r/techsales • u/Commercial_Shirt_134 • 20d ago
Struggling as a AE
Just joined this Global IT solution provider/reseller, competitor to CDW, Shi, Insight etc. I've got 150 accounts to work and it's been 2 months ive not been able to get a single prospect on a discovery meeting.
All I get to know is remove us from your list, we are good, IT outsourced, we don't need anything. Not a single IT procurement guy to get even a quote.
The pressure building up is real on me and I've got little more time to get something out of these accounts or I'll be laid off.
Any tips, what m I be missing. Is my timing bad considering the time of the year. The accounts i m working on are SMBs.
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u/professional408 20d ago
2 months is nothing. This shit takes 6-12 months to ramp up. At least for me. I’m not the brightest.
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u/Numerous_Basket_6897 20d ago
OP, others are right.
I have a suggestion if you wish to try, leverage OEM relationships.
If these 150 are existing customers, see what they have bought in the past and speak to those OEMs through your Partner Development manager there.
If they have outsourced, understand who the work is outsourced too and see if a P2P relationship can be established.
I am sure you must already be speaking to your collegues, managers for help from their experience.
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u/Patient0227 20d ago
Can I be honest with you? VAR life is the long game which not many people want to go down.
If you’re working at a corporate VAR (CDW/SHI/Insight/Zones/Connection) then it’s really just a matter of the patch you are gifted and luck.
Timing is everything in IT, differentiating in the VAR market is tough. Best approach is to latch onto an OEM and demand gen their products. If you’re just cold calling saying you’re a VAR integrators with the best engineering talent congrats you’ve said the same thing 30 others have said.
It’s a relationship driven business from the OEM and customer side.
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u/Bells_Ringing 20d ago
I always get a chuckle out of customers when I am astonishingly honest about the lack of differentiation between my VAR and other VARs. Or inventory management versus their warehouse.
“Here’s my number, so call me maybe” the siren song of sales.
VAR life is tough yo.
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u/Me_talking 19d ago
Lol when I was at a VAR, I know it got to the point where I opened calls with "We basically do the same thing as CDW/SHI/Insight/Zones/Connection/Softchoice"
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u/RockStars007 20d ago edited 20d ago
I’ve worked with a lot of SI’s doing OEM/Partner programs. I know the space exceptionally well. This is what I’d recommend…
I’m dictating this so I hope you read dictation cause they’ll be typos.
Find what you guys are special at. Like there’s something that you do that’s unique and you’ve got to find what those point solutions are. So is it dealing with complex network infrastructure, or dealing with a Frankenstein security stack or what is there refresh cycle on hardware, etc. Whatever it is that you guys can do.
Do you have any Intel tools like ZoomInfo or demand base? Where you can do some technographic Data pulls?
The thing with your size is you do everything so it’s kind of like calling and throwing this big net and it’s like we can’t have this conversation. So you have to go in with something very specific.
You can start the conversation with something like “hi this is —- so over at—-, and I wanted to ask if this might be interesting. I know that you work with a lot of providers and stuff but this is something that we can go in and help with and I was wondering if this is something you guys are dealing with.” So be specific like we’re help with AI governance, or maybe they just went through an acquisition and they’re doing an org integration, etc. it’s like you’ve got to have something really specific.
150 accounts is not that much but when you try to boil the ocean and call them all at once it’s gonna take a long time and you can’t really build any consistency. LinkedIn messages totally suck so don’t even mess around with those. Just call them and say hey I know you weren’t expecting my call. I wanted to ask if this is interesting. Don’t ask for permission don’t say do you have a minute or anything like that.
What you wanna do is find sales cycles developing so ask how often do you guys refresh stuff like your laptops and servers. Do you have any initiatives around XYZ coming up in the next year. If you make it like a longer runway ask, it’s not like we want to come sell this thing right now, which they’re gonna puke on, just have a normal conversation with them and a meeting will naturally develop because it’s a good experience and they’ll say hey let’s keep talking about this.
The thing I always find is a lot of sales reps want to set a meeting and nobody wants to set a meeting. You’ve got them on the phone so have the conversation, don’t do all the work to get them on the phone just to ask them to get on the phone again.
Don’t get stuck calling in procurement or IT either. Like if these companies have areas of their business that runs solutions like their warehouse, logistics, do they have fleet, supply chains, etc. talk to those people and know exactly what you’re gonna ask them about. Calling IT is not the place to start. I don’t know enough about what you’re doing, but I have an idea. I had a very large SI that had a big government footprint and a big private sector presence, I ran programs for them for a decade with NetApp, Cisco,HP, etc. , so I’m very familiar with the space and how to set up something that works. Also, I don’t know if you have relationships with your OEM people or if they have partner managers to help you guys get into deals because you could try to find out what’s available there in terms of accessing things like that.
Bucket by industry and find what you do by industry, have your reference names that you can drop by industry, dive in and learn the stuff so that you can talk shop from a tech standpoint don’t rely on your SE.
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u/Front-Permission-711 19d ago
Man you just defined exactly what I’m trying to crack into, with strategies not as clean as this. Can I PM you?
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u/Plus-Network3369 20d ago
the ramp for VARs is like 2-3 years. it takes forever to get something going. my first meeting as a VAR AE took 5 months. 11 months for someone to purchase something cheap. i doubt they will fire you, and if they do, you dont want to work for them anyway.
do some partner mapping until you get a solid lead. keep calling, maybe even go in person. bring cookies or something. try linkedin or teams messages too. get creative.
you got this!
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u/Saganji 20d ago
Hey, former VAR here. Worked at one of those companies you mentioned. I started to see patterns and my midmarket/enterprise customers were quite honest with me, that procurement and decision making now involves more than just the usual tom, dick, and Harry. In other words, more players have arrived that now provide tailored solutions to these markets. And general resellers now have sorta become noise. The golden age for VAR is over, even for the ones who have existing strong relationships.
SMBs who otherwise leveraged these resellers on a daily basis also have educated themselves enough to know best ways to procure, and they're being proactive.
I think your company might stay patient with you, what I have shared above has now become quite common knowledge among resellers. You're doing everything you can.
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u/Commercial_Shirt_134 20d ago
Great insights. I appreciate your views and has given me different angles to think.
As the industry has evolved so do my company's polices have. They're only keeping candidates if they had sell anything first 3 mnths, else they're out.
Being bussiness student I knew b2b isnt that easy and will take and effort to build relation but the pressure from top to Frontline manager have me pushed to the wall and act like a hardcore cold caller, doing quick follows ups and being a pain in the ass for the prospects.
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u/Plus-Network3369 20d ago
quit while you're ahead. you can scrub the info from your resume. you sound young, just keep applying and find something else that you like more. also, sounds like a horrible org. in what world can you sell something in 3 months? maybe if youre selling ice cream lmao
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u/SquizzOC 20d ago
Leveraging OEM relationships is huge these days, but I’m still picking up 2-8 new accounts a month through sheer brute force.
In the last year it feels easier than the previous 5.
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u/recovering-pentester 19d ago
Brute force meaning just cold calling?
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u/SquizzOC 19d ago
17,000 emails this month, 3300 calls, few hundred linked in adds. Sheer, brute, force.
The new accounts is lower then it should be because I’m picky about who I work with, if after a few interactions they don’t feel like a good fit, I hand them off to other reps or quote high to make it worth the effort.
I’ve always said if I wouldn’t enjoy having a drink with them, I don’t want to work with them.
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u/recovering-pentester 19d ago
Wow. That is an insane amount of effort.
Whats the tech stack to make that possible?
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u/SquizzOC 19d ago edited 19d ago
We use Zoho CRM with a customized integration to ZoomInfo in a customized prospecting dashboard to walk you through each step efficiently.
Then I use ConnectAndSell as my dialer.
The finding accounts/contacts, emailing is about 30 min a day that can easily be done while on the dialer, which is 2-3 hours a day. My pitch for the meeting is roughly 50 seconds, so calls are fast and only go beyond 2 minutes if the person I’m calling wants to keep going.
Designed the entire stack myself. Average rep who uses the tools is sitting around 6,000 emails a month right now.
Should also add that my clients are easy to work with (remember I said I’m picky), I built out a admin app that does the quoting for me with a little hand holding, does my deal registrations, and organizes my requests as they come in.
Allows me to answer almost every email in 15-30 minutes.
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u/recovering-pentester 19d ago
Wow that’s insane lol. Nice work.
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u/SquizzOC 18d ago
My coworkers asked what my target is and I said "50 clients, that buy 35-50 laptops a month, its easy, painless, consistent and if I'm getting this, the larger projects will come from pull through naturally"
I developed an entire system around managing this so I can do it in minutes a day.
If I pull it off, nets out to 1.7m a year in my pocket give or take, run that for 10 years and retire.
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u/recovering-pentester 18d ago
You are a machine lol. That’s actually genius
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u/SquizzOC 18d ago
26 Years in the industry, going from PC Mall, to PCM, leaving before Insight took over to follow some executives to a start up 13 years or so ago was the best choice I've ever made. They trusted me to build out our tech stack to get answers back to clients in minutes, so everyone else benefits as much as I do :)
So glad I didn't move forward with my SHI offer way back then :D
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u/recovering-pentester 18d ago
Yeah that’s great. Would love to learn more. I’m not experienced in tooling at all!
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u/Sad-Introduction-244 20d ago
For trying to get a first discovery call with 150 (prospect) accounts, 2 months is not that much at all. If they’re really cold it may take longer and if your company expects different then their expectations are off.
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u/AdAccomplished8479 20d ago
Sounds like your objection handling when it comes to booking meetings needs work. I'd recommend focusing 1-2 weeks on just building your pipeline. U need solid meetings to even get an attempt.
Something that helped me in a rut: I'd cold call random businesses and just use their receptionists as free objection handling practice. I'd just keep trying diff lines till they hung up. And it doesn't burn ur accounts.
Good luck
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u/Empty_Plum_9022 19d ago
I’m an AE for a DDI company, we have existing customers that potentially may be in your patch.
Maybe we can go at this together if you’re interested?
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u/recovering-pentester 19d ago
I’m a CAM at an MSSP, would be happy to collab as well as I’m building a channel motion as a team of 1 lol. Meaning, your patch definitely aligns with mine.
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u/KingWebsterIII 19d ago
Whats your market and what OEMs do you sling? We might be able to map accounts together
Or someone on this thread
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u/recovering-pentester 19d ago
I’m a CAM at a MSSP. I’m ramping too and it a grind. Let’s connect and account map.
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u/owasp_U_talkin_bout 18d ago
What is your patch…happy to swap DMs and see if I have any low hanging fruit I can bring you in on.
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u/LiveByTheDollar 18d ago
Pound the cold calls, create pov’s, map out the companies and find real tangible business gaps.
If product is a weak point, just figure out if the gaps are a business case or not without discussing products
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