A sales leader breaks down how to evaluate a SaaS company before joining. Weight development and learning at 20%, company financial stability at 20%, and team success at 20%. The remaining criteria shift based on where you are in your career.
I've been in sales leadership long enough to watch people make both terrible and fantastic career decisions. With few exceptions, the great decisions were made with the long term view, while the bad decisions were fairly short sighted. The challenge is it can be difficult to think long term in this stressful and chaotic profession like we are in in sales. One way to think long term is to apply a framework towards how you think about your current and potential future roles. This video will walk you through my frame for career decisions. I've used this formula when I chose my next role after eight years at Qualtrics. I used it again when I joined LaunchDarkly and using this framework has consistently put me in fantastic situations to progress my career. While I will share my weightings for each category, please consider how yours may be different. We're all in different times. Seasons of our career and priorities should probably be different. Where applicable, I will call out the categories that will change weights as my career progresses to help you see how they might vary for you. Now let's start with my big three that are currently weighted at 20% each out of the equation. The first one is my development and learning. I've always prioritized learning because the more I learn, the more I can teach. The more I can teach, the greater impact I can make. Making this development becomes a significant impact and it's a domino that makes all the other priorities fall into place. The next piece is the company long term outlook, especially in a bad economy. I want to sell a must have product for financially stable, stable companies. I know a lot of people who took jobs at exciting startups for lots of money before losing their jobs shortly after the markets plummeted. As I move on in my career I may be less risk averse and the waiting for this category may decrease. Now just keep in mind, financially stable does not mean big companies. There are plenty of small companies that are financially stable and there are plenty of big companies bleeding cash. And as we've all seen, working at a big company does not guarantee job security. The next one in this really important category is success rate of teams. I want to do well because the people I work with are doing well. Being paid well in a winning environment is better than making even more in a losing environment and I can't imagine any career stage where this wouldn't be a priority because winning and losing are both contagious. Now the next three are going to be weighted at 10%. For me, the first one in this category is compensation. I have short term midterm and long term financial goals. Understanding my cash compensation and whether or not people can hit OTE and equity compensation like investing schedule, refreshes, et cetera play a significant role in my decision making. Further in my career, the compensation waiting will likely decrease as I become increasingly financially independent. The next one is Work Life Balance. It is critical to me that my employer respects boundaries and allows me to prioritize my family health and general well being as necessary as I continue in my career. This weighting will likely increase as my kids grow older and take on additional responsibilities in the community. The next one is the fulfillment of the job. Now fulfillment from work can come in a variety of ways. A big one is just enjoying the day to day, not dreading every week on Sunday night. The next one is how I can impact myself through learning and progression we talked about before. The next one is impacting others. Co workers, customers, other people around and the weighting for this category will likely increase as my career progresses. Now the final two are weighted at just 5% for me, but may be different for you. The first one is Promotion Path Clarity. When I join a company I am thinking long term. I like to understand what my trajectory could look like if I make a sizable impact. Understanding promotion criteria, timelines, titles, compensation and spending control are all important elements to understand for Promotion Path. If I were earlier in my career, this would be weighted higher as it's important to show a trajectory in your career to open up better opportunities later. And the last one is Office culture. I am an advocate for in office work at least a few times a week. When I'm in an office, I want the environment to be welcoming and supportive of collaboration. This would be more heavily weighted if I were in the office more than a small percentage of the time now. Now feel free to change the criteria and or the weighting for your purposes. Whatever it ends up looking like. I do strongly recommend having a documented way to assess career opportunities so you don't make critical decisions off of emotion only. That's it for today's video. I hope you enjoyed this topic and that it was helpful for you as you progress your sales career. If you're looking for more ways to improve, I've linked some free resources for you in the description of this video and in the pinned comment below. Simply visit that link, input your name, and tell me which email I can send this to you and I'll get them to you immediately. If you enjoyed this, please like subscribe and comment and I'll see you in the next video.
