Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / The Sales Reps Who Quit and Doubled Their Income
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I have been digging into a specific number that keeps coming up in conversations with sales leaders lately. One in four top-performing B2B sales reps left their roles in 2024. That is from Sales Assembly's latest benchmark report. Luna: A quarter of A-players walking out the door. That is not a turnover problem, that is a talent drainage crisis. Lucas: Exactly. And what is interesting is not just the fact that they left. It is where they went. I have been following three specific cases. Former SAP sellers who jumped to startups in the last eighteen months. Luna: SAP to a startup. That is a massive culture shift. What was the comp delta? Lucas: On-target earnings at SAP for a senior enterprise rep—call it one hundred eighty thousand, maybe two hundred thousand if they are crushing it. These three landed at early-stage companies, Series B or earlier, and their OTE jumped to over four hundred thousand. Plus equity. Luna: Double the cash comp. I mean, even if the equity is a lottery ticket, the base alone is a compelling reason to move. Lucas: Right. And the startups are not just overpaying out of desperation. There is a logic to it. I spoke with the VP of Sales at a data-infrastructure startup that raised a Series B last year. He told me they deliberately hired five ex-Oracle reps. Their average deal size went from sixty thousand dollars to eighty-four thousand in six months. Luna: A 40 percent increase. They are buying the playbook. These reps know how to navigate a twelve-month enterprise sales cycle, how to get to the economic buyer, how to handle procurement. Lucas: Exactly. The startup gets a compressed learning curve. The rep gets a comp structure that reflects the risk they are taking. It is what some analysts are calling 'rep arbitrage.' Luna: I like that term. But let's be honest—plenty of those moves do not work out. The equity never vests, the product is not ready, the founder micromanages. So what separates the successes from the disasters? Lucas: That is the question I wanted to get to. I have been looking at the common threads in the moves that paid off. The first one is actually pretty simple: the rep needs to believe in the product's ability to close a specific gap they have seen firsthand at their old company. Luna: So not just a cool technology. A gap they have personally felt the pain of. Lucas: Exactly. One of the SAP reps I mentioned, he had been losing deals to a smaller competitor that had a faster implementation timeline. He joined that competitor. He already knew the objections, the proof points, the competitor's weaknesses from the inside. Luna: That is a knowledge asset no one else on the new team has. He can position the product against SAP better than anyone. Lucas: Right. The second thread is the comp structure. The successful moves all had a guaranteed base for at least two years. Not just a draw against commission. A real base that covers their lifestyle so they can build pipeline without desperation. Luna: That requires the startup to have funding discipline. A lot of them cannot do that. They need reps hunting from day one. Lucas: Which is why the third thread matters: the rep should interview the founder as much as the founder interviews them. The ones that worked out, the reps told me they spent hours talking to the CEO about go to market strategy, hiring plans, and how they think about sales culture. Luna: That is a level of diligence most reps do not do. They get excited by the comp number and the pitch deck. Lucas: And they end up in a mess. I have a specific example. A former Salesforce rep joined a Series A company with a great product but a founder who had never managed a sales team. Within three months, the founder was overriding the rep's pricing decisions, changing commission plans mid-quarter, and micromanaging every forecast call. The rep quit in month five. Luna: So the comp was good, but the operating environment was toxic. That rep probably lost a year of compounding income. Lucas: Which brings me to the other side of this. What about the sales leaders who are trying to keep their A-players from leaving? If a startup can offer double the comp, how does a manager at a large enterprise compete? Luna: They cannot match the cash. So they have to offer something else. Lucas: I have seen three strategies that actually work. The first one surprised me. Some leaders are creating internal 'rotation programs' where top reps can spend six months in a different function—product, marketing, customer success—and then come back to sales with a broader perspective. Luna: That is interesting. A career growth path that does not require quitting. The rep gets new skills and a fresh challenge without the risk of a startup. Lucas: And the company retains institutional knowledge. The second strategy is more tactical: give top reps more control over their territory and deal strategy. The biggest complaint I hear from enterprise reps is that they feel like order-takers. They have to follow a prescribed sequence, use approved messaging, get pricing approved by three layers. Luna: The startup gives them autonomy. So the enterprise can counter by loosening the reins on their best people. Lucas: Exactly. One VP of Sales at a large CRM company told me they created a 'president's club' that is not just a trip. It also comes with the right to bypass certain approval processes for one year. The reps who earned it loved it more than the bonus. Luna: That is smart. Status and trust can be more motivating than an extra ten grand. Lucas: The third strategy is the hardest but maybe the most important: fix the broken comp plan before your best rep finds a better one. I have seen so many companies where the plan was designed three years ago and it has accumulated weird caps, clawbacks, and accelerators that do not align with the current market. Luna: Reps know exactly what their plan is worth. If they can see that the startup's plan is simpler and more transparent, that is a powerful pull. Lucas: So the takeaway for sales leaders in mid-2026 is not to obsess over matching startup comp. It is to make the current role more valuable in ways that money alone does not capture. Autonomy, growth, and a comp plan that feels fair. Luna: And for the reps listening, the lesson is: do your homework. A big comp number at a startup is not a guarantee. Diligence on the founder, the product gap, and the comp structure is what separates a career move from a costly detour. Lucas: Honestly, if this conversation saved you from one bad move or helped you retain one good rep, that's the kind of thing that makes this whole show worth doing. If today was valuable, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it is a small gesture that keeps this ad-free and lets us dig into the data instead of chasing sponsors. We really appreciate it. Lucas: Alright, back to the data. I want to leave listeners with one specific number to watch. According to a study from Bridge Group, the average tenure of a top-performing B2B sales rep dropped from 3.2 years in 2020 to 2.1 years in 2025. That trend is not slowing down. Luna: So the window to retain someone is shrinking. If you do not create a compelling environment in the first two years, they are gone. Lucas: That means the onboarding and first-year experience is now the retention strategy. Not the comp plan you adjust in year three. Luna: That reframes the whole hiring process. You are not just hiring a quota carrier. You are hiring someone you need to keep engaged from day one. Lucas: Right. And that is a very different conversation for sales leaders to have with their HR teams and their CEOs. Thanks for listening, Luna. Luna: Thanks, Lucas. See everyone next time.