如何给予销售人员的配额缓解

Nearly every salesperson has been there at some point — feeling like life has to revolve around meeting quota. Now there’s no denying reaching your sales goals is important, it is your job after all. But real life also happens.

Sometimes you need to take time off. On one hand, taking time off can be a good thing, and can be planned for accordingly, such as a vacation or parental leave. However, sometimes unplanned events can throw even the strongest sales reps for a loop, and in these situations, quota relief may be necessary.

Before we dive into when and how to extend quota relief, let’s discuss some of the realities of taking time off for sales reps.

考虑到传统的星期一至周五工作周，一个月中有19至22个销售日。当您取出三到五个人时，您必须放弃10至25％的时间，不得不关闭业务并创造未来的机会。

休假是必要的。无论您是要度过一个急需的假期，还是必须倾向于个人紧急情况，被撤离工作都是人类的现实。

但是，休假真的很难销售，尤其是当您携带每月配额时。如果您不熟悉一个数字，那么学习如何休假可能是反复试验。

Below, I’ve outlined nine key strategies for taking an extended time off as a salesperson, the pros and cons of different leave lengths, and a few tips for managers on how they can help their team take needed time away.

Taking Time Off, With or Without Quota Relief

Here are some best practices for taking time off for salespeople.

Pre-Leave

1. Plan Ahead with Your Manager

Your manager is your partner in success. Work with them to create a plan that makes you both feel confident about the break. In the event you plan to take time off for a vacation or planned leave, aim to work with your manager 60 to 90 days in advance to ensure everything is covered during the sales period you will be missing. In the event you need to take an unplanned leave, an effective best practice for sales teams is to implement a backup or buddy system.

Each rep should be paired with a peer that they meet with on a regular basis to keep them up-to-date on what’s happening with their accounts. Additionally, each rep can keep a backup document up-to-date that outlines their major projects and activities. With this in place, teams can be adequately prepared if a rep needs to suddenly take time off.

这可以确保即使有人没有计划过请假，团队的成员确切地知道他们的帐户正在发生什么并准备提供帮助。

2. Increase Activity Before You Leave

首先，计算您需要进行多少活动才能达到目标。假设通常需要每月20个演示才能达到目标。如果您要休假四分之一，请在办公室时加大活动，以便您完成20次会议。

For example, a sales rep planning to take five days off and gives their manager 90 days notice can plan 90 days of 2X activity, 2X demo meetings, and 2X closing calls to make up for five days of selling on PTO.

3. Do A Deep Dive Into Opportunities That Need Attention

与您的经理安排时间，以查看管道中的所有机会，并确保每个人都有详细的注释。如果您期望与潜在客户发生互动（例如演示或电子邮件交流），请在您仍在办公室时将联系人介绍给您的经理或备份。

Prioritize opportunities based on the timeline and the buyer's process. For example, if you have an opportunity who have a zero to 14-day launch date, this should be prioritized over opportunities with 30-plus day launch dates.

4. Automate Prospecting

Before you leave, use a freeCRM like HubSpot在外出时，要设置自动滴灌广告系列以发送电子邮件多次。

5. Don’t Set An Out-of-Office (OOO) Message

一个n OOO message is a blocker to a prospect who wants to engage. Do you want to block a prospect? Of course not. Here’s how to keep your prospects engaged when you’re away.

During Leave

6.让你的经理或备份步骤

Give your manager or backup access to your email account, or set up an automatic forward so they receive your emails. They can look out for requests from key opportunities and responses to automated prospecting emails.

7. Check Emails While You’re Out (If You Feel You Must)

Create a time limit and "give yourself permission". But cap yourself at 30 minutes at a time. This time limit will force you to be hyper-productive and can help prevent you from going down any rabbit holes.

8. Take Planned Time Off At the Beginning or End of the Month

If you can control when you take time off, aim to head out at the beginning or end of the month so you have three full weeks to focus on hitting your number.

Notes for Management

这是为希望扩大配额缓解的经理提供的一些建议，或者即使他们有时间休假，他们的团队即使他们的团队也成功。

1. Encourage your team to take time off.

Whether you have a team member who wants to take a vacation, or who needs to step away to attend to personal matters, ultimately you should encourage what is best for the employee. If you make your teammates feel guilty when going away, they may not take the needed time away, and if they do, they may not get the most out of it from fear of missing their mark or letting down their team.

这是一个领导同理心的机会，并与您的代表一起确定最佳行动方案，以便员工休假和仍在工作的团队受到支持。

2.传达您的期望。

Your reps are looking to you to set an expectation of what proper planning looks like, especially if they are less experienced. If an employee needs to take time away, communicate exactly what they need to prepare before they leave to set their team up for success.

This could look like giving them a template for a thorough backup document, or asking them to prepare an analysis of where their current deals stand, and a recommended course of action for each account so you or another employee can keep the deal moving.

3. Consider focusing on other performance measures.

If unforeseen circumstances will make it difficult for your reps to meet their quota, consider pausing metric-driven performance plans for a period of time. This means you can use data other than sales numbers to evaluate rep performance, such as considering their ability to build solid relationships with prospects, how effectively they support their current clients, or their efforts fulfilling leadership duties on your team.

While the numbers sales reps hit is an important part of the role, it is not the only value reps bring to the table, and a holistic look at the reps’ performance before their leave or unforeseen event should be considered.

4. Change sales targets to provide quota relief.

When you consider extending quota relief to reps, make sure you are making a data-informed decision that is in the best interest of your team. What you don’t want to do, is lower a sales target only to put your team in an even more challenging situation during a later sales period.

Take a good hard look at how much revenue your team is bringing in, and how much flexibility is available from a cash standpoint. Can your organization afford to provide reps with a reduced quota one or two times per year? If so, quota relief is a powerful way to improve sales team health.

Here are a few ways you can provide quota relief:

• Shift quota to another point of the year— If you are working toward annual targets and have some flexibility on when your reps can reach these numbers, consider shifting their quota values to another point in the year. For example, if you have a rep who needs to take a leave of absence for several weeks during the first quarter of the year, you may be able to add the sales targets they should have reached during their leave to their second-quarter goals.
• Extend monthly performance period— For those who have shorter windows of time, you may want to consider extending the monthly performance period by a week or two, to give reps additional time to reach their sales targets.

在销售工作时抽出时间或让团队成员离开可能是一项挑战，但要过平衡，充实的生活是100％。使用这些技巧来花费时间，而无需牺牲配额。