Compensation is one of the more personal aspects of evaluating any new job. Trying to understand a company's culture and specifically, the organization within the company you are evaluating is almost impossible.
Ryan Walsh, the founder, and CEO of RepVue may have figured out exactly how to provide transparency in both compensation and culture in the B2B SaaS and Cloud industry.
Ryan possesses a very rare trait, a B2B SaaS sales leader who progressed his career from sales rep to Chief Revenue Officer over 16 years in the same company! Next up, enable every B2B Sales rep the ability to gain the insights of an "insider" into the reality of the variable compensation and culture of a potential future employer.
Amongst many data points Ryan shared, 67% of sales professionals (N = 3,000+) said if the role within the company was working for them, they would not want to change companies, still the reality is most companies do not meet the expectations of the modern B2B Sales professional.
RepVue has over 20,000 participants resulting in 26,500+ ratings on B2B Sales organizations. When asked what the most important attributes to a sales professional were, the number one answer was 1) Product-Market Fit. Compensation was a highly ranked variable behind Product-Market Fit, and very close to "culture".
How do you define culture? In most sales organizations culture is closely correlated to "winning" as measured by achieving quota. Having uncapped earnings is another critical factor, and base salary is much less important IF and WHEN existing employees are meeting and exceeding quota. Knowing if these elements exist is a large part of the RepVue vision.
Culture for salespeople is the ability to succeed, be recognized, and make money. RepVue calculates a company score that is based upon two separate and distinct sets of data. The first set is comprised of seven categories using a 1-5 score to determine sentiment. Those seven categories are:
- Base Salary
- Incentive structure
- Culture and Leadership
- Product Market Fit
- Professional development and training
- Inbound lead flow
- Diversity and Inclusion
RepVue then overlays the weight that salespeople rank as most important in each category. Simply stated, if a company is doing better in a category that salespeople rate highly, the best your score. The inverse is also true, meaning that if you score low on a category that is less important, it will not necessarily help your overall score. Scoring low on a highly weighted attribute will hurt your company score.
The second section that RepVue uses is based upon the compensation elements of each company's sales organization. Examples include base salary, on-target earnings, average % quota achievement, deal size and most someone can earn in a specific role.
In today's B2B SaaS industry, hiring has become a significant challenge and bottleneck to growth. As this industry trend evolves, sales professionals have started to encourage companies to understand how their sales organizations stack up against competitors.
One of the interesting data points that RepVue provides is the average contract value, correlated to quota, compensation, and company score. The basis "message" is the ability to message your unique value and competitive advantage in the language that resonates with sales professionals.
If you are a B2B Cloud sales professional, sales leader, human capital leader, or talent acquisition professional, Ryan Walsh and RepVue is a name, site, and company you will want to know.