Recently just put in my two weeks at my current company. I work sales at a small tech firm. Originally took this job a little over a year ago with the promise of making some pretty big money. I did really well this last year and exceeded my quota. My total comp plan for this job was $60,000 base salary and then 75,000 commission if I hit quota so 135,000 total comp. During the entire year I was unable to see how much money I was making off commission, even though I asked multiple times. Finally they provided it starting in January, but at that time they changed my comp plan which I never signed. They told me that the changes were benefit me, but that's not the case at all. I got my W-2 back and saw that I made less than 80 grand last year. I was tracking it pretty regularly, so I knew that I was making significantly less than what I was supposed to.
That's when I started taking calls from recruiters. Met with two different companies and got offers from both! The second offer just happened yesterday and it's $125,000 salary with $125,000 in commission so a total comp plan is $250,000. They offer 7% matching for 401k, 17 weeks of paternity leave, great healthcare. The team that I'm going on had 8/9 team members making over 200k last year, and two of the team members actually made over 700k. It's an incredible opportunity and this title and comp was what I was targeting to get at 5 years, and I got it under 4. Super excited about this
Yesterday at a meeting with my leadership team to let them know what I was offered. I was planning on accepting it anyways, but wanted to share with them first. Needless to say that they were shocked. Right off the bat when I told how much the salary was, my CEO told me that no salesman should have a base salary of 125k. He started insulting me saying that no man needs 17 weeks of paternity leave, real men can get back to work after a week. I told him this was purely a financial decision for myself and my family, and he says “it's not all about money, it's about having fun”. It's probably fun for him because I've made him a s*** ton of money, while I'm probably the cheapest most effective salesman he will ever have. This past year working for the guy has not been fun. He might be one of the worst people I've ever met in my life. Literally I'd get on sales calls with him with a new person that we've never met before, and he's joking about how he was at the strip club the entire night before. I have to talk with him hours everyday, and I hate every single minute of it. Apparently I'm the best actor in the world because he had no idea how much I hate working with him.
They first came back and said that they would raise my salary from 60k to 65k a year. I said that's not even close, they came back 10 minutes later and said they would give me 80k. It's almost insulting at this point that I would leave 45k off the table purely in salary alone. I declined that offer as well.
Now when I spoke with my CEO over the last several months, he's always said that any salesman that ever leaves him is not going to get any commission for deals that they close. With that mind, they are now asking me to stay a full month, then they asked me to stay 3 weeks. I gave them 2 weeks with the knowledge that any big deals I'm closing over the next couple weeks (easily 400k worth of opportunities closing). I'm not giving them any more time than the two weeks
This post is an encouragement for all of you! It's the best time to get a salary boost. If you hate your job, there's plenty more out there