Sales Laundry

Negotiating a strong compensation package for yourself in any role, but especially business development, can be a two edged sword.

On one hand you have sliced yourself a nice slice of base with a healthy heaping of commission, but on the downside if you have trouble putting your money where your mouth is, your compensation package could make you a particular juicy target when your company is looking to trim the fat.

 What should you do about it?  You should avoid becoming a target in the first place

If your mouth and sales skills have landed a particularly rich compensation package above and beyond some of your peers you darn sure better produce to a standard beyond yours peers as well.

 You might also want to make sure the level of production you need hit is even possible with your existing sales methodology.

 Many years ago I made that mistake.  I managed to work myself into an exceptional compensation package, and managed to lose sight of reality just long enough to agree to some stratospheric sales targets.

 I completely missed the fact that using my current sales strategy those new targets were a mathematical impossibility.  In retrospect, if I could have suspended the rule that there are only 24 hours in a day or my occasional need for sleep and a good bath, I MIGHT have been able to pull it off.

 While I am smarter today, I am still not smart enough to bend time and space to meet my sales objectives.  Sure, I could have gone the safe route and negotiated a smaller compensation package but that would have taken a large degree of the challenge and fun out of the journey.

 Placed in that situation today I would work backward from my lofty goals and determine what changes I would need to make on a daily basis to make sure my goal was well in line at year end.   Those changes could be as simple as making a few more calls each day or as difficult as pulling a Tiger Woods and completely revamping my sales swing so to speak.

 Either way, the experience would make me better at what I do and earn me a heady title typically reserved for laundry detergent, such as “new and improved” or “new more powerful formula!“

  The only draw back I see from this line of thinking is that by hitting those crazy numbers, next years’ budget will be crazy number + 10% and it will be time to revamp that swing again.

Image courtesy of www.consumerwarningnetwork.com