In May, Charlie Cowan (a.k.a. RevOps Charlie) posted this article with five ways revenue leaders can use RepVue to benefit their sales orgs and companies. I thought it was great advice, so I wanted to share it on our site too. You can find the original post here.

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If you’ve not come across RepVue as a revenue leader, you should do. Quickly.

RepVue is a site that crowdsources sales compensation data from salespeople about the org they work in.

• What do they earn?
• What is the commission scheme like?
• How many people are hitting target?
• How do they feel about their company?

RepVue is the go to site for reps as they decide whether to join your company, and even more important, whether they decide to stay.

Ryan Walsh, founder of RepVue posted this recently

What percent of a sales orgs' team members have submitted data to RepVue, last ~90 days
4.8% of (14k) $CRM $HUBS 8.4% $IOT 10.4%$MDB 7.7% $DDOG 8.6%$DOCU 7.8%$OKTA 7.3%$XM 4.7%$SMAR 7.8%$PS 9.7%
Some privates (Gong 19.8%, Outreach 16.7%, Podium 10.5%).

— Ryan @ RepVue (@ryan_c_walsh) May 17, 2023

Across large public businesses between 5 and 10% of all reps submitted a rating in the last 90 days.

This shows that reps are all over this site and that the data is current and accurate.

So as a revenue leader how do you use this site to your benefit?

1. Read and learn from your own company’s listing

Firstly, sign up as an individual leader by submitting a rating on your own org, or a previous org if you have just joined.

Taking the example of Gainsight we can see 69 employee ratings, with 90% verified as valid by the RepVue team.

One of the key metrics reps are looking at is the percentage of sellers that meet quota – “how likely am I to hit this OTE being waved in my face?”

Action: are these ranges and quota attainments correct? If not, you might not be doing a great job of communicating how well people are doing or what the potential of your commission scheme is for top performers.

2. Take a look at your closest competitors

Because that’s exactly what your reps are doing.

If you have an attrition problem (and the average tenure of a SaaS AE is only 22 months of productive work according to Bridge Group) then your reps are figuring out where they can hit quota if it is not with you.

As well as the quota and commission numbers, take a look at their tech stacks. What are your competitors offering their reps to get the job done?

You might think “They are just SDRs/AEs – they’ll use what they are given” but that’s not what your reps are thinking – they want to make sure they have the right kit to be able to achieve that OTE.

Action: do a revenue tech stack audit and travel through your seller’s process to understand what tools you have and how they impact your rep’s workflow. Contact me for help with this.

3. Sign up to RepVue as an employer

Having understood how you stack up against your competition, its time to engage with RepVue and have the platform work for you.

As a leader you are able to get deeper insights and trends

What is it that your reps care about the most?

I chatted to the RepVue team and as seen in this chart – ‘Product – Market Fit’ is the standout leader in what reps care about.

Reps want to know they are selling a product that customers want.

That is how they will meet or exceed their targets.

That is how they’ll have a better seller experience.

That is how they will build the next step in their career with your company.

Having showed you what your reps value, RepVue will provide you with a breakdown on how your different teams feel about each of these attributes.

Here we can see a heatmap across different teams – and immediately I am drawn to the Inbound Lead/Opportunity Flow column.

Across new business, existing accounts and sales management there is a below average confidence that the company is providing reps with the ingredients to turn into a deal.

You might think “We already do an employee survey every quarter – we have this data.” But do you trust your data? Does your one SDR focused on the Italian market really believe her submission is anonymous?

Action: Assess what is important to the reps in your team, assess how they feel about each of those attributes and build a plan to remediate. Is it a lead flow issue, or is it a communications issue? Focus on demonstrating your product-market fit to your reps – give them confidence they are playing for the right team.

4. Develop your company profile

Reps are going to RepVue whether you own your profile or not. So it makes sense to ensure they get a great experience when they get there.

By owning your company profile you can start to communicate with high intent reps from other organisations thinking of moving:

• you can add a video that talks to the culture of your organisation
• you can respond to rep questions
• you can update your tech stack and benefits
• you can post your current job openings – putting them in front of the right candidates at the right time.

Action: fill out the employer form to get in touch with the RepVue team. Start reviewing inbound questions from reps and consider what culture content would be most appropriate to share – talking head videos from reps? Customers discussing their love for the product? Advice for the interview process?

5. Put your jobs in front of your competitor’s reps

As a revenue leader, the next approach is to put your open positions in front of candidates looking at your closest competitors.

You can choose up to 25 different orgs that you want to target with your jobs.

Reps are constantly looking at their own org to understand if their experience is consistent with what their colleagues are saying.

The jobs tab is a perfect place to position your open positions and tempt those reps to look at making the leap to join you.

Action: build a short list of companies you want to target for your job postings.

Reps have the data – you need to join them

Before the days of RepVue, or even Glassdoor, information about quotas, rep performance and potential earnings was asymmetric.

The company recruiters had the information, the candidate did not.

But that has flipped completely.

The candidate now has more data than the recruiter ever did.

Imagine asking a recruiter what % of the team hit quota last quarter or what the top performers were earning – they just don’t have access to that data.

The RepVue platform will only continue to grow – its just a question of whether you are going to avoid it, or embrace it to improve your own org and provide you a consistent pipeline of talent.