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Comment by fullspectrumdev | Hacker News Reader

Sales people generally (in sensible firms) aren’t expected to sell anything in their first quarter while they learn the ropes, the product, etc.

It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1 - those are usually dead times of year.

Unless your sales org is a puppy mill/boiler room… which many are.

Also, in this case they cut a huge amount of the sales org, this seems more like a “shit we over hired and need to lay people off without it being a layoff, let’s use performance…” shenanigans.

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> It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1

I've worked at a few enterprise software companies in the US, and Q4 is always the busiest time for sales. Having a deal roll into Q1 is very undesirable, so sales people do what they can do close before the end of the year. Q1 is incredibly quiet.

On the Engineering side, yes - Q4 and Q1 are super quiet as sales is driving the economic machine in Q4, and everyone's doing planning in Q1.

> Q4 is always the busiest time for sales.

Yes, but not if you're still ramping. The sales cycle for Cloudflare is probably 6-24 months. Unless you've stepped in on a deal that's basically about to close, you're not going to be closing just because it's Q4.

I worked in quite a few sensible firms. A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of because they would have been fired long before that. A 3 month ramp doesn't mean produce zero results. In case anyone is wondering, results for a salesperson means selling things.

That she goes on to try and rub their noses in her shortcomings tells me all I need to know who was at fault here.

Q4 is a dead time of year? I swear some of you have never had jobs.

> A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of

It's funny that you say this then go on to accuse others of never having had jobs.

I've worked around enterprise sales for years and it's entirely possible for reps to go 3 quarters without closing business if they're in a strategic patch or they're trying to build a new vertical/geo. Sales cycles run anywhere from 6-24 months of you're selling enterprise software of any substance or scale, and unless you're getting hot deals from the last person, you're going to be starting most of those at 0. That's why we have ramps.

That said, there are definitely metrics you can look at to see if someone is on the right path at the 3/6 month mark. It's just not necessarily closed business.

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