Sales Leadership Begins Where the Spreadsheet Ends
You Are Not Managing Salespeople. You Are Managing Desire.
Most Sales Leadership advice starts with a comfortable illusion.
“If we fix quotas, performance will follow.”
“If the comp plan is right, motivation will take care of itself.”
“If the numbers make sense, Reps will push.”
Sometimes they do.
Often, they don’t.
In a previous article, we explored why Sales Reps are increasingly missing their quotas, focusing on internal factors Sales Leaders actually control: quota realism, compensation complexity, time allocation, ramp-up, and process discipline. Those issues matter. A lot.
But many Sales Managers eventually hit a second, more uncomfortable reality:
Even when the system is fixed, motivation still plateaus.
The reflections that follow are inspired by the work and public lectures of French philosopher André Comte-Sponville, whose thinking on work, desire, and happiness offers a far more honest lens on sales leadership than most modern management rhetoric.
Sales Is Not a Vocation. It Is a Constraint.
Let’s start with a premise most Sales Leaders avoid stating plainly.
Salespeople do not sell because selling is a calling.
They sell because it pays.
That is the hard truth.
Everything else is narrative.
If your top Reps suddenly won 60 million $ in the lottery, how many would still show up for pipeline reviews next quarter?
Very close to zero.
And that is not a moral failure.
It is the nature of sales.
Sales is an economic activity before it is anything else. That is precisely why salespeople accept things no other function would tolerate: endless reporting, internal friction, administrative work, forecasting rituals, and tasks that clearly fall outside what most would call “selling”.
Sales is a constraint before it is a passion.
And managing people who operate under that constraint is the real challenge of sales leadership.
Quotas and Comp Plans Fix the System. They Do Not Explain Behavior.
Sales Leaders are trained to think structurally.
Are quotas achievable?
Is coverage sufficient?
Are territories balanced?
Is the comp plan clear?
These questions are legitimate.
They belong to the structural and economic layers of performance.
Bad quotas destroy trust.
Bad comp plans create confusion, gaming, and disengagement.
But here is the mistake: once those issues are fixed, many leaders expect motivation to become automatic.
It doesn’t.
Money Does Not Motivate. It Raises the Ceiling - And Then Stops.
Salespeople work for money.
That is not controversial. It is the foundation of sales compensation.
Base salary gets them in the door.
Variable compensation raises the ceiling.
Commissions work. Accelerators work. Overachievement bonuses work.
But that ceiling, however high, remains finite.
Once a salesperson understands:
what quota achievement secures their income and status
where diminishing returns begin
what “good enough” looks like under the current plan
behavior shifts.
Beyond that point, more money does not automatically produce more effort.
It produces optimization.
Reps start making rational calculations:
Is the next deal worth the internal friction?
Is pushing this account worth the political cost?
Is the upside worth the pipeline risk or personal burnout?
At that stage, compensation has done everything it can.
Sales organizations often respond by redesigning comp plans, adding complexity, moving targets, or manufacturing urgency. Performance spikes briefly. Then it flattens again.
Because money never stopped being a condition of motivation.
It was never the source of it.
Money removes resistance.
It does not create commitment.
When Salespeople Act Against Their Own Incentives
There is a moment every experienced salesperson has faced.
You are asked to sign a deal into a specific quarter because the company needs it.
You know that to make it happen, you will have to give additional discounts.
You also know exactly what that means:
a lower deal value
a reduced commission
sometimes weakening your next quarter because you already overachieved this one
From a strictly economic standpoint, the rational decision is obvious:
delay the deal, protect value, protect your pipeline, protect yourself.
And yet, many salespeople still push the deal through.
Not because of the comp plan.
In fact, despite the comp plan.
They do it out of commitment to the organization, pride in closing, a sense of responsibility, or simply identity as a closer rather than an optimizer.
That decision is no longer economic.
It is psychological.
And this is precisely where sales leadership begins - and spreadsheets stop.
A Word to Sales Managers
If one of your Reps does this, do not take it for granted.
They did not just “do their job”.
They most probably:
saved your quarter
protected the team
absorbed a personal financial loss
Yes, next quarter it may be someone else making that sacrifice.
That is not a reason not to acknowledge it now.
This is where true leadership can shine.
Make it visible.
Make it explicit.
Make it collective.
Not as a favor.
As recognition of a real transfer of value.
Because when a Rep gives up money for the company and the company pretends nothing happened, trust erodes.
And once trust is gone, no compensation plan will ever replace it.
Why “Good Enough” Is the Silent Enemy
The most dangerous moment in a sales cycle is not early-stage qualification.
It is when a deal becomes “good enough”.
Good enough to hit quota.
Good enough to secure commission.
Good enough to avoid scrutiny.
At that moment, most sales organizations think motivation should increase.
In reality, agency collapses.
Once “good enough” is reached, the salesperson’s calculus changes:
extra effort brings limited upside
additional risk brings real downside
recognition becomes uncertain
future quarters may be penalized
From that point on, pushing harder is no longer irrational.
It is unjustified.
So salespeople do what rational actors do when agency erodes:
they protect themselves.
Sales managers often misread this behavior as laziness or lack of hunger.
It is neither.
It is the natural consequence of an environment where effort no longer maps cleanly to outcomes and sacrifice is inconsistently recognized.
Pressure then replaces leadership.
Forecast calls get louder.
Dashboards multiply.
Micromanagement creeps in.
But pressure does not restore agency.
It accelerates its disappearance.
Salespeople Do Not Chase Money. They Chase a Form of Happiness.
Everyone works to be happy.
Salespeople are no exception.
But in sales, happiness has very little to do with perks, slogans, or “fun culture”. It has everything to do with agency.
Salespeople are happy when they feel:
in control of their outcomes
fairly treated when they take risks
respected for what they contribute, not just what they close
confident that today’s effort does not quietly sabotage tomorrow
This is why it is perfectly possible to sell well without being happy at work.
And why it is equally possible to be paid well and disengaged.
Sales leaders often miss this because happiness does not show up in dashboards.
But its absence does.
It shows up in conservative deal behavior, reluctance to take risks, quiet disengagement once quota is secured, and top performers leaving “for no obvious reason”.
A Clear Definition of Agency (Because Words Matter)
Throughout this article, we have used the word agency deliberately.
In sales, agency is the felt ability of a salesperson to influence outcomes that matter to them, through their own judgment and actions, without being arbitrarily overridden by the system.
Agency does not mean absence of pressure.
Sales without pressure is not sales.
Agency exists inside constraints, not outside them.
When agency is strong, salespeople push beyond “good enough” voluntarily.
When agency erodes, they optimize, protect themselves, and disengage - rationally.
Compensation can raise the ceiling.
Pressure can force short-term movement.
But only agency determines whether a salesperson believes that trying harder still makes sense.
Final Conclusion
Sales leaders often believe their job is to design better systems.
Better quotas.
Better comp plans.
Better dashboards.
Those things matter. But they are not where leadership begins.
Leadership begins where the spreadsheet ends.
When a salesperson pulls a deal forward at personal cost.
When they take a risk that benefits the company more than themselves.
When they push past “good enough” even though the system gives them no obligation to do so.
Those moments are not driven by incentives.
They are driven by belief.
Belief that effort still matters.
Belief that judgment is respected.
Belief that sacrifice will not be forgotten.
Belief that today’s contribution will not quietly become tomorrow’s penalty.
That belief has a name: agency.
Quotas fix systems.
Comp plans raise ceilings.
Pressure creates movement.
But agency determines whether performance endures.
And in sales, misunderstanding that difference is the most expensive mistake of all.
#SalesLeadership #B2BSales #SalesManagement #RevenueLeadership #SalesPsychology
If I can, some idea for your next article : salespeople typology to figure out behaviour and consequently their management needs