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Sales quotas can often feel like the brass ring that’s just out of reach. But they don’t have to be. Today’s guest, Steve Weinberg, has tips for not only MEETING sales quotas, but also on how to EXCEED them.
Who wouldn’t want to be a sales star?
What You’ll Discover About Sales Quotas:
* The biggest problem with sales quotas,
* How poor hiring, poor leadership, and poor onboarding contributes to missed sales quotas,
* The critical importance of proper customer prospecting,
* How to get past gatekeepers, and
* Much more.
Guest: Steve Weinberg
Steve Weinberg has spent his life selling and helping others sell better, more, and faster. He is an expert at building, guiding, and sustaining high caliber sales teams, and creating exemplary standards in account management. He has authored Above Quota Performance to transfer his knowledge to others that want to improve their sales results.
Steve has closed over $500 million in new business. His sales have included many leading global corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, PayPal, Google, Facebook, Prudential, and Costco.
He has over three decades of leadership experience in sales, including Vice Presidencies at Dun & Bradstreet Software, AC Nielsen, Solcorp (then part of EDS, now HP), and at Deloitte and Touche.
He recently led the Accuity (now Lexis Nexis Risk) sales team to new sales accomplishments. While at Accuity as a salesperson and simultaneously as a manager of a team of salespeople, Steve closed the largest sale in the company’s history and was the top selling salesperson in the company many times, as he was for other companies.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Sales episodes.
Contact Steve and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Check out his website, SteveWeinbergSales.com
And his book: Above Quota Performance
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How to Confidentialy Beat Sales Quotas with Steve Weinberg
Sales quotas can often feel like the brass ring that’s just out of reach but they don’t have to be. Today’s guest has tips for not only meeting sales quota, but also how to exceed them. Now, who wouldn’t want to be a sales star? Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the weekly podcast for smart executives, managers, and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.
I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I have a great guest for you today. He’s Steve Weinberg. Steve has spent his life selling, having closed over $500 million in new business to a who’s who of leading businesses.
Available at your favorite local and online book seller
And today, he helps others sell better, faster, and more by building, guiding and sustaining high caliber sales teams and creating exemplary standards in account management. With over three decades of leadership experience in sales, he’s distilled his knowledge into a book titled, Above Quota Performance.
And I am delighted to have him join us today. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Steve.
Thank you, Hanna. It’s great to be here.
It’s great to have you. Sales quotas, yeah, it’s just one of those things that can strike fear into somebody’s heart. Can they make it? Will they make it? Is it realistic? Steve, in your experience, what’s the biggest problem with sales quotas? Why do people feel it sets them up to fail?
Well, there are a number of reasons. I know that for me, every time I reach quota or exceeded quota, they always increase the quota. So, it seemed like in many cases, you were penalized for achieving quota. And I found that in researching this, most quotas are determined from the top down.
The company decides what revenue they need. They go to the VP of Sales or the Chief Revenue Officer and say, “This is the sales dollar we need for this year,” and then that amount gets allocated among the salespeople. We’ve seen, again, through research that approximately half of all salespeople do not achieve their annual quota.
And I’ve seen numbers anywhere from 40% to 66%. So, I settled on a number of 50%, and I just think that’s an astonishing number. I mean, and it’s accepted. So, when you think about it, any organization anticipates that 50% of their salespeople will not reach quota. That’s part of their planning process.
I don’t know how that could be accepted by many companies, but it is, and I think now there’s been somewhat of a move to try to alter that, but I think that amount has stayed the same for the last 20 or 25 years.
That’s such a depressing number, Steve. I mean, what is it? Do they just jack it up in anticipation of the failure or people don’t understand the sales force doesn’t understand the sales process. I mean, is it an art or a science? What’s the secret here, Steve?
Well, in my book, I mentioned that selling is both an art and a science. But when you look at this, I think a lot of that has to do with companies not having the patience to put, in effect, a sales training plan that allows new salespeople to maybe not go on quota immediately, particularly when they’re moving into a new territory and being trained properly.
But again, in my research, I found that if you asked the salespeople what the problem is, they will tell you their quotas are too high. But if they’re too high, then the 50% did achieve it. So, 50% didn’t, but 50% did. So, usually, that’s not the reason. A lot of it is because of the lack of sales training.
And then when you look at salespeople, very insufficient prospecting by them. In fact, often they’re doing little or no prospecting or they’re targeting the wrong people. They’re not thoroughly qualifying leads, they’re not finding the key decision makers, and they may not be articulating a compelling value proposition. When you look at sales management, they don’t escape blame here.
There’s very inadequate sales leadership. I know in my past that my sales management usually consisted of what are you going to get this month and why isn’t a greater amount? That was pretty much the coaching I got in many cases but there’s also been poor hiring practices by sales managers in filling openings. And again, as I mentioned earlier, inadequate onboarding when bringing in new people into a territory.
You’ve covered a lot of ground here about the prospecting, qualifying leads, not getting to the key decision makers. Poor leadership, poor hiring, poor onboarding. It’s just across the board here, Steve.
What is the biggest mistake that keeps the sales process from achieving their sales quotas? I mean, is any one of these bigger than the others, or are they all equally liable here?
Yes, I would focus on two. One would be the onboarding, and the second really is the salespeople chasing the wrong leads or the wrong prospects going and spending a lot of time in going after companies and people that just won’t be buying from them.
A lot of them don’t understand that because if they call somebody up and the people are receptive to their call and they’re friendly to them, the salespeople will normally just continue on and not understand or not realize that company or that person probably will never buy from them.
And a lot of times and I also cover this in the book, the salespeople don’t understand that the real competition is not the company that they normally see in the marketplace. The real competition is do nothing or status quo. So, the salespeople don’t understand that.
They talk to somebody who’s friendly to them, and then six months later, or maybe less, they find out they’re not going to buy from them because a lot of times, they are content to stay with what they have.
Wow. So, Steve, when you’re coaching people in how to achieve their sales quotas, what you zero in on first besides qualifying prospects? And maybe that should be it, or what qualifies a prospect because that’s really ground zero, right?
Yeah, it is. When you think about it, again, one of the things I talk about is time management and where do you spend your time in selling and that we have a finite amount of time in a year or in a workweek. And if we waste a lot of it on prospects that will never buy from us, we can’t get that time back.
So, what I talk about is trying to find prospects that are in what I call the sweet spot, and the sweet spot being set of prospects where your value proposition, their needs, and your competitive strengths all intersect. So. you could have any one of those three not be the case, and you have a less than optimal prospect, in which case you may win, but you’re more likely not going to win, and then that’s a big time waster.
So, if you think about it in the year, if you could only focus on people that are going to buy and you develop a really good value proposition, you have a greater chance of selling and making your quota and not wasting a lot of time on people that won’t buy.
Well, most people are pretty opaque. How do you know those things? How do you find out whether they’re good prospects?
It’s becoming more difficult than it ever has before. I would say five or ten years ago, when the salesperson, particularly in the enterprise sales world, which is where I was at when you would call in a company, they were willing to meet with you and a lot of times, share information with you.
Today, that’s not necessarily the case. Because of the pandemic, they shut down most contact, and even the Zoom contact is more limited than what we had in the past for face-to-face meetings.
So, what that requires from the salespeople is to make up a lot of telephone calls or zoom calls or try to get on site meetings with people and to meet with more people because the amount of time you’re getting with each is very limited today as compared to the past.
Okay.
And you have to ask a lot of – what I would say, ask a lot of open-ended questions, not closed-end questions. You don’t want yes or no answers. You want people if you say to somebody, why are you thinking about making this change? And then you want them to tell you the reason, right?
And if they say, “Well, we don’t know whether we’re going to make a change or not,” well, that’s what I would call a red flag, and then you can drill down on that. What I find is most prospects are pretty honest if you ask the right questions. But if you don’t ask the questions, they won’t volunteer it.
So, let’s go to your example here for a second. The prospect who says, “I don’t know that I’m going to make could change. You call that a red flag?” How would you recommend somebody drill down on that?
It doesn’t necessarily mean that that they won’t buy. It means they need to be convinced or they need to see the value in making a change in the organization does. So, what you would have to say to somebody, are you getting what you want out of whatever your solution is today? Is that meeting your needs?
And I would say from my discussions, at least 80% of the time, they’ll tell you, “No, it’s not.” And then you say, “Okay, what is it? What are the deficiencies?” And they’ll tell you. It’s not timely enough or we’re not getting the right information or any number of reasons.
And then you say, “Okay, what can I do to explain to you how we can improve that for you?” And then have them seek that information from you and explain to them how your solution, product, or whatever can help alleviate that situation for them.
And then once, if they recognize that, then you say, “Okay, now that you’ve seen that, can we quantify this, or can we take a look at what it would mean if you make that change?” You want to get into the position where somebody doesn’t look at their expenditure for your solution as a cost, but more as an investment.
So, for example, if they spend, let’s say, $500,000.00 with you, will they get $5 million of return on that? And if that’s the case, it makes it a whole lot easier to sell. If they just look at the $500,000.00 and say, “Well, if we stay what we have right now, we don’t have to spend $500,000.00. We don’t have to disrupt anything. We don’t have to change any training. We don’t have to hire any new people. We can just deal with this.”
And then what salespeople need to find out is, are they willing to go out of that comfort zone? And if they’re not willing to even entertain that idea, then you might be wasting your time.
Those are some great tips for questions to ask and how to approach sort of the ambivalent buyer, if you will. I particularly like the ones dealing with the pain of disconnect.
What would it mean for you if you could get X, Y, Z? Because it’s also a way to quantify, and particularly for people who are selling services, showing the value of what they do can be difficult sometimes, if somebody is just comparing cost to cost instead of what they could gain. So, thank you for that, Steve. I think that’s really, really powerful.
Right. You also need to quantify what the cost of doing nothing is. So, let’s say if you don’t do anything, if you don’t buy from me, then what’s the cost to you? What’s the cost to your organization? Let’s quantify that, and that’s important, too.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think a lot of people don’t look at it that way. So, again, it’s a good perspective to help people evaluate things. Now, let’s say you’ve qualified the prospect. You mentioned before that one of the issues you see in people not being able to reach or exceed sales quota is follow up.
What’s a good follow-up process/frequency? I mean, you don’t want to be nagging somebody with an email every day. But by the same token, you point out that letting too much time go by, you become your own worst enemy and the competition. So, help us understand that more.
Again, it’s become very difficult and much more difficult today than it was pre-pandemic, even just three years ago. But what I would normally do is at the end of every meeting, I would always ask when I should follow up with them and get a date on their calendar at that point in time.
So, if somebody said to me, “Well, we’re going to be busy for the next two weeks, why don’t you call me two weeks from Monday?” I would say, “Okay, let’s look at the calendar. That’s the 22nd so I can call you at 10:00 in the morning on that date. Correct?” And they would say yes or no.
If they said no, then you’d get a different time or date and then you set that date right at that point in time so that when you call them, they would take the call. So, it’s not an unwelcome or a cold call at that point in time.
And unless they tell you not to call, which is a different problem altogether, most of the time, the pace that they give you will be adequate and you can work with it but sometimes, it’s not. And if they tell you, “Well, we’ll call you when we need you,” then you have to make a decision as to how you’re going to handle that. That’s not a good sign.
So, I would say, “Well, how about if I check back with you in two weeks and again go through that conversation of setting a date?” But the more you’re able to actually set up a follow up date, the more likely it is that they’ll take the call.”
And I found that this also works really great in cold calling because I actually got to the point where when I called somebody, I hoped that they would say that they would not take the call at that point in time.
So, I would call somebody up and I’d say, “Mrs. Jones, do you have time right now?” And she would say, “No, I don’t. I’m going into a meeting in five minutes.” And I’d say, “Okay, can we set a date for you to speak with me?”
And then we would actually get a date on their calendar, which is, in my mind, far better than her taking that call when you interrupted from doing something at that point in time, because they’re always doing something, right? They’re not sitting there daydreaming, so they’re busy doing something. And when you call them, you’ve interrupted them.
So, it’s better to have a call on their schedule or agenda. And then when you call them, you remind them that this is the time that we set aside for our conversation.
I love that idea because it also gets you past gatekeepers. Many times they have an assistant who take answers and screens their phone calls, and this way you can say, “Oh, Mr. Weinberg is expecting my call. We set this date up this time two weeks ago.” And they’ll go ask you and say, “Did you remember talking to this guy?”
Exactly.
And it jogs them.
So, no, that’s a wonderful tip. Very, very, very practical.
Exactly. It’s funny because I was at the very end of my sales career, I went into the sales training area and we spent a lot of time on cold calling. And then this was not something that I had planned, but it actually worked out. It was actually a better – it was more productive for them not to take the call at that moment if they picked up the phone, not take that call, but schedule a later call. That worked out much better all the time.
And if they say, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” and you can go back to your qualifying process, right?
Right. Exactly, or if it’s a target company and it’s somebody that you absolutely want to sell and this person says, “Don’t call me,” then what I would normally do is go after somebody else in that organization.
Okay. Wonderful. I’d like to talk about your book a little bit. The title is Above Quota Performance, and that’s a really interesting title. But I got to ask, because you mentioned this earlier, in your own experience, you reach your quota and now they just raise it.
Wouldn’t it’d be you become a victim of your own success, making it harder and harder quarter after quarter and year after year to outdo yourself? Why do you want to do that?
It’s like the dogs chasing the rabbit, right?
Yeah.
But it’s something that I dealt with throughout my career. I don’t think – I never had a situation where at the end of the year, after achieving or exceeding my quota, am I always well over 150% every year, sometimes as much as 400%.
I never had a situation where they came back with the same quota or one lower, and I would always tell them at the time they gave me the quota, I would say to my sales manager, “This is ridiculous. You’re penalizing me and you’re giving me an unachievable quota.” And then they would say to me, “That’s what you told me last year, but you achieved it.” So, it is kind of a chicken and egg process.
All right, but what about those people who say, “Yeah, I could hit that, but I’m working harder than Hanna over here, who’s just kind of coasting by and just barely meeting her quota maybe by the end of the year, end of the quarter.” Just from an emotional perspective, how do you manage the feelings that that would provoke?
It’s difficult. And I know, again, in my own situation, seeing that there are always some people that may have it a little easier or harder than anybody else. And that’s somewhat how it is in life, eight? I mean, wherever you go and whatever you do, some people seem to have it easier or harder, and you just have to accept it and deal with it.
Okay. What would be the most important thing you’d want readers to take away from your book, Above Quota Performance, Steve?
I think the most important thing is that sales is a great career and it’s not hopeless. So, that if someone is not making their quota right now and they still have the interest and want to improve that, they can improve.
And the reason why I wrote this book is that there are a lot of really good books on the market, good books on sales, and I’ve read a lot of them but I have a lot of different ideas than many of them. And I wanted to promote my ideas because they really work well for me.
I was not initially trained in sales. I was not a natural sales person. I’m actually a trained accountant. I’m a CPA. So, I switched. I had to do like a personality change but sales is a great career and it offers all kinds of great things for me.
I like the fact that every day was different. Every day was challenging. It was rewarding when I closed the sale. It was very rewarding when I received a commission check, and I think salespeople are always going to be needed. Good salespeople are always going to be needed. So, for the future, prospects for sales are still very good.
Absolutely. Without sales, there’s no revenue coming in. And with no revenue, it’s really hard to sustain a business. It turns into a hobby, and how can that be financed in the long run? That’s troublesome. So, thank you for these great tips.
You’re welcome.
It’s been wonderful. I appreciate your time and all that you do to help others achieve and exceed their sales quotas.
Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to tell your friends about the show. Leave a positive review. We’ll be back next Thursday with another episode of Business Confidential Now. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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