Published: Dec 12, 2021. Updated Jan 8, 2022.
I often get asked, what is it like working at Shopify in Sales?
Thus, I decided to write this blog post as an introduction to cover the most common questions I get asked.
The first thing to understand is Shopify’s business model. Shopify generates revenue from online store plans. The price ranges from $29/month up to $2000/month for Shopify Plus. The Shopify platform is the core of our business and all other products are generally upsells or cross-sells that enhance the platform.
Sales Organization
The salary of a Sales Development Representative is $70k-$80k, no commission (Toronto hire, 2021 start date, new grad)
The salary of a Merchant Solutions Sales Specialist is $70k Base, $87.5K OTE (Toronto hire, 2022 start date, 2 YoE)
The salary of an Account Executive entering as a Level 5 is $100k Base, $130K OTE (Toronto Hire, 2021 start date, 3 YoE)
All roles also feature $5k budget for Lifestyle Spending Plan (You can buy anything with it, even airplane tickets, etc) and $5k USD stock per year. ($15K USD stock vested over 3 years, 1 year cliff)
Sales Organization
The sales organization breaks down into 3 geographic locations, 3 segments, and 3 product lines.
Geographies: US East, US West, Canada. There are others in the globe but I’m assuming you’re from North America.
Customer Types: Core (Cross-Sell), Plus (Cross-Sell), New Business.
Shopify Plus – The enterprise version of Shopify for big businesses. Competes against Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, etc.
Shopify Financial – Fintech tools to help stores grow
Shopify Retail – Retail POS system which competes with Square.
This is important to know, because if you do end up landing an interview at the company, you will be joining one of these teams.
For example, you could be in Team Canada, Core Cross-Sell, and your manager will ask you to specialize in Shopify Financial.
Shopify Financial
In Shopify Financial, we only sell to existing Shopify customers. So you could consider us a cross-sell team. For example, imagine we have 2 million stores, and 100,000 have never used the Shopify Capital product, or 50,000 have never activated the Instalments solution. Our job is to educate the merchants on the product, and if its a fit, help them try it out.
– Shopify Payments (competes with Paypal or Auth.net).
Value prop: Increases conversion rates of your store, reduces fraud, and has 4x the checkout speed of a competitor.
– Shopify Capital (competes with Clearco)
Value prop: Resolves cash flow issues for your store, imagine you need to order 3x the amount of inventory you normally do for Black Friday but don’t have the cash – we can fund you that for a fixed 8-13% fee with no interest.
– Shopify Instalments (competes with Afterpay, Sezzle, Klarna)
Value prop: Increases AOV (Average order value) and conversion rates of your store, by allowing your customer to conveniently pay in 4 instalments.
The Shop App is technically under out portfolio too, but its free.
Here is a video pitch of me pitching the Shopify Capital Product that I used in my interview process. https://share.vidyard.com/watch/YQXidNAVSt8yugatigh9Ek?
Sales Process
In my role the leads are 50% inbound, 50% outbound. However over time, the leads dried up so I went 80% outbound.
Team quota plan. Sales plan is 70% base salary, 30% commission
We have 2 BDRs split across 20 reps so Account Executives have to do their own prospecting.. It’s not that hard to prospect into existing accounts though, they will usually take your call
Sales Tools
We use Salesforce CRM, Gong.io for call recording and training and Salesloft for building your outbound cadences.
You will use the Gsuite and Slack for communications.
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is segmented into 4 customer sizes.
Upgrades – You are calling on Shopify stores that are past the $3mil revenue mark, and pitching them to upgrade to Shopify Plus. It’s a mix of inbound and outbound leads.
Emerging – Approx. $10m-$50m revenue
Expanding – Approx. $50m-$100m revenue
Large Accounts – Our largest customers – Think of Kylie Cosmetics or Allbirds which are $100m+ companies. Allbirds case study
Sales Culture
As Shopify is a product-driven organization, rather than a sales organization, it makes it work in a very different way. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, these are all sales-driven. The majority of customers who buy the product talk to a salesperson, or buy through a channel partner.
Shopify on the other hand, is product-driven because the majority of customers just self-service by signing up on the website.
The overall company strategy translates into the culture. It is not a highly competitive sales culture meaning that the employees are quite relaxed. There are still sales targets, however, and sales people will push to reach them, but a lot of teams are on team quota plan, which encourages more collaboration within the wokrplace.
Most people at Shopify are very happy to work at the company. Customers are very happy as well; its common to talk to a Shopify storeowners and them to announce to you they really love the product.
Tobi, as a leader emphasizes work life balance, so you’re not pressured to “grind it out”
Entry Points & Example Sales Roles
If you are looking to join Shopify as a new grad, they’ve started a program called Revenue School Associate which is recommended. Aside from that, it’s always good to have coffee chats with individuals to help you determine which area of the business you are interested in, and bring value to. From that point on, you can always find a mentor, try to get a referral, and continue to network with individuals with similar interests. Employees at Shopify are eligible for a referral bonus so they are usually more than willing to help!
Account Executive – Financial Solutions https://www.linkedin.com/in/ifabiyi-adaran/
Account Executive – Shopify Plus Upgrades https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayneelford/
Sales Development Representative https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayangers/
Revenue School Associate – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tierney-sterling-6230b4160/
Merchant Success Manager – You work with an existing book of up to 100 stores to drive upsells and maintain retention. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandro-pacitti-750b6847/
More coming – send me an email of what other information you want to know that is missing. ryan@ryaning.com