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Beyond Reach

This interview is a fun read not sure if I am up for reading the book itself based on the reviews. Closer home having been part of sales teams for a long time, I have seen the moving target of sales quotas to ever more unattainable levels not serve people well:

..Sales management sets quota at the level required to meet the company’s financial objectives (as opposed to actual market opportunity).

The other part is psychological – sales management wants hitting quota to be a real accomplishment for the reps. But if only 40 percent of your sales team hits quota, more than half of your reps think they have bad performance. This fosters feelings of negativity and demotivation.

One of my close friends is a veteran sales rep with many decades of experience. If she consistently made her quotas even five years in a row she could have retired by now. Instead her jobs follow a familiar pattern over and over - she exceeds quota the year she starts, they give her a harder patch and/or up her quota the next year - she comes in striking distance of still making it in year two but the commissions are a pale comparison to the first year. Now they slightly up the level of difficulty and year three she fails to make it. 

End of year three she is dropped to base pay and needs to dip into savings to cover the difference. Between year three and four she is often out looking for the next gig where the same roller-coaster pattern follows. The lifestyle she has established over the years cannot be sustained without her working because the years are so uneven in terms of earnings. M would be first to agree this needless and endless growth should end and with it would end such infinite hamster wheels where the end is always out of reach. 

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