With a company named QuotaCrush, you would think that my opinion is that salespeople and sales managers should be singularly focused on quota. In fact, that is completely counter to by entire belief system in terms of the best way to accelerate sales.
I shouldn’t be writing, and you shouldn’t be reading, this post.
Why? Its the end of the quarter, and if you are in sales, and if you are awake, you should be working on how to use the end of the quarter to get as many deals closed as possible.
This week is a key week to call all of your stalled deals and wake them up with an offer. This is the time to grab your April and May deals, and see about moving them into Q1. This is the week to make sure the deals that you are counting on for Q1 – actually happen.
I’ve gotten into two lengthy discussions recently about draw as a sales compensation component. Specifically, since I work with start-ups, the questions were around whether or not you should offer up a draw or not as part of the compensation package.
I have some very strong opinions about draw, and I want to start by going over the basics. Draw is compensation offered to a new salesperson coming on board. There is a “draw period” which is the time over which the draw is paid. (typically 3 to 6 months). There are two types of draw:
In many large companies, departments get “use-it-or-lose-it” budgets. What this means is that they get dollars for projects for that year, and if they don’t use up all of that money by the end of the year, then they don’t get to spend it. It does not roll over until the next year. This is where salespeople looking to finish out their own year great can capitalize. It requires you to be flexible in your pricing technique, but you can very often push through a sale that might otherwise take a very long time to close.
