Salespeople, What Is Your Number / Quota?
How much business do you need to pull in? $100,000 a month? $1 Million, $2 Million, more per year?
Feel free to use the stealth commenting feature and give a rough sense of segment or vertical (i.e., integrator, manufacturer, etc.)
Good question. Let's say the average salesperson makes $100,000 (obviously it varies widely but it's a round number to start with). For an integrator, it would seemingly have to be $1 Million + given the inherent low margins in the business.
In any event, feel free to share even if it's general rules of thumbs you know from your peers.
I was surprised to see a job posting for a large national integrator that expected bookings between $1.5M - $2.0M USD per year for a sales person with 3 years of experience.
In many regions, this is a pretty aggressive target for a junior sales person!
Here's that listing, from Convergint Careers
Been there done that. It can be done. Product diversity goes a long way – the ability to meet just about any specification out there (Fire, Access, CCTV, Intercom, Sound, Etc)…
I would be more interested in the margins in the different regions. Anyone interested or willing to share current margin averages?
I wonder what their mix between products and labor is and what their margins are. Seems likely a fairly high number but if they have have low product margins, they might need this to justify the position. Anyone with any ideas or thoughts on this?
Human effort is the variable in this equation of profit margin vs sales volume. The problem is as much a company's as it is a new employee's expectation to achieve this level of sales volume at a reasonable profit margin.
I got hired as a salesmen for a large company after I sold my 1st company. I needed something to do . so i got a job. I reallized they had what you would call fuzzy math . the equations did not line up .
Thier formula what 25% of the profit .But unless you really were in control of the company assets and project s you could not control the loss's. It really was a minimum wage job with bonus's. It used my resources to finance company expenses's buying them 30-90 days of time. Watch out for the flim flam sales people of life , promising the world when reality is a lot different .
When I Control the personnel , I control the loss's and the expense's. 30,30,30 , 10 rule ( 10% to the sales process )
I have watched many companys with 30+ % lossy rates as they have no control over thier operations and constant overages due to lack of strict control & standards .
Good People , Good Talent , High Expectations , Progressive Standards , Strict enforcement , Great Benefits & Rewards for success. I have sense set my own standards of No Compromise (NMWTC) And Good Records of ( The Black List ) No Compromise , No Exception s Taken , High Standards for Great Success. Passion , Performance , Pride
Michael, I believe $1.5 - 2m can be done. I just think that's a big number for an average or new rep, especially as you imply/ask, the margins are half decent.
You could bid a 12% margin on 20 different multi-million dollar RFPs and hope to win one but I am presuming the deals are more lucrative than this.
I know both manufacturer and integrator sales reps with $1-2M goals. Generally, on the integrator side, they work the bid market, though, where dollar amounts are usually much higher, and margins lower. For "direct", non-bid sales reps, the guys I know a multiple integrators are under a million. If I had to guess, I'd say $300-600k.
$500k sounds reasonable for direct, negotiated work. What I wonder is how much project management responsibility they take on? If they purely do sales and need separate PMs, engineers, etc., that's a big percentage of money going to the salesperson. On the other hand, maybe a $500k quota rep is getting paid in the $50k to $70k offsetting the lower sales number.
That lower number sounds about right to me. I generally think negotiated sales reps get a higher base and lower commission than reps taking on larger bid/RFP numbers, but that could just be me.
These numbers are achievable only if you have flexibility and support from the company. Everything in place and good structure .
Stay away from little projects which take a lot of energy & time. Invest Time in well Qualified leads & clients , Do the time and work the process .
Companies offer great exciting offers to entice new talent , Lots of applicants to sift thru, Big Egos & Large enticing # s to attract as many replies as possible .
I found to make the qualified leads a success you have to become a part of their life and culture and pretty much live daily around their schedule s .
There is a price to pay , nothing is free , ( Family , Relationships , Friendships ) everyone pays for the time.
I have worked as an integrator for over 18 years and have held numerous sales positions within several organizations. I was in a larger market and based on my relationships and sales opportunities, I typically would close over $5Million per year and earn well over $200K annually. I was compensated a percentage which would fluctuate based on the profit margins estimated and adjusted for what the actual project would close at. Sometimes this meant extra money, but more typically, it meant a reduction in my commissions. I have worked on the manufacturing side and the consulting side as well as business development and I can honestly say that the money is best when you work for a quality integrator and you exceed your numbers. By the way, my base was typically between 75K and 100K, with the remaining earnings based on commissions and bonuses.
A, thanks for sharing, very informative.
I think you will agree your performance is pretty exceptional. One person closing over $5 million per year at an integrator is not typical industry-wide. Your number is bigger than ~90% of integrator's annual company revenue, right? :)
$50m yearly, but it's an overlay position which allows me to leverage a very large group of people to retire my quota.
600-800k quota. 35 percent average margin. 50 k base. 50 k average yearly commisions, company car with health benefits.
My targets have been over my career based on turnover per annum of between 1 m- 5 m with a 20-30 % margin .However with the influx of lower cost products the targets have evolved into being Gross profit based ,this is due to the erosion of margins specifically on larger deals dropping down to in some cases 8% markup to,almost buy the business to try secure SLA what we are also finding is. A project is being split into supply install and SLA separate so one would quote separately on all the components .This is to drive the price down by the consulting engineers and customers
"due to the erosion of margins specifically on larger deals dropping down to in some cases 8% markup to almost buy the business to try secure SLA"
D, very helpful feedback.
Do you increase margins or hours on the labor side to make up for the declines on product markup? Or is the focus on getting the future service business?
"To increase margins, you have to put box around your target market."
Alan, what do you mean by 'box'? Do you mean limit the segments or type of customers you go after?
Is there a database or a website which has job posts for security companies, or must one constantly refer to career opportunity pages on various security company websites?
There is no single database or site. Indeed, it is highly fragmented, with no site even posting 10% of jobs available. Compounding this, a lot of the best jobs are not even disclosed anywhere online and are just handled through recruiters.
You ever thought about a job classifieds feature to IPVM? As an employer, it would be nice to advertise to a list of candidates that are already familiar with this somewhat specialized field. My biggest obstacle is finding people who know anything about video surveillance. I have pretty much given up on trying to find people who already know about this stuff, and just focused on training people. However, it would be a gold mine to have a plethera of people to advertise to that already have experience.
Sean, we have. See: Should IPVM Do A Job Board? If So, How Should It Work?
It's a fair amount of work and I am not sure how valuable it would be relative to other things we are working on so it's in queue for now.
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