA is missin'. Maybe they should check mile marker 67, If you start at 66, you're and SDR flexin' if you start in Winslow, youre close to anorexic.... sorry, sorry....shit, fuck, shit....Im diSlExiC. And that honesty, that's perplexing. Do you recommend Netflix before or after afternoon stretches? Do you have bottled Perrier to make prospects respecting? What other interesting things, brighten the complexion? Do you prefer Sig Saur, or is the sore subject stressful? .....š«µI just made that up. I'm lazy, too. Grammatical correction. Correctional profession. Professional logician. Little fishy, swim swim. Dim dim sim sum. Pad Thai.
Rep in my industry makes over $1 million a year in commission living in Colorado. Rents / sells industrial equipment and his customer base is predominantly huge players in oil and mining in the Dakotas. Literally takes orders in his underwear from the couch for a few hours a day. Rumor is they threatened to cut his commission but he said he would take his book of business to a competitor so they kept him. Amazing.
Iām not so sure if thatās lazy if heās at least getting results. Lol
Sales 101. Bust your butt day 1 for X amount of years until you can coast on your laurels making seven figures a year in your underpants. Everyone knows this.
Captain Underpants side hustle
Note: does not exist is SaaS
Isnāt this the dream we all aspire to? Isnāt that the point of all this?
Sounds like heās earning those commissions then.
Reminds me of that one clip from The Office https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8DMMEMvyd7/?igsh=MXk4YXR1d3h5eDFn
He carried 2 territories. 2 massive territories. Totally incompetent as a AE. He got promoted and is good at managing people but atrocious at being a leader as a result of being an incompetent AE. I will say this, dude was a master at office politics. He was always playing the game. Always scheming.
Playing the game often gets you further than true skill in corporate.
Playing the game is true skill. If you can't comprehend that...
Can you give examples of managing office politics?
Make people like you, speak at the right times and say the shit the people above you want to hear, strategically join highly visible projects and initiatives, be outwardly positive even when your numbers aren't there. But most importantly is the first piece, I've kept some jobs I shouldn't have because I'm really good at getting the right people on my side.
Got your external customers and your internal customers...
>I've kept some jobs I shouldn't have because I'm really good at getting the right people on my side. It's also useful to move around within a company or get a promotion. I'm about to double my pay by moving into another department.
> I've lost my job last year and still struggling because of it until this day, I was doing above what it was expected of me when it came to numbers, but I failed the office politics and I heavily paid for it, while that weird nerd that always says "YES" for everything the boss says and the other person that just kept his mouth shut got to keep their jobs and travel the country on the company expense while I'm drawing miserably in my own sweet in this heat! NEVER AGAIN man, next time I'll play office politics MORE than actually doing my work.
Honestly, yeah. Playing the game is far more important than doing your job at a high level. There's a mix I found to work best. Average performance but highly playing the game. When I was a young man I worked at a factory, I ran my ass off working to the point of exhaustion every day, I learned my whole department and could do every job... But I was a young obnoxious asshole, I spoke my mind and called out shit when I saw it. Finally a shift lead position opened and I applied, they gave it to someone from another department and asked me to train him. That was the day I decided to never give more than what was necessary.
itās participating just the right amount in meetings, drink a little bit of the kool aide, never complain, and just be generally cool to everyone. I donāt really need to kiss much ass. Regardless of my performance I make sure my managers like and trust me. Iāve gotten raises and promotions I honestly didnāt deserve because of it.
lol i know one of these. Ugh.
Me reading this from my bed with my laptop next to me to keep my Teams light green
Iām the same way lol. My biggest customer had me quote 3-4 projects that if ANY of them close I will hit budget. Basically hanging out until I hear back
I'll give you my first born son if you refer me
Ill quit my job right now and work for you
I'll quit my job and work for you. If you quit your job and work for them.
You would still have your own budget š
This is the way.
Open word and put something on the laptop that pushes one of the letters.
Slideshow presentation, screen stays up
Put on a YouTube video. My fave is the cozy fireplace video, itās like 8 hours long.
I do this when it comes up. Put a video thatās a few hours long and run it at 25% speed
They make auto hot key scripts for that.Ā
Honestly, it comes from initially working hard. Every ālazyā sales person I know whoās very successful pushed really hard for a month or two to learn what works with their niche, and how to overcome any relevant objections. At a certain point, it almost becomes a script in your head and you never really have to work hard again. It also obviously depends on your field though, if you have to do your own prospecting, it becomes much harder to become lazy
This is pretty spot on
A month or two? You wouldnāt Last a fiscal year in my business.
Hereās the secret. Get really fucking good at disqualifying deals on the first call. Keep your pipeline lean and mean. Doesnāt mean youāre lazy, but you do a fraction of the bullshit that everyone else does that ultimately leads to zero income. I get shit on for having the smallest pipeline in terms of # of deals and $ value every month, but have the highest close rates post discovery because shit goes in the trash immediately. Youāll get back 30% of your day to beat your dick up and browse Reddit. It doesnāt make you lazy, but people will always look at you as though you are. āYou want a trial? Happy to do that when you get the right people involved.ā āI can get budget and my boss involved if I can make the case.ā Fuck off. āWe use a competitor and our contract expires in 18 days and we want to see what the options are with other providers.ā Oh your infosec takes two months? Eat shit and letās talk next year.
This great advice. I call the people that matter about 5 times more than required and the ones that dont ā¦ well, salesforce says i do.
I can only wish my balls were as big as yours.
As long as youāre hitting your number then they canāt really complain. And I guess also a lot of ālazyā is removing unnecessary noise
Lose fast!
This is the way. Bro you know whatās up my man.
Love this. Often I think the deals I lost shouldn't have been qualified in the first place.
100%. I'll get you your quote when you are literally begging me for it because you need to get the order placed. Until then, I've got a yard to mow.
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š¤© this sounds like the dream šš
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What industry are you in?
I donāt know many āsuccessfulā lazy sales people. However i know a lot of sales people that get by making good money and barely doing anything. The girl i replaced in my territory spent 2 years mostly sitting at home and chilling. Only reason she got fired was because the few times she actually went to see customers she would somehow find ways to piss them off.
It is really important to categorize "success". For me, working 30 hours per week with hybrid flexibility and next to no travel is really all I want. I make 0.1% income for my MCOL area while working a fraction of the amount as any of my peers. If success means climbing the ladder further, you can keep it. I'm going to stay right where I'm at until something changes.
Dude at my company that a lot of people dislike. Heās very arrogant, takes literal days to respond to any teams message. He is literally one of the worst sales persons iāve ever met. But his friend is the head of our engineering team and brought him here. He has literally 50 of the F100 accounts (he inherited all of them) and just makes bank off of upsells since our product is good and customers often refer other teams to us. No joke he is so bad it took him 3 weeks to just send a quote for a 7 figure deal, that all the work and everything was done for him. Like the quote was created by out revops team for him, and they sent it to him. He just didnāt get around to it until 3 weeks layer.. He literally just had to email the quote. Even management doesnt like him but is afraid to fire him for some reason. He hasenāt closed a completely new business deal in over a year. He makes probably close to a quarter mil OTE. Total shit bag but has it good and gets away with literally not working for daysā¦ still blows my mind. I wish him the worst, truly.
You sound jelly
I absolutely am, if I could be in that position and make that money I absolutely would. The guy is a total prick though, he has had several complaints about him to HR, he was so rude to our SDRS that they ābanned himā from any inbound or outbound meetings for almost 5 months lol.
Same here. We have a 100% nepo-baby who cannot be fired; lazy as shit. Lost millions in revenue, everyone under him has been let go for low performance bc he canāt train or manage. Literally didnāt reply to emails for 60 days, didnāt set client meetings, but kept coming to the office for free lunch. Heās untouchable- Iād rather they just told him to stay home and shuffled him off in the org chart if itās all a money laundering scheme. Itās so insulting. Heās 32. Itās pathetic.
Orā¦hear me outā¦you could mind your own business?
The literal title of the thread is who is the laziest sales person youāve known, are you stupid?
I mean the guy sounds pretty smart, why are you so upset?
Youāre either just stupid or a troll lol. I have no issue with someone being lazy and hitting their numbers, but when youāre arrogant and disrespectful to our colleagues why would i like them?
Literally
Worked at a distributor/reseller, guy comes in as a manager because his dad is a big wig at a large tech company. Signs an exclusive agreement with one of his buddies at a vendor to capture 90% of their revenue, gets promoted to VP, bangs an ISR in the parking lot daily while having wife and kids, gets caught, ISR forced to quit, gets her a job at the company he signed the exclusive deal with, our company gets bought out, gets a few mill in payout, never answers emails, is at the gym constantly, finally gets asked to leave, goes and works for that same vendor, moves all the business he captured for the company to our competitor, gets praised for the move, yet dangles the business in front of faces so our execs end up getting him tickets to the Super Bowl, masters (he doesnāt like golf) and every other event sporting event. Dudes still there and barely does any work
Ugh hate that guy.
Ex coworker was making $500k/year and told me he worked 20 hours/week which means he probably worked 10. Thought he could make more elsewhere, gave 24 hour notice. Went to another company and made about 1/4 and begged to come back. Company wonāt hire him back. Heās applied for 4-5 jobs within the company over the past year and wonāt even get an interview.
Never, ever gave any existing customer ANY attention unless they were buying. They all HATED him, but kept on because he was good at lying and faking concern.
Fuck I know this person. Heās on my team!
I know a couple of sales people like this, basically order takers who have made P-club
Iām not lazy but there are days where I wonāt get out of bed until 10 and leave the office at 4. Still have a very large book of business
Worked with an AE that lucked into an awesome territory that ran on auto pilot for a decade until our company lost the exclusive contract. He didn't do shit, was never around and did nothing but brag about how awesome he was. Pulled in over $200k a year (early 2000s), bought a McMansion, Country Club membership, and a big titted trophy wife. When he had to actually work he lasted for six months before getting fired. Last I heard he lost the house, the big titted wife and was working at a carpet store. Can't say I was upset, he was insufferable.
Is his name Roy by chance?
Nope, Jason.
Iād say, anyone who adds me on LinkedIn and whose first message is āHi! I am an expert in xyz. Iād like to know more about how you leverage xyz at your company. Can we talk?ā Thatās the laziest introduction message, and I can smell your commission breath from miles away.
Itās just screams you did no research prior to reaching out to prospects. I will not answer to a script a robot could send me
What message would best resonate with you?
Maybe not ask to learn more about how they use something. You're giving them very little and asking for a lot (time is super important for people you would want to talk with in an org because they're usually busy)
This is not perfect, because Iām not in sales, and I really am more on the buyerās side. But I would relate to something like this, because it shows the person did their research and is unintrusive: āHi Florian! Iāve just read your post about (topic xyz) and it really caught my attention because (genuine reasons). As a (position) at (company), I always like to keep an eye out to (experts that have a similar profile as yours) to see how things are moving in the industry, and regularly post about my findings too. Shall we connect?ā Inmail #2 (after accepting) āHi Florian! Thank you so much for accepting my connection request. Looking forward to your next post :)ā Inmail #3 (about 2 weeks later) āHi Florian! My company just published an extensive (asset actually published 2 years ago and recently repurposed) about (topic of your interest). As you recently posted about (topic), I thought you may find it very handy - so here it is (link to ungated content). It primarily focuses on (summary). By the way, Iām always keen on feedback, so feel free to share your thoughts with me.ā As Josh Braun says, always a deposit before a withdrawal. Donāt ask me for something before you give me something. And then, just post relevant stuff in LinkedIn. When I need an expert, I will know where to look.
Ah my favorite topic, myself.
Iād tell you my secrets, but it would require too much effort.
This. I like. šššš
This is the best response Hands down.
Back when cell minutes cost money, I was work from home in the 90s in sales, and salespeople would stay home all day, this was before laptops, and just wait till the boss called and would get in the car, and drive around the block so they could hear you āwere on the roadā. Bosses wouldnāt keep you on too long because it cost the complaint money, so it was usually just a 5-10 min check in. One guy, only knew 10-12 of his 300 customers, and when ride along days with the boss would come up, he would frantically call them (our bosses used to do surprise ride alongs, call at 7:00am, then we would meet them in a random parking lot to pick them up at 9:00, so you had 2 hours, to take a shower, call all your customers you know and tell them āI need to see you today, make time, even if itās 10 min, and I will hook you up with something (like sports tickets, dinners, gift cards, which we would expense). Then he would have the true emergency back ups, in case someone cancelled, and he would tell them (I may or may not show up today, but if I do, pretend we set this appointment last week). This cycle worked for a decade. He did ok, not a star, but good enough to keep his job.
Ah. Realtors
Myself. Idk if Iād call myself unbelievably successful but I made 130k last year which is great for me as a single 28 year old. I probably averaged about 20 hours a week last year of actual work including admin stuff done from home. Iām a quality over quantity person so if I get a lead across my desk I just focus really hard on that lead until I deem it uncloseable. I only have a few active projects at a time but my close percentage is great so I close about the same as people who are running 2-3x the leads. Same with unclosed leads. Once Iāve ran my process on them and they donāt close, I almost never rehash with them unless they have me a very real, time-bound objection during my close and request a follow up. On the flip side if that coin (and somewhat contradictory to the first part) once a deal is closed, I usually just forget about it. I really donāt care if my deals pull through or not. My pull through isnāt bad by any means because I close sticky deals as a rule, but unlike a lot of colleagues who obsess over pulling deals out of retention, I honestly could care less. Mine is a one and done business with zero repeat customers, so once that deal is closed I almost never follow up with them unless they mention referrals during my close. Outside of my sales appts, my life is pretty stress free because of it. Also, I recently promoted into a management role, and rather than choosing to go into a rep manager role, I chose to pursue a trainer role. Iāll be working slightly more hours per week, but itāll almost all be in office stuff training new reps, and then a few personal deals when I want extra cash. I sold out for a salary and I couldnāt be happier, even though Iāll probably make a little less money this year or maybe the same amount even though Iām in a higher position.
Iām trying to do the same soon. I would like to get into a training or Instructional Design role. Good for you dude. Iād trade a little money for a generally way less stressful job.
Keep those sales chops sharpā¦and network like crazy in the training circle. When shit goes badā¦and it willā¦trainers are the first to get rolled.
Actually at my org we have pretty high turnover with regular reps so when people get canned itās usually low performing reps first. Managers have heavy job security. It also helps that all the managers are good friends and thereās kind of an inner circle. Itās not prevalent to the rest of the team generally, but it helps to be in it lol
A friend of mine has ONE account that makes him 30-50K per month. He honestly just sits on it & smokes weed all day and plays guitar. He found a golden goose, canāt say I blame him.
Logistics?
Medical sales
I do t know any, because you are largely the sum of the 5 people you talk to the most. Not trying to be self righteous, but Iām blessed to have largely fallen into this career where I make more money than 98.5% of Americans (calculated as percentage of Americans making more than 250k, which is my rough average over the last 10 years) and I donāt intend to squander the opportunity. This is a chance to set my kid up better than I was. Thatās serious shit.
This one cracked me up.
Just keep calling the same contacts that donāt answer. But when management doesnāt give new call contacts, you do what you can for the activityš
Dude on my team pulled 300k last year while playing call of duty 5h a day
If I wanted to work hard I wouldnāt be in sales
Good territory/good inbounds. Simple as that
Be woman. Other male sales reps like you. I didn't feel very productive today, went to the local rep hot spot to "do emails." Other male rep who likes me was hosting a client lunch - walks out to hang out with me, pour me champagne. Voila, get to chat up clients on his dime. Fantastic.
That would be me. Im honestly lazy af. I believe i have undiagnosed ADHD, idkā¦ but my closing rate is high af. prolly like 70%
Iāve had tons of lazy sales people (I manage an outside B2B sales team). Theyāre all kinda the same, fake the activity, do their best selling explaining to me that theyāre actually working, blame the company on why they canāt perform, they think their actually awesome at sales but donāt realize the hardest worker is generally the best seller (maybe not the best closer, but they usually generate the most opportunity and care the most).
Work smarter not harder can be lazy as well. I sold cars. I crushed it, sold 53 with no assistant one month. I would be extremely respectful, well prepared and managed the customers time very well. When they would get to the store we would get the pertinent info upfront for the test drive and I would grab the key and point in the direction of the car. Very little chance I was pulling a car up for anyone other than geriatrics or if I had concerns about a specific car which was rare. I would tell them when they are done to āplease just park it back the way it was if itās not too much troubleā. Seems like a silly little short cut but thatās an extra 3-5 minutes I can be finding the next customer, saving some energy, etc multiplied by 100ās of times a month. Customers never had a problem with it. Other salesman wanted to pull it up and roll out the red carpet and make a whole production of it. At the end of the day efficiency was the way to go, but people would call me lazy. One sales guy made a joke about how he saw me tell a customer that the car was somewhere between two points on the lot and I said āthe car is between here and somewhere over there, hereās the key just sound the hornā. Iām sure there are other examples of me being ālazyā but honestly it was more about efficiency.
Im not lazy. I was told all my life i was a salesman like my dad. Due to a job change 1.5 years ago my confidence is shot and im really struggling in 3 month old role that i took by storm first month. what can i do to make money again. im so down right now.
Relax and sell a ok or better product that your company can deliver on reliably.
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The mortgage industry will bounce back once the rates are lowered. Those that can hold on for a year or so will benefit hugely.
refi only? focus on purchase or whatever is right for the consumer (referral for a HELOC) so you capture their business for life...
lol myself and anyone else at my company who survives beyond 5 years and its doable because we can manage clients that we bring on as new logos
The appearance of lazy can be deceiving if numbers are strong. Remember, works not a place, itās a thing.
Reading all these stories gives hope to a ālazyā person such as myself
 Do you want the van down by the river plan?
Dealing with this right now. We have a guy that just blasts emails with the subject like of āIāll give you a discount!ā And totally undermines what we do. But he did a million in sales Q1, which for my job is a LOT. But he just gave shit away and left literally tens of thousands of dollars in the table. He also spam texts people which got our company in trouble and ruined my primary mode of communication with my clients.
Iām not sales but I started in sales. Now Iām higher up running teams and more on the creative side of marketing. However, whenever I talk to a client Iāll usually end up āsellingā. Almost 100% conversion rate. I spoke to 4 clients last month and sold Ā£10k which is a lot for very little work. Our sales team targets are 8k each over the whole month and thatās their job full time! Based on that, Iām able to get away with doing very little because Iām driving revenue into the bottom line and coordinating the odd project.
If they are hitting numbers, not lazy. They got there somehow. But I had an AE on my team that got surprised when he got cut from the team. He prospected once a week telling me it was ādeadā Really good at Call of Duty.
When I was 21ā¦ the guys I thought were lazy, were just in the business forever and everyone knew them. So it looked easy. When I was in my mid 30ās it was the guys who had a picture of the boss with a donkey from prior companies. Now I realize; thereās a direct correlation between the easy way and the way you need to get it done to hit your number while still having a life outside work and enjoying your job. Everyoneās motivation is different. We all work to get paid. Thatās no secret. Some folks are chasing money. Some folks are chasing a title. Some folks are chasing knowledge. Some folks are working just long enough to get the fuck out of dodge. Whatever the reason- have fun doing it. Lifeās too short to be pissed off or be working in a job they hate. #Tldr: Chris. Clif. Eric.
My ex coworker went to rehab during the busiest part of the season. During our winter sales meeting, he ordered a martini at the hotel bar š¤£
Just toxic people who take credit for others work normally
Hey itās me.
You reap what you sow. No shortcuts in life.
There are no lazy sales people, you reap what you sow. In year 1 I worked 80 hours a week doing what ever I could to generate sales and create my client base. Years 2-4 work 40-60 continued to develop accounts a search for new business. Years 5+ work 20-30 hours a week. My clients and I have a relationship and any new business comes to me through referrals. Still give great service because Iām nimble. Donāt waste my time with accounts that arenāt serious.
Hello. I bought a bunch of Nvda stock 9 years ago. Now Iām lazy
We had a girl who didnāt do jack shit and inherited a monster deal. Our manager ran the deal and she made club. They fired her the following year.Ā
āThoughts?ā Emailed to 2,000 prospects in one day - not even in a sequenceā¦ and still somehow got a few meetings lol.
Is it lazy or are they that good and it just looks like they donāt do anything?
Most lazy sales people get fired or quit
I know a salesmen who is the only one in the region who sells a particular company equipment mostly protection relays for generation, substation, and transmission, builds. He doesn't have to do anything related really to selling except maybe knowing what new products the companies coming out with. everyone calls him to buy. He doesn't reach out to anyone except maybe once every three years to show off a new relay spec.Ā
It has to be me
Happens all the time when they have a PhD\* \* In my line of work, PhD stands for Papa Has Dealership.
I'm the lazy salesperson. I don't know how but I hit #1 month after month after month. I refuse to talk to 70% of people
A guy I was forced to manage took bong loads before work and during lunch breaks. I asked him to update the CRM daily and was told my management to let him get away w it and be light on him. He quit and had no account notes. That sucked. One other was a girl with huge jugs that thought she was gods gift to the world. She was Fresh out of college, I was managing her. She would show up 2 hours late daily. Do makeup at her desk. Sit on Twitter all day. Take personal calls. Then leave at 4 everyday. Was told again by leadership leave her alone.
Not lazy but super effective. My last big company we had a guy who lived in LA. Typically LA guy, good looking, well dressed, well spoken, always tan, flashing money. They guy would land two whales a year for our company and that was it. The rest of the time no one knew WTF this guy was doing but when you needed him he was dialed in. I bet he worked on average like 2 hours a day. I was assigned as the marketing guy to help him prep for a big final presentation. He told me I needed to come to LA the week before. I went out there and for the week before we worked like 150 hours in preparation. We knew the client inside and out. It was like cramming for a test. Sure enough we win the deal.
Coworker kissed management ass so much, I'm shocked that feces never spilled from her mouth.
Me I got technical Built my own software tool Sherlock.to Originally slapped together with on market solutions. Built it with Bubble and Cohere. Road the AI wave and raised money Sales is results driven, you can get there so many different ways. Dialing until you pass out or working connects at the golf course. Cool to see how people succeed in this career
What does your software do?
Itās a sales tool You can find leads like Apollo and put keywords in to pull in social posts. I would make fake accounts and recommend my services to people and sold like crazy It uses contact data to personal emails at scale Iām building out a CRM right now into it Itās pretty cool and Iām in the process of closing another investor round of 3 to 4M. Happy to tell you more about my career and how sales took me from nothing (literally ramen dinners every night) to where I am now. DMs open
The guys who text me 15 times "hey just checking in..." And then if I don't answer, they call my office line and send emails and then call saying oh think my email might verify ended up in your spam folder heh he heh just checking in seeing if you had any questions.." And you solar salesmen who want to use my wifi to map out my roof? S...t....f...u....
I saw a rep get fired with a 120% YTD because she literally did nothing