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Carlos
OK, stay with me here. We’re still in the QBR. This is like a sales soap opera episode. Carlos is the rep presenting. With this character the book introduces us to a glimpse of what “good” could look like as a seller forecasting their number. “This was one rep I admired,” McMahon writes. He is firm in what he is forecasting although it is well below the quota and the managers put on pressure for him to increase it. He knows where his deals stand and where some of his blind spots are.
The lesson of this chapter is sandbagging, when reps commit to a lower number than they have high confidence that they can deliver, i.e., promise low, deliver high. But more often, they’re compelled to forecast high and end up dropping the commit at the end of the quarter. This serves no one well, except maybe the sales leader. Like a warm bed on a cold morning, you know you have to face it, but you put off the discomfort as long as you can.
Rev success data lessons? How does Carlos know more about his deals than Shannon? And how do we make sure what Carlos knows is captured consistently so that all the reps have the same confidence in their forecast?
The problem here is consistency and alignment. There’s no consistent qualification understanding between two reps. There’s no alignment between rep and manager. There’s no agreement on how to call balls and strikes. There’s just guts and bias and prejudice.
Again, this is the just the setup. Answers come, but for now, let’s just appreciate the questions and what the problem looks like. We’ve got, like, 54 more chapters to get through. 😜