In the competitive landscape of sales, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that hiring more sellers is the quick fix to not meeting quotas. However, this approach is often a short-sighted solution that overlooks the root causes of underperformance. Instead of throwing more headcount at the problem, it’s crucial to delve deeper into the data, understand the underlying issues, and implement strategic solutions.
In this article, we will examine the four reasons quota is often missed – wrong people, lack of process, improper training, or, the quota was the wrong quota.
If hiring is failing, maybe you should change how you hire.
One of the most common mistakes when hiring people is using your gut, or people that were successful at competitors, or relying on personality assessments. However, these are all incredibly flawed. There is no sales personality, competitors aren’t you for so many reasons, and your “gut” stands for generally unreliable thoughts. The solution? A blend of culture fit, previous experience solving problems for your key buyer, and a deeper understanding of the required skill sets and competencies of the role, and a way to assess those skills.
If you don’t have a documented sales process, each person you hire brings their own.
Sometimes, the problem isn’t with the people but with the lack of clear processes guiding them. The fact is, if you don’t have documented sales processes every person on the team is following their own process. You can’t expect predictable outcomes without clear direction on how to get those outcomes.
“Figure it out” is not a training strategy.
Even with the right hires and processes, your team may still struggle if they don’t know how to execute the tasks at hand effectively. This is where targeted training and development come into play. It’s crucial to identify the specific areas where your team members need improvement and provide them with the training to develop those skills. However, this isn’t about a “kitchen sink” approach to training; it’s about focusing on the specific needs of your team and addressing them directly.
It may be none of these things, you may have the wrong quota!
Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of sales performance is the quota itself. Is it possible that the quotas you’ve set are simply unattainable? Conducting backward quota math can help ensure that your quotas are realistic and achievable, based on the capability of your current systems and team.
The Cost of a Bad Hire
The 2024 average cost of a bad sale hire is >$1.4m in lost revenue. A single bad hire not only affects your team’s morale and productivity but also sets the territory back over a year, hurts your brand, and wastes all the money you spent on them. It costs a fraction of that to fix how you hire, build a scaleable sales process, implement the right systems, and then train everyone on them.
The fact is, if you haven’t done these things, it’s not an option. You will never have sustainable growth without solving these problems. The question is, how much money do you want to waste before you focus on these things?
If I can help with any of these, I’ve worked with over 200 startups in the last year to figure out the root cause of these problems and build the right solutions.
