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Ellison: The sales staff was compensated based on deal size, not profit. So the commission on a $1 million sale that generated $500,000 in profit was the same a
by michael_dorfman 16y ago
Ellison: The sales staff was compensated based on deal size, not profit. So the commission on a $1 million sale that generated $500,000 in profit was the same as one that cost the company $100,000, he said. "The sales force could care less if they sold things that lost money because the commission was the same in either case," he said.
Meanwhile, I've never encountered an organization with more perverse sales incentives than Oracle had when I used to deal with them, back in the early 90s. Salesman were fired if they missed their sales quota for a single quarter, so we used to get phone calls at the end of each quarter begging us to buy something, anything, and return the item and cancel the invoice after the first of the month. Et cetera.
- logicalmind 16y agoAre you sure this wasn't simply a sales tactic? Or did you know this sales person personally? I generally don't find sales people to be the most honest and trustworthy individuals.
- n8agrin 16y agoFiring salespeople that don't make their quarterly projections is fairly common afaik.
- logicalmind 16y agoMaybe so, but a sales person guilting a customer into making a purchase in order to save his job would be something a bit different.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoYou would think that one would follow from the other. In fact you could guess that the very point of threatening to fire someone is to drive them towards tactics that people with a secure job wouldn't countenance.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoI'm sure. We went through quite a number of sales-droids; it was rare that someone lasted more than a quarter or two. Like clockwork, toward the end of each quarter, they'd come up with more and more pointless plans to meet their quota. It was sad, really.