3.7 Sales prioritisation
By agreement of the significant majority of people informed on the science, humanity’s environmental impact is the biggest issue of our time. Governments globally have looked to incentivise societal change to reduce carbon and slow or reverse the impact of climate change. One of these initiatives has been the introduction of biofuels to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The corn-ethanol industry blends its product into petrol, which in theory is a win for everyone. Consumers save money, jobs are created in farming communities and governments can hit their carbon reduction targets. Carbon is taken in from the atmosphere by biofuel crops as they grow, returned back to the atmosphere when the fuel is burnt and then re-captured again by more crops. Government biofuel incentives have thus been big money.
But as with many well-intentioned ideas, these incentives have also had a somewhat perverse effect. As rapidly as farmers and refiners have tried to accelerate biofuel production, so reports have been released that show the positive effects are much lower than anticipated. In some cases biofuels are more polluting than fossil fuels. To meet targets and demand, farm operations involving diesel-fuelled tractors and fertilizers made from natural gas have grown significantly. To maximise crop production, fertilisers are used on crops that release nitrogen oxide, a greenhouse gas that is nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. On top of this as farmers have tried to expand their biofuel operations they’ve extended farming onto marginal lands, damaged biodiversity and increased water use and contamination. An assessment on the impact of biofuels concluded that only “profound advances” would make the US biofuel programme sustainable. To be clear, I’m fully supportive of efforts to reduce environmental impact, I just want to illustrate how a mistaken target – in this case a biofuel production goal – can drive an unintended result: over-intensive farming practices that may have a net-negative impact on global warming.
Targets motivate behaviour. When governments place big targets behind biofuel production and back them with hefty incentives it should be of no surprise that people that can benefit from them will do all they can to maximise their returns. Rarely is there a greater expression of targets driving behaviour than in a Sales function. Sales teams are different in every organisation, but in general Sales prioritise their effort based upon the same basic criteria:
I will sell what will get me to my target
I will sell what is the lowest effort
I will sell what I know how to sell
None of these statements should be seen as a negative. They are an excellent example of prioritisation and should be applauded for their simplicity and focus. Wherever there are issues with this behaviour it is because extraneous factors are not correctly resolved, leading these criteria to turn from positives into negatives. When targets are not set correctly, it’s the Sales team’s fault for not selling the right things. When products or solutions are too hard to sell, it is the Sales team’s fault for not working hard enough. When Sales resources aren’t available, it’s the Sales team’s fault for not knowing how to sell them. Or perhaps its just the Sales team exhibiting human behaviour and leadership not incentivising or enabling correctly?
If each Sales person has a target of $10m a year, they will sell whatever is easiest and whatever they know best. They will sell outside of their core if an opportunity arrives and will overachieve wherever they can, but will likely not sell a balanced solution set. If, instead, each Sales person has ten targets of $1m each, they may sell to achieve each target and then drop any opportunities within the ones they’ve attained to focus on the rest. The incentive is to tick the individual boxes rather than capitalise on the total bigger opportunities. Targets can be powerful tools for both incentivising and disincentivising behaviour.
Marketing can play a crucial role partnering with Sales to help them understand the right things to sell and making it as easy as possible to sell them. Sales enablement, be it how to best follow up on a lead, how to have a first call with a prospect or how to pitch to an opportunity, is essential to a functioning Sales and Marketing partnership. Marketing is the scale engine for Sales. Sales is the closing engine for Marketing. Together, strategic alignment on priorities should allow both functions to partner on delivering shared success with Sales leaders driving and incentivising the right behaviour with targets and bonuses, and Marketing leaders making selling low effort and easy to understand.