How to Make Quota? Forget the Quota!

There’s a lot to be said for quotas. Some are well built and help push and motivate sales reps outside of their comfort zone. Others are barely a goal at all, there’s pretty much no need for improvement. Then there are others still that are almost abusive or at least so unrealistic as to become pointless. It’s an individual thing where the variables of the market, time of year, the experience of the rep, inside support team and more come into effect. Where someone sees a stretch goal others might see a lost cause. Either way, unless your quota very directly and significantly affects your pay, the best way to make a quota is to completely forget about it. Here’s why.

The quota isn’t useful

First off, and all of this is assuming you are paid a commission for sales, you’re being paid for the sales you make. So, who cares what magic number you or your manager came up with? What are you going to do, stop working hard and coast because you hit our quota? Give up and not pay your bills because you didn’t hit your quota? Either way, you look at it, the quota can only hold you back. Again, unless hitting the assigned quota means more pay for you, it doesn’t matter.

What you should focus on instead

You have a list of customers. Some are better than others, some buy more than others. Unless you are exceptionally good or lucky every single one of your customers is currently not purchasing something from you. Every call you make, you need to be probing and pushing to expand the share of each customer's business. As discussed in prior articles, you should systematically go about this. Before going on sales calls you need to know in your mind what line(s) of business you want to get from your customer. You also need to be on constant alert for hints you may be able to get some more business from your customer.

You may be doing everything right, using promotions and a monthly schedule to steadily build your book of business, but if you go in on a call ready to sell brake valves and your customer says something to the effect of, they can’t get reliable delivery of camshafts. You need to jump on that opportunity and start working with your customer to transfer the camshaft business to you. The brake valves can wait.

Regularly you need to be verifying your customer's buying habits. This can be high level; it doesn’t need to be a granular study. It doesn’t matter which suspension parts your customer isn’t buying from you anymore if you haven’t sold them a single suspension part in 5 weeks and you used to sell them 3,000$ per month in suspension parts. You need to have a broad conversation about suspension, not drill the customer about why aren’t you buying part numbers…

Last-minute pressure

Some sales reps are paid more commission when they sell at higher margins. This makes sense, you’re getting more dollars out of the dollars you’re using for parts. It may seem self-evident, but to make the same amount of money with a 15% or 30% margin is the difference in selling twice as much product. Even if you aren’t on some sort of commission ladder, lower margins are not only bad for your business but if you drop your price on the 28th, do you really think your customer will believe that your prices went back up on the first? You’re creating your own pricing pressure and teaching your customers to wait until the end of the month. You’ll be stressed about quota and willing to drop your prices to make it. The first month I ever truly cared about a quota, my margins were awful.

A part of being a professional is being consistent. By keeping your eyes open for new business and working hard for it consistently your quota will become irrelevant anyway. If there’s a cost to dropping your prices the last few days of the month, then there’s power in asking your customer to only bill them on the first so you can get a head start. Not that I recommend this, I don’t, but it’s going to do a lot more for your relationship with your customer if you keep this attitude. Your customer will respect you more, and that’s valuable.

Conclusion

Quotas may be motivating to you. But at the end of the day, you want all your customer's account to be moving up and to the right. Even if a quota is motivating for you be ready to forget the quota. If you lose some parts sales to a fleet because they just sold off 20 old units and bought brand new ones, it’s not a reflection of your ability as a salesperson. It’s bad luck and a good reminder that you always have to be moving forward because there’s no such thing as standing still. Standing still is guaranteed to be moving backwards. Always move forward with all your accounts, and always be looking to get new customers. You can only handle so many accounts and if you find a good one, consider dropping a less performing or less promising account. Don’t worry about the quota, keep moving every account up and to the right, and you’ll be just fine.