Can Reddit Help Sales Professionals?

Reddit can be a…place. It’s been called the “front page of the Internet” and probably also a number of less flattering names. Last year, it became a publicly-traded company. You may have also seen Reddit in the news this past April or May or one week ago, because of a scandal involving an AI experiment conducted, without permission, on members of a particular subreddit and the subsequent suit Reddit brought against the implicated startup company. Subreddits are the topic-organized pages or “communities” into which the website is divided. If you’re old, think: Facebook pages or groups. If you’re young, think: a string of comments on a TikTok video. (If I’m wrong about that analogy, don’t call me.) But whether you’re young or old, you should know, and probably already do, that there’s a subreddit for almost everything.

But what does this mean for sales professionals? Is “Sales Reddit” worth visiting? How can you use it? And what should you watch out for?

WELCOME TO r/sales

It contains multitudes. Recent threads range from the instructional (“Best advice for a newbie is to shut up”) to the inquisitive (“How many of you hit Quota last year?”) to the existential (“Is tech sales eating itself alive? Endless outreach, AI overload, and buyers who’ve seen it all”). The tone of people’s threads might be curious, frustrated, or commiserating.

Sales will also make its way into a variety of subreddits. For example, on r/funny, you can find a corgi forcing his parent to play fetch while on sales calls. On r/todayilearned, you can indeed learn that “luxury department store Neiman Marcus gets 40% of its sales from 2% of its customers.” But if you want the most direct path to Reddit’s sales-related cache, you would go to r/sales or one of its cousins, like r/salesmotivation, r/salesoperations, r/b2b_sales, or r/salesdevelopment (which is actually a channel linked by r/sales).

FIRST, A WORD FROM YOUR INNER ALARMIST

Reddit, like many things on the internet, is not entirely regulated to block things like misinformation. The company has community rules, and many subreddits are scrupulously governed by moderators who filter for things like relevance and spam. For example, the sales page does not allow self-promotion, bots, spam, or intra-group recruiting, aside from their weekly job thread. (They will also direct you toward other sub pages that do, e.g., r/salesjobs.) But none of these completely prevent people from sharing bad advice, misleading others (whether intentionally or not), or treating people with disrespect, to name a few hazards. This, by the way, is not something I have personally observed on the sales page. In fact, during my—albeit limited—lurking experience, I found a lot of members to be kind and encouraging to one another.

WHEN CAN GOING ON REDDIT BE HELPFUL TO YOU AS A SALES PROFESSIONAL?

Commiserating/Venting
r/sales is full of, well, salespeople. People who have gone through many of the challenges you may have experienced, or maybe even regularly experience, in your career. Sales is hard. Sales can be draining. Sales can feel personal. And stressful. People’s work cultures and social resources vary. Not everyone has a trusted buddy they can talk to about the prospect who walked out mid-presentation or the Cruella De Vil protégé you cold called this morning. Many of the posts are titled some kind of variation on “I messed up.” Even if you have friends and loved ones who are willing to lend a sympathetic ear after you had to write the words closed:lost on your CRM, they may not fully understand the ins and outs of the sales world. But chances are, you can find some folks on r/sales who do. While therapy is probably a better setting in which to work on your self-worth (which is NOT tied to your success in sales), for a quick fix, Reddit can offer some comfort on a crummy day.

Encouragement
This one’s related, but I was heartened to see a number of really kind strangers-supporting-strangers situations. Responses to someone who shared a “best month yet” included “Heck yeah dude!!!!” “Well done proud of u!!!” and “Insert ‘congrats, happy for you’ meme haha.” Although the potential for Grinchy replies is there, the number of sincere pats on the back I read warmed me. None of us are above the need for support and validation.

A sales toolbox expansion set
r/sales has an entire section dedicated to resources that includes everything from a sales code of ethics (based on the Manufacturers’ Representatives Educational Research Foundation’s) to an aggregated list of common questions, advice, motivation, book recommendations, and more. It can be a good starting point if you’re looking to bulk up your sales knowledge, though, again, read and absorb at your own risk.

Advice…maybe
People on Reddit are often generous with their wisdom. Sometimes too generous. There is little barrier to entry on dispensing advice, so don’t rely on the quality or veracity of it without confirming with a trusted source. That said, r/sales can contain useful tips from seemingly thoughtful professionals. This blog aggregates useful tools and resources the author found on Reddit alone.

Getting hired…maybe
Every week, the sales page prints a “who’s hiring” post, where participants can…you guessed it, post roles they’re hiring for. The subpage’s mandated format for posts (pasted below) ensures that jobseekers get enough information for this to be useful and not a wild goose chase.

Location:
Industry:
Job Title/Role:
Direct Hire or 1099:
Base/Commission/Commission Only:
Pay range/Expected Earnings ($#):
Job duties/description:
Any external job posting link or application instructions:

That said, fake job listings abound online and have been getting more and more sophisticated, so it’s highly important to exercise caution to avoid parting with time, money, and possibly even safety with “ghost jobs.”

Recruiting… sometimes
Those “who’s hiring” posts we just talked about? Someone’s posting them (unless they’re not…see above). Enough people use Reddit to recruit that there’s an entire science behind it. This article lays out one approach to gaining insight into your recruiting efficiency: “Start by monitoring the number of responses or applications received through your job postings. Then, assess applicants’ quality and alignment with the desired qualifications. Finally, engage with candidates and track the conversion rate from initial contact to hiring. You can also leverage tracking links or unique codes to identify the source of applications.”

For kicks
We all know the Internet can be a dumpster fire, convening space, dog-video repository, and many more things, all in one. You probably won’t find dog videos on the main Reddit sales page, but you might find some camaraderie, some interesting anecdotes, some take-it-or-leave-it advice, and maybe even a few laughs. Just remember: you’re not looking at a pristine representative sample of the sales world. You’re looking at a sample of people who spend at least some time on Reddit who are in sales—for better or for worse.

Maestro helps clients with recruiting and hiring—from BDR to C-suite. Reach out to learn more at mastery@maestrogroup.co.