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Over Achievers on the Sales Force - We Have it All Wrong

Written by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: Believe it or not, our six-year-old son is an over achiever. He has spelling tests each week and his teacher gives the class bonus words for extra points. He loves the bonus words and extra points so much that he has duplicated the process on his math tests. The teacher gives the class 20 math questions each week but (right now they are working on problems like 7 + 4) no bonus questions on the math. Our son takes it upon himself to add 4 bonus questions (he includes bonus questions like 800 +600) because he feels he can do more. This begs the question, how do you measure your over achievers?

Over Achievers on the Sales Force - We Have it All Wrong

Believe it or not, our six-year-old son is an over achiever.

He has spelling tests each week and his teacher gives the class bonus words for extra points. He loves the bonus words and extra points so much that he has duplicated the process on his math tests.

The teacher gives the class 20 math questions each week but (right now they are working on problems like 7 + 4) no bonus questions on the math. Our son takes it upon himself to add 4 bonus questions (he includes bonus questions like 800 +600) because he feels he can do more.

This begs the question, how do you measure your over achievers?

Does a salesperson over achieve simply because she exceeded her goal? What if one huge deal, order or account drops in her lap? Does that make her an over achiever or just lucky? What if a salesperson misses the goal because a large existing account declares bankruptcy, but brings in much more new business than expected? Does that make him an under achiever?

It's time to identify ways to measure sales performance in a meaningful way, one that places less importance on the gross revenue number, but varying importance on profit, new business, retention, effort, account growth, fit to the profile, ability to leverage, and client satisfaction.

What can you suggest?

How would you rate these?

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Article Tags: achiever, achievers, bankruptcy, bonus questions, bonus words, business retention, client satisfaction, extra points, gross revenue, leverage, math questions, math tests, new business, sales performance, salesperson, spelling tests



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