Why are so many sales management organizations struggling right now?

It’s not because of the economy…

It’s not because of lazy salespeople (we’ll always have those)…

It’s not because you’re getting squeezed on price because everyone is looking for the lowest price…

It’s because most sales organizations are still using the old and tired way of measuring a salesperson’s effectiveness: sales quotas.

The Sales Management Myth of the Sales Quota

Nearly 100% of all Sales Management organizations assign sales quotas.

However, less than 10% of all sales organizations assign prospecting quotas.

And as you know as a sales management professional…you reap what you sow. So if you’re serious about sales management success, then you must measure that success one play at a time.

As a sales manager, when you demand your salespeople to do something they don’t like to do, oftentimes those commands are ignored. And when you assign measurable objectives for each sales person by either the week or the month, many of your sales people may call your micro-manager.

The truth of the matter is that sales people tend to gravitate to the things that they like to do and are the easiest to do and they will avoid the hard things. Many of those “hard things” are things that will help them make money and bear their quotas.

And its your job to nudge ’em…and measure ’em.

The overarching  goal of the sales management professional is to help sales people be successful in difficult tasks like prospecting. Which because no sales person likes to do it, the sales manager needs to measure it.

Enter The Sales Management Prospecting Quota

So instead of assigning sales quotas, start assigning sales prospecting quotas. For example you might adopt some of the following quotas:

• Get 10 C-level business cards per week

• Get five new name accounts per week

• Write 10 proposals to do prospective accounts in one month

• Have five new meetings with VP level or higher executives per week

• Make five brand-new sales presentations to new accounts per week

When you start assigning activity quotas instead of sales quotas, you will see your sales teams productivity starting to improve. As the expression goes:

“What gets measured gets DONE”

And as the sales management professional, you need to measure the activities of your sales people, especially the tough and least popular ones that lead to sales like sales prospecting.

Sales quotas simply don’t work to affect behavior of sales people, but behavior quotas do. So start assigning new kinds of quotas at measure specific and measurable activities and behaviors which will lead to the attainment of sales quotas and beyond.

And once you start doing that, you’ll not only be managing like an unconventional sales manager, but you and your sales team will start getting unconventional results as well.