I will agree with you that the process of selecting and hiring a sales person may be lacking, but I still hold fast to the idea that a rigid process can be as much of a burden as a blessing for the sales team, especially where the “variation” you mentioned is lacking.

Example: X Technologies (names changed) runs an inside sales team making outbound calls. Each representative is required to make 85 outbound calls a day to keep a consistent flow of deals from pipeline to PO.

New guy Dave the sales rep, on the job six months, is on the verge of being fired for not meeting the daily requirement of 85 outbound sales calls.

To be fair, when Dave was hired, he agreed to make his 85 calls a day, and signed a document saying there was a “zero tolerance” policy for failing to meet the requirement.

What Dave and everyone else failed to realize was that Dave would be running 115% to quota each of the last four months after his sixty day ramp up but would be taking almost twice as much time on each call to close the deal. As a result he was only making an average of 47 calls per day and found himself 30 days from termination.

The thinking is backwards. The call quota was set to make sure that by following the process, each rep would have the greatest likelihood of success and the company would meet projections. Yet Dave is on the verge of being fired not for being a bad rep, in fact he is in the Top 15%, but for failing to follow a rule his success has precluded him from doing, designed to make sure he is successful.

To be fair, the balance between process and personality vary by industry, by product and even by where a product is in its lifecycle, but the pendulum can swing too far to process or too far to personality.

You are correct in stating that a sales process is likened to a manufacturing process, where the analogy diverges though is that the same 14 step process that ensures a perfect widget will be created every time, does not, in many forms of sales, ensure a perfect closed sale every time, because, unlike the factory worker making the widget, the holes on our prospective customers do not always need to be drilled in the same places by our salesman.

I would like to read your comments and if you would, delve more into how the reward system impacts this question. I would like to explore that thought a little more.

I will agree with you that the process of selecting and hiring a sales person may be lacking, but I still hold fast to the idea that a rigid process can be as much of a burden as a blessing for the sales team, especially where the “variation” you mentioned is lacking.

Example: X Technologies (names changed) runs an inside sales team making outbound calls. Each representative is required to make 85 outbound calls a day to keep a consistent flow of deals from pipeline to PO.

New guy Dave the sales rep, on the job six months, is on the verge of being fired for not meeting the daily requirement of 85 outbound sales calls.

To be fair, when Dave was hired, he agreed to make his 85 calls a day, and signed a document saying there was a “zero tolerance” policy for failing to meet the requirement.

What Dave and everyone else failed to realize was that Dave would be running 115% to quota each of the last four months after his sixty day ramp up but would be taking almost twice as much time on each call to close the deal. As a result he was only making an average of 47 calls per day and found himself 30 days from termination.

The thinking is backwards. The call quota was set to make sure that by following the process, each rep would have the greatest likelihood of success and the company would meet projections. Yet Dave is on the verge of being fired not for being a bad rep, in fact he is in the Top 15%, but for failing to follow a rule his success has precluded him from doing, designed to make sure he is successful.

To be fair, the balance between process and personality vary by industry, by product and even by where a product is in its lifecycle, but the pendulum can swing too far to process or too far to personality.

You are correct in stating that a sales process is likened to a manufacturing process, where the analogy diverges though is that the same 14 step process that ensures a perfect widget will be created every time, does not, in many forms of sales, ensure a perfect closed sale every time, because, unlike the factory worker making the widget, the holes on our prospective customers do not always need to be drilled in the same places by our salesman.

I would like to read your comments and if you would, delve more into how the reward system impacts this question. I would like to explore that thought a little more.