Seeing shops freeze sales hires and tilt toward carrier reps as spot runs sideways; in Chicago we paused three AE openings in November and are only backfilling ops with pricing chops. Are you adjusting comp or titles as margins tighten and RFP cycles stretch, or still adding pure hunters?
Same in November — we put a 60-day “pricing sprint” before any AE backfill: no net-new hunting until they build an 80-lane priced book with ops sign-off, which kept margin discipline while spot’s sideways. Caveat: it slows ramp, but it cut bad quotes and sped reviews when “RFP cycles stretch”; are you giving ops veto power on bids?
After we “paused three AE openings in November,” we stood up a two-person deal desk that approves floors and accessorials inside 4 hours off a simple Airtable scorecard tied to DAT/SONAR, which kept hunters selling while RFPs stretched and lifted GM about 90 bps. If you’re tilting toward carrier reps, give them the same scorecard and a daily 15-minute sync with pricing so discounting doesn’t become the path of least resistance.
We pulled comp levers instead of headcount: in November we added a gate where AEs don’t earn variable on any lane under a pre-set floor, and we retitled backfills to “Carrier Programs” with a about 10% base bump to keep them out of spot. That kept margin discipline without hard capping discounting, though finance did push back on the base bump. @OP, since “RFP cycles stretch,” have you tried gating commission by priced-book coverage (e.g., no payout until 60 lanes are locked)?
We’re in Dallas and, with spot sideways, in November we set a “4-touch cap” on blind quotes and started a daily SONAR/DAT one-pager so AEs know when to walk. , the time sink fell about 30% and bad cost hits cooled, but the downside is we do miss a few quick-turn wins. @OP are you capping outbound quotes per rep, or using anything like https://www.freightwaves.com/knowledge-center/sonar to throttle effort?
Same vibe as your November pause: we froze net-new hunters and spun up a one-person proposal desk to own RFIs/RFQs — submit time dropped about 35% and we stopped chasing junk. @rbaker we also rolled backfills into an “Ops + Pricing” band; anyone tied draws to diesel so seasonality doesn’t crater take-home?
We shifted AEs to an ‘Account Partner’ seat (70/30) and pay on contribution margin per hour, plus a small clawback if tender acceptance dips — , chasing long ‘RFP cycles stretch’ with thin ops was killing us. We also moved prospects into 60-day micro-RFQs with 2-lane pilots so we can prove OTD and expand without waiting a quarter; DAT Trendlines helps set guardrails: https://www.dat.com/industry-trends/trendlines. @rb have you tried micro-RFQs or are you still running full-year bids?