I’ve been a sales manager for a little over a year. In that time I’ve worked harder than I ever have before for significantly less pay then I made in sales and now the company is saying they may not pay me my quarterly bonus based on territory performance even after acknowledging that the numbers were un-achievable due to being on hiring freeze and being understaffed. My question is, is this normal for middle management?

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Unfortunately, yes. If it’s about money, you might want to be in sales.

My advice, know what you’re worth. If you can quantify your impact on your sales people (the overall production) use it.

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Thanks for the perspective. I’m honestly pretty disillusioned right now. Heartbroken might be the better term. I love this company and I’ve sacrificed a ton to help it succeed and... I’m just tired.

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Well. The bonus is for achieving results. From what I can read you didn't achieve it so why should they pay?
Doesn't matter why you couldn't achieve it or who's fault is it. The result is not achieved. It would be better if you would start talking about bonus when you saw that it becomes unachievable.
P.S. I'm sales manager as well.

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P.S.S. didn't notice used many times the word "achieve" :D

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Sales management compensation is indeed dependent on how your team does. What is advisable though is when uncontrollable factors like hiring freeze show up, work with your management in advance to adjust targets and align them to reflect the reality. As a sales manager , you are not only responsible for territory performance but also elevating the reality and baking it into your territory goals. Alternatively, if you still enjoy sales, there are compensation plans that allow sales managers to own strategic accounts as an individual contributor in a sales capacity beyond the managerial role. In fact sales managers who are selling in parallel do end up becoming better at their managerial role since they have a sense of the ground reality. Depending on how much leverage you enjoy with sales leadership, I would recommend negotiating with them to alter you comp plan so you can hedge for the downturn that’s expected to last at least for the rest of the year. Feel free to ping me for ideas.

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These challenges are common in the first year. Think about the controllables. Is your team outperforming in PipeGen? If so, can you identify at which step in the process they’re not executing the close? Losses to a specific competitor? Big deal execution issues? Transactional deals too heavy? Not heavy enough? If you are managing a region, what are peers doing that you are not? (of which you believe is controllable? )
Territory and frozen HC woes will be an ongoing battle. Covid or not this has been a repeating theme for me at multiple companies. Targets go up and headcount goes down. That’s the science of profitability for corporations.
First line management is one of the hardest jobs there is. If you learn how to effectively manage time, prioritize what matters most, and focus on taking care of your people, consistently exceeding your number becomes easier year after year.

Leadership is great if you want to grow and learn how to scale teams to build out your own at your own company or a startup. No one goes into management for the money. The best AEs I know make much more money than the best leaders I know.

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Yeah, the more I read about management compensation the more I think I'll just stay in sales.

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