A Goal or a Quota?

 

An interesting thing happened in our office the other day. We had a significant communication breakdown.  It happened in a very vital area - our sales team. Here's what happened. We've always had very specific goals for our sales team as most companies do.  We recently brought someone new onto the team. Of course, this person was informed of the sales goals and seemingly for the first few months did just fine hitting and/or exceeding the identified goals.  But then, something happened.  Week after week the sales goals were not achieved. While there were some other contributing factors to the situation, it seemed the biggest factor was that we had set sales goals. This particular individual was used to working off sales quotas.  Really?  Goals versus quotas?  Yes.

 

Never had I considered someone would find such drastic difference in two words. Goals.  Quotas.  I guess I've always just set goals for the sales team and treated them as quotas.  As I gave some thought to why I did this, it became clear, its part of my natural style of management. I tend to bring people on board for their talent, know that they are self-starters and manage very lightly. So my mistake this time and several times in the past, was not appreciating how much some people want and need some rigidity. I must admit my mind always goes to rigidity = bad, even though I've learned over and over again that this is not a statement that makes good sense. 

 

Yep, in my mind, for the most part, quotas are rigid and exclusionary; they imply "this is what you must achieve, no matter what."  Goals are flexible and inclusive; they imply "this is what we think you can achieve if you try your best." What the experience last week taught me again is that many times people view things completely differently and in this case sales quotas and sales goals differ in scope and intent to our new salesperson.  

 

Here's what I was reminded of. Sales quotas are hard numbers used to break down the revenue required for the company per salesperson - sales goals are long-term plans to expand revenue.

 

And boy am I thankful to this new person on board who brought me into being keenly aware of the difference.  As I continued to think about the differences in goals and quotas, I realized how the distinction extends to other areas of my personal life as well as my business.  I found it interesting, as I looked at goals verses quotas in relation to the type of exercise programs that I put in place such as running a race or a triathlon, where my "quota" is- I must prepare and then complete the race and my "goal" is- finish the race in a specific time frame.

 

I'm going to become a little more rigid. I'm going to be clearer when working with and managing others about our combined quotas and goals.  I am really thankful to this new person on our team who helped me get focused.  My hope is if you're too hard on yourself and everything to you is a rigid quota, you'll think about changing some of those quotas into goals.  But my guess is most of you are probably more goal oriented, and like me, you need to change some of those goals into quotas.

 

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