How Zenefits' Big Bet on Sales Went Wrong
Getting Sales right is VERY tough. Having the right Sales culture that is consistent with the rest of the company is vital.<p>The aggression that Zenefits tried to copy was very similar to Oracle. If you exceed your quota at Oracle, you are paid much better than any Engineer. But if you miss your quota, you&#x27;re fired. As such, Oracle frequently oversold and underdelivered, but eventually grew big enough that it didn&#x27;t matter - they were the market standard and could invest in engineering.<p>This type of Sales culture wouldn&#x27;t fly in Google, Apple or a lot of other places. Some places choose to not pay their salespeople any commission. This screens out any elephant hunters capable of generating very big commissions, as well as people used to gaming the system.<p>Annual off-site &quot;Presidents Club&quot; weekends for Sales people who exceed quota are very common - it&#x27;s not just for the Oracles of the world.  Part of it is to incent Salespeople who are at 70 or 80% of their quota to push and get to 100%.  In addition to raising revenue, it increases the predictability of revenue.  (Good for investors)<p>It&#x27;s very clear that Zenefits got some parts of this wrong. Overpromising in insurance is very different than overpromising in database software. Scaling a salesforce also isn&#x27;t linear - especially if you&#x27;re not improving your Operations at the same rate.  I feel bad for a lot of the good employees who get caught up in the mess.