Legitimate Opportunity to Enter Tech Sales
Pros
TL;DR Legit opportunity, challenging industry, worth trying. Alright, folks, here it is. If you have looked at these reviews and are trying to decide where the truth is between the impossibly enthusiastic and the unrealistically negative, here it is. If you love to overthink everything and want the most information possible, this is the review for you! Let me speak a bit about this industry as a whole from a never-heard-of-it-until-today perspective, and then I'll talk about revgen specifically. What the heck is a Sales Development Representative (SDR)? Essentially, telemarketing. Nobody uses the word telemarketing anymore, I guess because it sounds non-glorious. Now, as a sales development representative, you won't be calling lonely senior citizens and trying to sell them magazine subscriptions, at least. You will be calling a specific contact at a legitimate business who (at least theoretically) should be qualified to hear a demo presentation of the software as a service (SaaS) product (which they likely need or are using a competitor already) that you are assigned to. You aren't even selling the product, you are simply selling these folks a no-obligation 20 minute demonstration of the product. Someone else (above you) is the one doing the actual presentation. How does cold calling like this even make money? If you're calling a business that might need, for example, a service like Dropbox but geared for business-- how do they not have something in place already? How is this business functioning without something that they need-- and if they already have something in place, why would they ever take a cold call and consider changing a process based on a cold call? Well, it turns out that they do. Or, at least, about 5% of people do. Due to the margins in the software as a service (SaaS) industry, paying people about 42k per year to cold call for eight hours a day is a great use of resources. (My mind was blown by this). Okay, so, Revgen. Revgen needs you to succeed as a sales development representative (SDR) because they make money from contracts by placing you at a company as an SDR after you complete Revgen's bootcamp. In a sense, you are the product. But this means Revgen will do anything possible to see you succeed. You bring an honest effort to the table, and the managers there will jump through hoops and go to any length to see you do well. Upon graduation, Revgen wants you to be placed at a Shiny New Job that you'll enjoy and do well at because you're now representing Revgen. Maybe the biggest deal here is that Revgen has a well-connected network already. They know people. They have worked with so many companies already and have a good reputation in the industry. Have you ever asked yourself: "where are all the good jobs at? --I know some of these folks aren't even posting on Indeed or wherever." The network is a huge asset that someone in my shoes would never have access to otherwise. And these jobs pay good money! I didn't realize how much money sales jobs can pay. Everyone is so friendly, managers and coworkers. I've really met some cool people with fascinating backgrounds-- plenty of them having nothing to do with sales. This business is growing. They've expanded a lot in the past few years, and trajectory is continued expansion.
Cons
You are making 110 dials per day. You'll have time to accomplish this, don't worry about that part (plenty of your dials will go straight to voicemail (take only a few seconds for those) and plenty will be unanswered (takes about 30 seconds for those). You will, however, likely only speak to about 6 qualified "decisions makers" per day (on most "campaigns," campaign just means the specific company you're doing the calling for). (This absolutely varies from one campaign to another, so you may actually be booking more than this, but this is a reasonable average). Out of those 6 decision makers, you will likely only schedule one demo per day. In a sense, that's one success out of 110 attempts. And that's doing a good job! It can be challenging to feel like you're succeeding by doing this. And there will be days when you make 110 dials (or more) and don't book a single demo. That can be discouraging. Hardest of all, it depends on luck, somewhat. If your list of "leads" (people with phone numbers in whatever industry you're calling) is bad, it will be harder than if your list happens to be great. Depending somewhat on luck, there may be weeks when you don't book a demo. That can be discouraging; HOWEVER, everyone you're working with gets it. They've all been there before. Everyone I've interacted with is happy to listen to you vent. AND Revgen reviews a call of yours at random once a month. As long as you're following their system, if your results aren't great because of external factors, they work with you. I'm gonna touch on some of the cons in other posts: "Toxic CEO" I could see how John Rosar's personality (definitely type A) just isn't for everyone. He means business-- it seems everyone in the room sits up a little straighter when he is in the meeting. BUT. I've seen it myself. John Rosar WILL go to bat for you. If you complete the program, he will make any call, provide any recommendation, and you will always be welcome back at Revgen. And during the program, he will do anything to help you succeed. "They don't train you/training is repetitive" They definitely trained me. They have a systematic outline for sales that they have data to prove works pretty well. As you get more comfortable, there's also room to customize things a bit and make it your own. I doubt they're going to tell you some never-before-heard-of technique that works magically, but they definitely have a system. I could see how training could be repetitive. The method and techniques are pretty straight forward. I believe the repetition comes into play to reinforce best practices. Or, maybe you've picked something up and someone else is still consistently not doing something to spec. So you'll hear the training again in group. Or you're doing pretty well, but there's still that room for improvement. "If you miss quota, you get thrown under the bus" Perhaps this was not in place at the time, but there is now a process in place where one of your calls is reviewed by someone other than your manager once a month. You get a score based on a rubric that's provided for you on day one that makes sure you follow the revgen process. If you get a successful call score for the month but miss quota, they will work with you. In general, if you are putting forth genuine effort, they will 100% go to bat for you. "long hours/underpaid" The hours are 8:30-5:30 Monday-Friday with an hour off for lunch from 12-1. Once a week, you will have a call review session from 5-6pm, so half an hour after your normal end of day. At the time of this writing, the base pay is 30k + estimated 12k commission for an "on target earnings" (OTE) of 42k per year. And, just to be clear, they really pay you, at the very start I was worried this was some catch, but nope. Sales may not be for everyone, but this is a great way to find out if it's for you. Plenty of people in sales are cool folks who originally wanted to play guitar or animate or get a phd, but none of those things paid the bills the way sales does.
