I wrote a while ago about how I think the value of the rolodex is gone, yet still so many people hiring sales people want to know about your Rolodex. Who do you know at their target companies, and who do you know in a particular industry.
Metrics are used all over in sales organizations:
Metrics are how managers feel good about how people are doing – its how they can point to things and say, “look – my people are working.” Often, tt is how managers and CEO’s can turn to their board and investors and say, “I have no idea how we didn’t make our numbers this month, we made 4,000 outbound calls!”
One of the most frustrating parts about being a salesperson is the constant rejection, the constant stream of failure. The more neophyte salespeople I work with, the more I see the frustration over this simple fact of sales. Sales is a numbers game. You can’t win them all, and you have to get out there and talk to lots and lots of people, to find those people that need your solution, have the means to pay for your solution, and decide that you have the correct solution against all the other alternatives.
A sales person that used to work for me called me last week to get my opinion on a new position he was considering. We chatted for a while about the position and the opportunity, and I was very excited for him. Its a great company, a great product, a great team – and I think it will afford him quite a bit of opportunity to advance his career.
Then we started to figure out if the comp was right for him.
I can’t name a single business that has failed as a result of over-paying sales people. Its probable there are a few, and I’d love to hear that story if you know of one. Its certainly possible to create a sales compensation package that is overly generous – but in general, commissions are designed to be a percentage of sales. Therefore, by definition, if commissions are rising, then so are sales.
Video games certainly have changed since I was young. Today’s video games have over-arching stories, character development, video interstitials, plots and sub-plots, awards and minigames, social integration, challenging gameplay, and certainly lots of amazing graphics.
In the 1980′s, video games all nearly had one objective, and then you got to repeat that objective over and over again, at an increasingly quickening pace, until you lost. You couldn’t “win” at any game because these games didn’t really have an end. And, when you did lose, you threw in another quarter and tried again – trying to get further and further along. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, etc. They all operated like this.
Several years ago I joined an internet company as a sales rep, and in about 3 months, I became the top salesperson. At the national sales meeting, one of the other reps came up to me and asked how I was having so much success. I responded, “I’m honestly not that sure that I’m ding anything revolutionary. It just seems that these people are happy to take my call and after explaining the product and how it solves their problems, they are willing to buy.” He stared at me blankly for about a minute and then said, “…You call them?”
I wrote a guest post on Frank Peters’ blog yesterday on my thoughts on entrepreneurship in Jordan and the rest of the Middle East.
You can read the article here: http://www.thefrankpetersshow.com/archives/2011/03/jordan.html
