Quota is an ugly word. It's the weight that salespeople carry with them all the time, especially at the end of the month and the end of the quarter.
Quota is the elephant in the room between the salesperson and his manager.
Quota is the unspoken, but contracted, commitment between master agencies and carriers.
Quota, Quota, Quota.
That's the end.
The end does NOT justify the means. In this case, the means is what matters. The means is the daily sales activity that occurs to reach sales goals.
The means is the tactics of the sales plan being enacted each day.
Many trainers say that sales is about numbers. It is. If your average sale is $500 and it takes you 80 calls to get that one sale, do the math.
If your average sales cycle is six months, you have to be doing both Prospecting and Follow Up daily to move prospects and suspects forward. You have to have a plan for that -- for both the Prospecting - who, when, where - and the follow up - what, when, how.
Sales managers should be coaching the activity - not the quota. Management means managing the sales team's daily activity. (That's why Salesforce has a dashboard.)
Managers need to know the numbers too. What activity is necessary - how many calls, how many proposals, etc. Yet managers also have to know the ARPU, the sales cycle length, post ink churn and other numbers in order to hit quota and bring revenue to the business. If not, then what is the job of the manager?
Note that I did not say that the manager has to worry about Quota. The manager needs to pay attention to the daily sales activity of the sales team members because it is the activity which results in sales.
