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Comment by chucknelson | Hacker News Reader

Eh, I'm sure some hefty salaries being paid with the revenues makes employees happy at least.

I'm sure Groupon will get things under control, but I think the cut in fees and less frequent participation of merchants will offset any revenue growth. Just more investing on hype I guess.

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>Eh, I'm sure some hefty salaries being paid with the revenues makes employees happy at least.

We grew from 37 employees as of June 30, 2009 to 10,418 employees as of September 30, 2011.

If not hefty, than numerous...

Why Groupon employs over 10k people is beyond me, even if most of their employees are in accounts/sales it seems those numbers are a bit excessive. I have personally worked as a salesman for over 4 years, personally handling hundreds of clients on 5 different continents. I'm now very curious to know what its like to work at Groupon.

Groupon is in about 250 markets I think. So, that is 40 people per market. If half are customer support, that would be like 20 people per market in sales. That would mean the average salesperson, sets up 1 deal/month. Although, they probably churn through sales-people. So, if half the sales people are totally incompetent, that might be two deals per salesperson per month. Plus, there is probably some other stuff with Groupon Now.

I used to work at a "Groupon for X" startup and I can say that only closing 1 deal per month would be catastrophic results for a salesperson. I can't speak for Groupon, but I would put their targets at around 10-12 closed deals per month.

Do you sell to local small businesses? From my experience restaurant owners/massage clinics/etc can be VERY high touch.

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