Promises may be made, but are they kept once you are hired for a sales job.

You’re starting your new sales job. Promises were made. But soon, you discover that you have been lied to by upper management.

Maybe you didn’t get the sales territories you were promised.

Maybe you didn’t receive the compensation package that you were expecting.

Whatever the reason – do you stay, or do you go?

It depends on your situation.

My advice – stick it out for a while and see what happens. For example, there may be a change in management that could work to your advantage. Or another salesperson may leave, and you could inherit some of his large leads or accounts. Or, the compensation package may change. Or, one of your primary competitors could go belly up, and you and others on your sales team could receive more business.

Success in sales, like any profession, is due in part to hard work and smarts…but sometimes it’s mainly due to luck.

As we all know, sometimes it’s being at the right place at the right time when the stars (and dollar signs) are aligned that really matters.

For example, I knew a woman who became a sales manager and earned a lot of money because the entire sales team left. Fed up with what they considered to be the owners’ eccentric decisions and mismanagement, the whole team all walked out the door – expect her. She stuck it out.

Don’t always rely on promises alone when determining your road to success.

Eventually, the owner realized he was over his head, and hired a business manager to run the day-to-day operations. He also hired a team of top-notch employees to help run and manage the production and shipping departments.

With the business finally growing, the owner didn’t forget that woman who stayed with him during the hard times. As I mentioned above, she not only became the sales manager but also collected about 80% of all the significant accounts and was financially successful for several years – until the owner sold his business to a competitor.  As a result, the entire sales team was sold down the river. A year later, everyone was laid off. (But that’s a different story).

Of course, it’s always a good idea to do your homework before you accept a job offer. Yes, you can read reviews on Glassdoor or Indeed. But there have been numerous times when employers will “urge” their employees to write positive reviews to order to attract gullible employees.

Can you trust your gut? Not always.

One of my friends was working as a consultant for a tech start-up. The owner offered him a full-time job with benefits. With a family to support, he accepted the job offer. After all, he had been working as a consultant for a while, and he thought he knew the business. Or, so he thought.

It turned out to be the worst decision he ever made. But he stuck it out for about six months and decided he was happier being a consultant again.

We’re all human. We all make mistakes.

Promises don’t always turn into reality.

But if you stick it out, sometimes those promises may come true.