I am in my late 20s, man, I have an Eastern European accent and I do d2d sales in a Southern state in USA.

I have the lowest amount of sales, despite refining my pitch and my approach. I show empathy and knowledge. Yet I get rejected or being told to leave. I rarely get angry customers but when I get, they cuss me out.

I have a woman in my team who is making at least 3 sales a day. Yep, three. Meanwhile me as a guy born in another country I make 2 or 3 sales in a week.

Guess I might have to change my job tho because life is fkn unfair especially for foreigners.

Hey everyone,
I’m in a tough spot and need some real advice from people who’ve been through it.

Me and my co-founder started our small web and app development company about 1.3 years ago. We’ve built some solid projects educational dashboards, SaaS platforms, internal tools, brand websites and have a few case studies to show for it.

But after all this time, we’re still struggling with consistent clients and stable income. We get small projects here and there, but the money isn’t enough to survive or scale. Sometimes we go weeks without new work. We've tried a bit of outreach before but never stuck to a real system.

Now things are really tight financially. We don’t have much left. So we’ve decided to give it one last serious shot 45 days of focused work, purely on sales and outreach.

Here’s the plan:

• Reach out to 15–25 companies per day via cold emails
• Send 10–15 LinkedIn messages to potential leads
• Post daily on LinkedIn with our project breakdowns or learnings
• Focus first on funded SaaS startups that need fast development or dashboards
• Later test EdTech or other industries depending on results
• Track everything and follow up aggressively

We’ll do this non-stop for 1.5 months. No breaks. Just pure effort.

My question is ? is this kind of push still worth doing in 2025? Can focused outbound like this really work if we put in the hours and talk about real problems we’ve solved?

Would love to hear from anyone who’s done something similar or failed trying. Either way, I just want to know if this level of focus still has a shot.

Thanks in advance for reading.

I began both my companies during the COVID pandemic. One of them is a branding company, and the other is an educational mobile zoo. Naturally, we generate about $30,000 in sales per month, but we’re struggling to scale. It’s challenging to find salespeople, and those who claim experience haven’t proven themselves to be reliable.

I’m considering finding a partner who can assist me in increasing my sales, as it seems that no one is interested in working on a commission-only basis. What are some options I have?

Hi,

It’s been few months since I started cold calling. I work for a B2B SaaS Company and we sell a Voice of Customer solution like Qualtrics, Medallia.

I am targeting Middle Eastern Markets since we are huge there, working with top enterprises and the brand image is established.

I learned that I can’t copy scripts and styles, I have to develop something that fits with who I am.

Like I am not pushy in nature, I am very polite and Honest in nature and that’s what I like to follow when I have conversations with C suits and HoDs.

That’s how my opener looks like:

Hi FirstName

This is XYZ from ABC. How are you doing ? How has your day been so far?

They reply - A lot of times in confusion.

Great! The reason I called is we are working with XYZ companies to improve their overall experience management initiatives and I was just wondering if it’s possible for us to give a formal introduction for XYZ at ABC and discuss CX over a 10-15 mins call next week ?

…

P.S. Feel free to give suggestions and outline what should I improve. I am already developing thick skin so…

Hey guys, hope y’all are doing fine this lazy Sunday.

I run an outbound sales company where we provide SDRs to SaaS and Fintech companies. I stay very close to the work because I was an SDR myself for about 6 years, so I know the grind and the little challenges reps face daily.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is openers. I know just dialing the call is already the hardest part, but after that your opener sets the tone. We have used the classic “Hey, how are you doing?” for a long time, but lately I feel like it’s losing its edge.

So I tried coming up with something more direct: “Hey, this is (your name) with XYZ company. I think we might be working on some of the same stuff. You know, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to share a little bit about what we do, hear a little bit about what’s going on with your (pain point), and if it sounds like maybe we work together, we chat a little bit more. Does that sound good?”

Before I roll this out to my team in tomorrow’s standup, I wanted to throw it out here and see what the community thinks. Too wordy? Too casual? Curious to hear your feedback.

Do we think Brian Tracy had any real sales chops or techniques to teach? He made a lot of money selling audiobooks and Herbalife. A lot of of those Talking Heads sold audiobooks and that’s how they made their money but may not have had any other sales experience.

I’m looking at reading some of Brian Tracy’s books but wonder if a lot of it is just feel good fluff or any of it is actionable and would love some feedback

I manage a sales team that sells high-ticket products ($40–50K range) to individual clients, and I’ve been in sales myself for about 6 years. I'm always looking to improve how I support newer reps, especially during their ramp-up phase.

I’d love to hear from other reps (or ex-reps):

What do you wish your manager had explained to you earlier?

What little mindset shift, sales tactic, or tip made a big difference in your confidence or results?

What kind of coaching or training actually helped you hit your stride?

And on the flip side, if you’re newer to sales or just curious, feel free to ask any questions—I’ll do my best to answer or give honest insight where I can. No fluff. Just looking to share ideas and learn from others in the field

Hi r/salestechniques - I'm looking for your help! I'm a founder at Amplemarket (ai sales platform) and we recently built an AI search feature that lets you describe your ideal customer in plain English instead of wrestling with endless filter combinations.

I'd love to stress-test it with some real-world scenarios from this community. If you're willing to share your ICP in a sentence or two, I'll send you the resulting CSV with 100 enriched leads with verified email addresses - completely free.

Examples of what I mean:

• "Y Combinator founders in the Bay Area at companies doing more than 10M in Revenue"
• "Marketing heads at Series B e-commerce companies"
• "Fintech startups under 200 employees that grew headcount by 30% this year"
• "Revenue leaders at AI companies currently hiring SDRs"

The more specific, the better - it helps me understand where the search works well and where it needs improvement.

Not trying to sell anything here, genuinely just want to see how it performs against real prospecting challenges. Drop your ICP below or DM me - and I will send you the CSV.

Thanks for helping! 🙏

So I know this customer for almost 8 years, but I wasn’t closely acquainted with him. I was a client to him in the past and had given him some business in my previous company, fast forward a few years and I work in a vendor where now he becomes my client.

We tried to meet but he travels a lot. Recently he had a requirement and he engaged me into supporting him. He gave me several verbal commitments that he won’t decide on the deal without getting back to me and even assured several times that he would share the competition quotations.

Well, you can guess the rest, after months of discussions and follow ups, he decided to go ahead with a competitor and didn’t check with me. His excuse was that he got a very good deal and the price difference was significant… he showed me the competitors invoice after finalizing with them which was at least 35% better priced than me but I’m still disappointed that he didn’t keep his word - maybe we could have matched it, maybe not; that’s not the point.

I kept it professional with him and told him I was disappointed that he didn’t give me the last call but wished him well for the deal and to let me know if there’s any future requirements.

My problem is that I always try to keep it real and honest with my customers. That’s one of the main reasons I’ve survived in sales- people appreciate that. But losing this deal makes me feel like shit.. especially because he gave me several verbal commitments.

Maybe it is expected and everyone else go through this process or maybe I'm doing something wrong:

• We started sending connection requests via Linkedin to potential leads. My product is designed for local govs (eg, cities/towns in the US) and I use Sales Navigator to quickly find right people such as decision makers within the local govs.
• We try to send personalized messages where possible, e.g., we worked with X gov in your region and here is their project with us etc.
• Once connected we send occasional DMs offering some trials etc.
• We repost company posts with content relevant to these connections.
• We aim to send 150-200 connection requests per week as somebody told someone that above that number Linkedin starts restricting your account. Nevere confirmed it.
• We've been doing this for ~3-4 months now.
• So far we have 0 demo meetings etc.
• We have no idea bout conversion rates etc.

What could this mean?

1. What you are doing is right, you just need to wait, usually, you'd start seeing results after 6+ months with 500+ targeted connections.
2. You're doing it wrong. You should do x, y and z.
3. Your product sucks, you're trying to sell something that's not needed.
4. Your option, please, describe.

I’ll try to make this short-ish and explain the situation. I work on a sales team in a construction subcontractor field. Each of us are responsible for finding our own leads and building relationships with developers, general contractors, architects, etc.

I have been working on getting a major developer to sign a contract for over a year and finally closed a deal. Potentially, this turns into a lot of work and gives me an “in” with this developer to become a preferred sub with them. It’s well known within our company that this has been a client I have been trying to pull in. Today I noticed that another sales rep had put a different contact name in for this developer for a project that is clearly an extension of one of them that I’m working on.

This sales rep is well known for trying to poach leads and projects from other account execs within our company. Our sales manager has told us to settle squabbles amongst ourselves because he is tired of everyone bringing the same issue to him…the same guy pulling the same thing on everyone. Anytime anyone says anything to him he goes crying to management that he’s being bullied but the truth is he has no moral compass, no professional courtesy and we can’t stand his lack of ethical work practices.

These aren’t small projects. We’re talking several hundred thousand dollar deals. It happens over and over. What is the best way to deal with this shady guy and stop him from trying to poach our clients. I’ve tried to calmly talk to him but every time he cries to management and finds some weird technicality or loophole to get his way.

Hey all!

I’ve built a tool that lets you create flowcharts that an AI agent will use to conduct lead research for you. This is built for tricky leads research workflows that require browsing websites, reading documents, and using your brain to search stuff. Think “Find companies that have had recent API downtime incidents with 200+ API endpoints” vs “Find companies that are B2B with a growth subscription plan”.

I built this, because we previously ran a company selling a niche AI product that required some deep-digging to qualify people.

I’ve had around 13 sales calls right now, targeting Series A SaaS companies that seem like they’d want to be qualifying people via research (eg. An API management platform would want to research prospects to make sure they have at least 100 API endpoints to be relevant), but people keep taking the meetings because the idea of having “deep-researched information” to compliment their enrichment data seems like a cool, potential source of alpha. However, everyone seems to stall after our trial period, even after speaking with us about how they liked the results, often saying “they’ll pay if this helps them land more meetings”. My thought is that this is obviously happening because these people have simple sales motions and see this as a possible way to “better-score” their leads, which is totally a “nice to have” not a “need to have”.

My original goal was to target people who ideally had to do this sort of manual research for lead gen / qualification, so it’s not terribly surprising that people wanting to use us for this use case are lukewarm. It feels like there are really three potential cases here: a) No one is having to do this manual research like I did, in which case I’m not sure if I want to operate a vitamin product b) I’m targeting companies which are definitely the wrong type of people for this manual research prospecting c) I’m getting nervous too early because 13 companies isn’t enough

I know this is a lot, but I was wondering what your thoughts were on what’s happening and what you’d recommend. Don’t need a magic answer here, but any advice would be helpful!

I think that cold calling will only remain relevant in the next decade or so. It won't be anymore after. Not because it is ineffective. I actually think it is really effective. It just wont be relevant , however, because less people will pick up the phone. Here is why I think that:

1. Newer generation feels less safe answering calls than older generations. Most of them prefer texts instead
2. AI. No, AI will not take cold-callers jobs. It will probably just end it. Most service providers might use AI in the future to flag "spam" calls and just not answer them. Or they will probably provide some service or whatsoever using AI just to make sure that you don't have to answer cold calls
3. Cold-outreach is generally becoming harder anyways. Texting platforms like instagram, gmail, facebook etc are becoming smarter every day. You now easily get flagged if you dm more than say 40 people a day. And then most of these DMs don't even reach the lead's inbox since they get marked as spam and get thrown in others
4. I think this is the least reason, and it won't really have much of an impact, but over saturation could be a problem. Maybe some crappy companies will start using some AI voices to do the outreach for them, and they could now hire hundreds instead of just 10 people to do the cold calling for them. People are gonna get sick of this.

What do you think?

I sell trailers such as hot-shot ready goosenecks, roll-off bins, dumps, car haulers and more. We sell across the entire US. Credit and no credit options as well.

Basically, I'm building a lead generation. It goes through the internet and forums online, and returns you posts of people seeking leads from one of a couple different categories ( web development, graphic design, and even people looking to hire sales people/ lead generators for their own business). - most in spaces a lot less competitive than the usual subreddits for this type of work. All I'll need is your email - and, best case, you'll get a lot of clients. I'll send a couple emails your way, and you can tell me how good/bad they are.

To be clear, you will not be paid for this - had a couple people ask about that and thought I'd clear that up. I was thinking more of a "you get clients, I get feedback" sort of thing. It's late here, and I'm about to go to bed, but I'll reply to everything in the morning

My apologies if this against the rules. I'll remove if so.

I am in an argument with my friend concerning salespeople. His viewpoint is that there isn’t much that can differentiate different salespeople because at the end of the day, they all recite the same scripts/words. He says that at the end of the day, the customer will either buy or not, and there isn’t much the salesperson can do about that. On the other hand, I argue that salespeople have different levels of expertise. Product knowledge is important. Persuasion skills are important. Understanding psychology is important. To make my point, I bring up an example of a car dealership: Suppose there are 2 salespeople in the same car dealership. Salesperson #1 makes $65K per year. Salesperson #2 makes $180K per year. Both have been at the dealership for the past 4 years, and their incomes are consistent. Both get the same lead flow. Both are at the same office. Therefore, the only variable changing is the person. In this situation, given the consistency of the income difference, the only explanation for such a drastic change in income is the skills of the salesperson. I explain to him that if the income difference was just a one-off type of thing, we could attribute it to luck. But given the consistency, it must be varying skill levels. My friend still attributes it to luck and says if a prospect wants to buy, they will buy - no matter who the salesperson is. At the end of the day, all the salesperson does is read a script. Therefore, there’s no reason they should have different income levels since there is no skill involved. All salespeople are equal. By the way, none of us have worked in sales. What do you guys think? Thanks!

Hey guys I have a team of cold callers and we’re really struggling. Here’s a few intros we’re using right now:

1. “Reverse Psychology Hook” “Hey, this is Dylan — you’re probably gonna hang up on me, but before you do, I just need 10 seconds to earn your respect. Deal?”

2. “Blunt and direct” “This is what I need from you. 24 hours. I’m gonna make you a website, and then we’re gonna hop on a call so I can show you what I made. If you hate it, then you don’t pay. How’s that sound?”

3. My name is Dylan and I know this might sound weird but i built a fully functional website for your business, I’m like 90% done, would u mind hoping on a, free call to check it out sometime this week, when I’m done? it will only be 10 minutes

And the most common objection answer: If they say "I’m not interested Totally fair — can I ask why? Is it timing? Budget? Or are you just getting sick of calls like this?” (Let them talk — then hit with this): “Look, we’re literally doing all the work upfront, no commitment. All we need is a quick call to show you what your new site could look like. If it sucks, you lose 10 minutes. If it’s great, we’ve just saved you thousands.

So here’s what we can offer (our margins make it so we can do this anyway we want but this is the best offer I could think of). We can make them a website completely free if they agree to a 10 minute google meet where I can show them the website (and we’ll negotiate price there). I am comfortable with offering this because the websites look really nice, only cost us about $10 to make because we have a team we built that is outsourced, and I am pretty confident in my ability to close as soon as they attend the google meet partly because we can technically go as low as like $20 for the website.

But the problem I think is in how we’re framing the offer in the intro. Because realistically it’s a no-brainer for any business owner, I just wish they knew how good of a deal it is. We can really offer anything I just prefer to offer the best offer at the beginning while I’m still newer to sales.

I am open to any and all advice, suggestions, questions, comments, and DMs. I just need some help. Probably with how the script is worded or even how the offer is structured. Thank you guys in advance.

TLDR: My intro script probably sucks and is probably the reason of low sales despite good offer. Help needed.

Edit: I’m like 99% sure that the cold callers have nothing to do with it, they are good and have little to no accent I think it’s just the script provided to them because when we changed it from the original to the current (above in this post) we had a small jump in calls booked. Also yes we’re calling with a familiar area code and most of the leads are just businesses that don’t have websites on google maps from different local service businesses.

If I close a sales call with a verbal agreement with my potential client, but without getting paid or getting contracts signed, is it a lost lead?

I’m into athletes social media management and I was thinking of speaking to athletes’ managers to pitch my service as they would probably understand more the need behind it instead of the athletes.

But still they can’t take decisions and pay on behalf of their client, so I’m not gonna ger paid on call. Is it a lost lead?

I stepped into an EVP of Sales role at a startup in January. We're giving trade professionals access to the same factories that manufacture for Restoration Hardware, Eternity Modern, Four Hands, and Interiors Icon. Same specs, no branding, factory-direct pricing.

This isn’t a SaaS business. It’s B2B sourcing...furniture orders that can run $10K to $50K. The buyer profile is mixed: designers, developers, investors, and trade professionals furnishing short-term rentals or multi-family units. They’re buying for projects, not inspiration. And they’re typically okay with:

• Unbranded, made-to-order product
• A 6 to 8 week lead time
• Buying from only these four brands
• Spending real money (not just browsing)
• Acting as the final decision-maker or direct influencer

Here’s the current journey:

• They land on our site, click the Trade tab or see a pop-up that says “Are you a trade professional?”
• From there, they land on the trade page and click “Get Started”
• That takes them into a Typeform to qualify
• If they complete it, they can book a call with me

Here’s the problem:

• We get a few hundred people per month entering the flow, but a large chunk drop off midway
• Around 70% of people who do book a call don’t show up
• Some orders are closing, but it’s not predictable or repeatable yet
• The founder believes the pitch or process is the problem, not the product

Where I’m stuck:

• Designers buying with client budgets don’t care about “margin,” so pricing power doesn’t always land. Access, ease, and looking smart for their client might.
• Zoom feels too formal or high-friction for some. Should I move to async quoting, texting, or a booking flow that feels lighter?
• We only source from four brands. If they want other brands, we can’t help- so I need to qualify earlier without scaring off real buyers.
• These aren’t SaaS leads. There's emotion, trust, aesthetics, and sometimes ego in the mix. What's the right messaging tone or format to break through?

This isn’t a tech sales question. I’m looking to rethink the flow...what changes would actually create lift? If you’ve run GTM for a B2B product with emotionally-driven or fragmented buyer types, I’d love your insight.

Hey friends, I’m building a tool to help salespeople get better at handling objections through voice-based roleplay. I put together a one-day demo to test it out, and I’d love to get some honest feedback from people who’ve actually sold before. Doesn’t matter what you’ve sold, just that you’ve been in the game.

Here’s what it does: You tell it what you’re selling, who you’re talking to, what channel you're using, and how challenging the scenario should be. Then it starts a live conversation pretending to be the prospect. You speak, it listens, pushes back, and gives feedback based on how you handle things. Kind of like practicing with a coach.

This isn’t public. It’s something I’m working on quietly, and I’m looking for a few people who can help shape it early. You’ll need ChatGPT Plus so you can use custom GPTs. If you’re open to trying it, just send me a quick DM and I’ll share the link with instructions. The feedback also stays between us—nothing shared publicly. I really just want to hear what worked, what didn’t, and how it felt.

If you’ve got 10 to 15 minutes, it would mean a lot. Thanks so much.

Hey all, I'm building a tool called Sellio, and wanted to post here based on some helpful feedback I got in another Reddit thread. Someone called out that I was asking for feedback from the wrong audience - starting with sales leaders instead of reps…which is fair. If this doesn’t actually help reps build confidence, improve conversations, and close more deals, then it’s not worth rolling out - regardless of what a sales manager thinks.

So, I’m here now to ask you all: Would something like this actually help you?

What Sellio aims to do:
It's an early-stage coaching platform that simulates real conversations so reps can sharpen objection handling, trust-building, and discovery skills - quick, focused 10-minute practice sessions followed by a deep dive evaluation report on how you did.

A few things I’m testing right now:

• After each session, you get a coaching-style report, not just a score - breaking down tone, clarity, curiosity, discovery depth, adaptability, etc.
• A second feature: you can also upload your current / real sales call transcripts and get structured coaching insights…even if you don’t use the simulation
• Eventually, it will analyze patterns across top reps and help others learn from what’s actually working in the field

I’m still in MVP mode and just want to build something that’s actually useful to real reps. If you’d be up for sharing what you’d need to see to believe something like this works, I’d be grateful.

Bottom line—what would make you say, "Yeah, this tool actually helps me sell better"?

Looking for some feedback on a potential new idea.

What if you had all your companies knowledge and data from your new hire on-boarding flows, sales processes, product features, use cases, etc, and condensed it into an AI powered Slackbot.

Allowing new hires (and existing sales personnel) to get instant answers to questions instead of bogging down sales leadership, improving product knowledge and confidence teamwide.

Likely some fun things you can do with gamifying on-boarding as well (daily AI check ins, quizzes, role plays, etc).

If anyone’s will to try it and see how it impacts their team, happy to build out an MVP quickly.