I was speaking with a prospect the other day and the subject of recruiting women in sales came up. This company is extremely impressive: high-growth, exciting market, great location, amazing sales culture - the works.

Like many of you, I attended Dreamforce last month. As is often the case, some of the most interesting conversations happen in the hallways between sessions.

During one of those conversations, I got pulled into a debate between two VPs of Inside Sales.

The question under consideration

If 40% of the reps on a sales team miss quota, who is at fault?

VP #1 argued that the team wasn't properly led - essentially failure was on the sales leader’s shoulders. VP #2 countered that it was more likely territories were uneven and many reps were assigned unrealistic quotas - failure was on the shoulders of the sales planning organization. Having made their cases, they looked at me to choose a side.

Today, we launch our 2014 research on the Sales Development / Lead Generation function -- focused on teams generating pipeline (ADRs, BDRs, MDRs, SDRs).

For some time, I’ve had a thorn in my side about a particular ‘insight’ floating around the sales punditry.

I’ve grumbled when it was repeated on conference stages, scowled reading it on blogs, and I might have exclaimed ‘for f***s sake’ when I found in Dan Pink’s (otherwise) excellent To Sell is Human.

But earlier this week, I heard it from a young Inside Sales Rep as a ‘justification’ for not picking up the phone. That did it. I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

Here’s what he said: 

This essentially a parroting of the information assymetry idea: that pre-web we lived in an era of tyrrany where sales ruled over buyers mercilessly.