You’re in sales but you didn’t mention anything about commissions or override on the performance of your team as a manager? Well you said sales more or less, so I’m guessing you’re not the outside new sales guy. Here are some questions I have and ones you may want to ask with respect to new role, as well as negotiate on.
–What is the OTE for the position as a manager? Is there no variable comp built in? Do you have commissions/ bonuses today in your current role?
–You may want to consider accepting a lower base IF your OTE is higher AND there actually people at that level achieving OTE or exceeding it. IF you cannot find that a good majority of the people achieve OTE, then its probably not a realistic sales target for the current stage of the solution/company, or the sales guys aren’t very good at what they do.
–OR, the lower base is commensurate with a change in role. For instance -if say you’re in a pre-sales sales engineer role, the bases tend to be higher, but the overall comp is lower than the saleperson. The salesperson’s base is typically 20-30% lower in some instances, but IF you do your job and you have a saleable product / captive audience, you should make far more than you could have as a sales engineer.
–If they cannot negotiate on base, negotiate on commissions. If they pay you an override based on team performance, negotiate a higher step up, accelerator above target, etc.
If you believe in the company, and this role enables you to make more money if your team produces, then you should go for it – stock options or not. Sales is about taking risks, otherwise what would be the point in putting yourself on the front line if there was not the possibility of bigger rewards?
