4 ms·

Sales people are really good about selling themselves, but generally not so great at actually selling the thing you are hiring them to sell.

• shostack 11y ago
  Right, which is why you let them go if they don't hit quota. What they do is the most measurable part of the acquisition funnel. Laying off a large group of them speaks to financial issues/improper planning vs. just regular weeding out if poor performers.
  • my5thaccount 11y ago
    Quotas are fine for an enterprise with a decades old sales process that has data to measure. SurveyMonkey was entering a new market and growing the sales force quickly and before they even knew what a reasonable quota was. You could say that's bad planning, you could also say it's throwing spaghetti at the wall to see which sales person sticks. Data gathering, if you will.
  • ucaetano 11y ago
    That doesn't work when you're setting targets for very aggressive growth. A much higher % of salespeople won't hit their quotas, and not because of bad performance, but usually because of bad (aggressive) planning. Letting those many people go would mean spending too much money on replacements, that probably still won't sell their quotas. in the essence, you market analysis (value generated to customer, willingness to pay, potential market size is wrong. As you said, this looks like a business model failure, not a sales failure.