This was a great article from Salesforce that shares an idea that as we adapt to modern buyers that we will likely remove traditional sales measurements of quota and move to other customer satisfaction measurements.
Personally, as long as I have been in sales, quotas have existed and I have been ok with that. However, I have worked at places where that quota has been a key driver to closing a deal, and as the article mentions, it has in fact created unnatural acts. I can recall being forced to present a 50% discount to pull a deal from an expected Q2 close into a last month of the year win. It was not only hard to do as it made me make it about us and not the customer, it really showed the customer that we were not looking to help them but only to make a sale.
CSAT and other measurements are very important and IMHO should have been part of the KPIs used to compensate sellers for some time. Simon Mulcahy the CIO at Salesforce speaks of a future of blended metrics, something I would love to see more of but will re
The article also mentions a hybrid role “…balanced model of different performance metrics will evolve sellers into a perfect blend of hard and soft skills: agility, strategy, and expertise, yes, but also empathy, curiosity, and communication.” This is so important as we often spend much of our sales training time teaching selling actions but when I look for sellers for my team, I love to see things like natural curiosity, the ability to engage and communicate (listen as well as speak) in real conversations and also, empathy.
Sales is evolving, those who embrace this will succeed in the modern selling world where the buyer is evolving faster than we can keep up. Engaging customers with a real, at your core, desire to help and solve problems will always stand out and build the best relationships that stand the test of time.
This article is published on:https://www.salesforce.com/blog/end-of-sales-quotas/?utm_campaign=6040c8d248788b0001e2ddaf&utm_content=60ef19ebc81ed40001b93db8&utm_medium=smarpshare&utm_source=linkedin
