Page 89 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

As the HubSpot sales team scaled and our business hit a new stage of maturity,
sales forecasting became more important. Unfortunately, as is the case with
many sales organizations, the HubSpot sales team was not good at forecasting,
and they didn't take the task seriously.

So, I devised the following contest:

1. I separated everyone into four contest teams.

2. Every time a salesperson conducted a product demo for a prospect, he had to
estimate, by the end of the day, whether that prospect would close by the end
of the month.

3. If the salesperson thought the prospect would become a customer that month,
he would write the prospect's name on a whiteboard, accompanied by a
“confidence score” between 0 and 100. This figure represented the level of
confidence the salesperson had in his guess.

4. At the end of the month, we reviewed the whiteboard. For each prospect who
actually became a customer, the confidence score was added to the
salesperson's score and, in turn, their team's score. Just as importantly, for
any prospects that did not become customers but had been added to the
board, the associated confidence score was subtracted from the individual
and team scores.

Guess what the winning team's score was? Negative 70!

The proof is in the pudding.

The team had not appreciated how bad they were at forecasting until this contest
illustrated the situation. They had had “happy ears” after their discovery calls
and demos, thinking every prospect was sure to buy. They had been skipping
steps in their discovery and qualification processes, leading to sloppy pipeline
management. As we reran the contest and provided forecasting training,
behavior improved and team scores increased.

To Recap

The sales compensation plan is one of the most effective tools for the
CEO and VP of sales to use to drive business strategy.

There is no perfect sales compensation plan. The appropriate sales
compensation plan depends on the stage of the business.