The role of PMF on Sales Quota Attainment

Since joining a well established and well-funded SaaS company, I’ve gotten to learn a ton about what it’s like to work for a scale-up. I’d say the main takeaways are related to the immense pressure every department, not just revenue, faces in helping the founder’s meet investor expectations. The high-pressure dynamic with VC backed Startups always starts with the top of the hierarchy and passes downward. The advisory board and C-Suite determine KPIs and OKRs for the quarters - which aim towards achieving a certain MRR/ARR multiple - which are then passed down to upper and middle-management. Managers are then tasked with getting their foot soldiers to deliver results. The startup grows but faces many challenges along the way, especially in the current economic environment we’re in.

Some startups grew to quickly, for instance, during the pandemic boom and now have had to downsize, which had a very negative effect on their culture. Others are well-financed with a working business model that is likely to be able to weather the business headwinds ahead. The point is, there are structural dynamics at play that determine the fate of your job and how you will perform. As a sales person, top-down decisions have massive influence on quota attainment, as well as how well the product meets a need/pain of your target market.

These externailities are unfortunately out of your control as a salesman. Finding PMF is largely the product team’s job, and if your product is not serving the needs well, no amount of sales finesse can help you attain quota. One of the factors to look at when you get a lucrative offer from a startup/company is to see what percentage of sales people are hitting quota–it could be an indicator of how well the product is meeting the market’s needs. Is it solving a massive pain for company’s and therefore flying off the shelves, or is it not delivering on its promises and is operating in an extremely competitive market place? These important things to consider. After all, to be a good salesman, you need to be able to convey full conviction in the value proposition of your product in an authentic way. It’s hard to do that when your product isn’t delivering the way its supposed to. This can affect the morale of the sales person and the entire team.

If you’re product does not have perfect product market fit, the best thing you can do as a salesman is identify niches were your product serves your customer’s the best. It is a good opportunity to gain more expertise in the market your operating in, and to convey those expertise to your prospect. Sharing useful insights about the state of your market, the competitive landscape and where your business stands and can offer a competitive offer will allow the prospect to trust you more. Sell with integrity and a good understanding of the value proposition you bring to the table. Another option is to really try to push for some internal changes, to give your feedback to the product team and bridge the gap of communication between product and revenue to help build a more competitive offer.

Of course, this only works to a certain extent, selling in an environment where competitor are outmatching you on quality and pricing will be incredibly difficult in an environment of informed buyers. You can, realistically, only be as competitive as your product – selling a product that solves a massive pain for customers at a good cost-benefit proposition will help sales people succeed and profit. Finding these kind of companies, with a good competitive moat, is not easy, so if you have a job working for a healthy business with a good people culture, remember that the grass is not always greener on the otherside. You might have run into something very rare and valuable. We all know how tough it is right now during the recession.