Consult Carson 8/6: “In sales, it’s never enough!”

From today’s mailbag: “I’ve exceeded goals, grown year over year and done literally everything asked of me… and while it led to good early bonuses, now my goals are so high I cannot reach them. It feels like in sales, it’s never enough. Any advice?”

Carson: Right or wrong, in sales, you are often only as good as your most recent win.  Like being a superstar athlete, you are cheered in the moment and celebrated while you are the story of the hour, but once that moment of glory passes, everyone wants to know what you’re going to do next.

From someone who has chased metrics at multiple levels of leadership my entire career, I can certainly understand your plight.  While this mentality can certainly be a mix of being a product of management that doesn’t really know what it wants or how to get it along with a testament to how difficult some divisions or companies find it to make goals that are not arbitrary, when you are on the front lines there is little consolation.

Know this: what you are feeling is common.  It’s also why many people choose to just do enough and not seek the accolades – because often more headache and heartache come with over-achievement.  There are inevitable repercussions of sales excellence – the mold isn’t made for you.  Typically, rules and parameters and guidelines and processes are created to manage the masses.  You’re the exception to the rule, but there’s no exception made for you.

The status quo will not share your pain, because it isn’t their goal to be the top of the heap.  They may hit a goal one month, miss the next, but see a gradual, manageable increase to their expectations which makes it less complicated to achieve.  If you are blasting through the stratosphere, the existing processes will buckle and be baffled and will strain to contain you.  If everyone across the board is expected to have a 50% increase in productivity, the worker who had 500 widgets last year now has to do 750 while the person who did 100 only needs 150.  It gets to a point where it extrapolates beyond common sense and few leaders will acknowledge fault in the logic.

My advice is persevere.  Latch on with the people who are influencers in your business and get advice on how to get what you want.  Sometimes, it’s about accepting that you broke the bank to start and that it will take a bit of time for the compensation structure to catch back up to you.  However, once you have reached the top there will always be others just waiting for you to fall, which – for some of us – makes it even more imperative we don’t lest we be cast as a flash in the pan.  The long and short of it is that if you are a true achiever and believer in your ability to win at all costs, you keep your head down, take one day at a time, battle through the storm of uncertainty and do the best you can.  Every sales role is going to present some semblance of this challenge – it’s not unique.

Ideally, you will have a manager who understands your frustration and supports you in your role.  There are many managers out there who have not been trained how to lead or motivate and they are the ones fueling this “More, more, more!” mentality.  In the end, you have to evaluate the big picture.  It isn’t always the best performers who get paid the most, get the most recognition or get the promotion.  There are so many facets to whatever you are seeking, so perform as best you can, work to adapt your process to contain all key metrics your customer benefits from and your company endorses, and liaise with the right people on all sides of your sales food chain.  It’s very likely you have peers that feel the same.  It’s very likely that somewhere there are leaders who understand your mission and frustration.  And, if you do right by customer, company, and you on each and every transaction, you leave each transaction either closing the business or knowing the specific reason why you didn’t, and you support everyone subordinate to you on the sales food chain – employees, customers, etc. – you’ve done your job.  Sometimes, it’s just about celebrating a job well done, even if right now you’re the only one celebrating.  Everything comes back around.

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Carson V. Heady posts for “Consult Carson” serving as the “Dear Abby” of sales and sales leadership.  You may post any question that puzzles you regarding sales and sales leadership careers: interviewing, the sales process, advancing and achieving.  You will also be directly contributing to his third book, “A Salesman Forever.”

Question submissions can be made via LinkedIn to Carson V. Heady, this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carson-V-Heady/125078150858064?ref=hl , Twitter via @cvheady007 or e-mail atcvheady007@yahoo.com or you may post an anonymous comment as a reply to my WordPress blog at the bottom of this page:https://carsonvheady.wordpress.com/the-home-of-birth-of-a-salesman-2010-published-by-world-audience-inc-and-the-salesman-against-the-world-2014/

Carson V. Heady has written a book entitled “Birth of a Salesman” that has a unique spin that shows you proven sales principles designed to birth in you the top producer you were born to be.

If you would like to strengthen your sales skills, go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICRVMI2/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_yGXKtb0G2