Sales Performance · HP Lesson 5
What Actually Drives Your Revenue?
Last Friday night, I posted on Reddit.
"What makes you want to be a salesperson?" in r/sales
299+ comments. 64,300 views. 70+ upvotes in 48 hours.
The answers were embarrassingly honest.
What makes them a Salesperson?
#1 Money
Surprise surprise 💰
"Money." "Also money." "And more money."
They weren't even trying to be subtle. Around 80% of the answers looped back to the same word. The top comment had 347 upvotes. It was one word long.
#2 Freedom and Autonomy
Number two hit differently.
"I spent my child's entire first year at home because of sales. Only 2 hours of work each morning and afternoon."
No office. No fixed hours. You eat what you kill on your own schedule.
#3 The Game
"It's not even about the money on some level. It's the game, the satisfaction."
The scoreboard is brutal. But it's honest. You always know exactly where you stand. No pretending, no politics — just results.
#4 The Accidental Salesperson
My favourite answer, with 61 upvotes:
"I f**king hate sales. I was cursed with this god-awful skill."
Because the truth is — most of us didn't choose sales. Sales chose us. Myself included.
That last one triggered a memory from the beginning of my sales career.
Why I Chose to Be a Salesperson
When I was a fresh graduate, I was obsessed with understanding how the business world operates. I had already decided I would start my own company one day. So any frontline role that could give me real business exposure was on my radar.
That's how I ended up joining the Security Software startup mentioned in previous stories.
At that point, I had no concrete idea what sales commission really meant. The basic salary was higher than most fresh graduate roles. I simply told myself: No harm trying.
Not every sales opportunity assigned to me was significant. Many were small leads — desktop encryption software, short sales cycles, sometimes even closed in a single day. Small commission, small effort. Fair enough.
Until the day I won my first significant project — the "10 meeting case" I shared before. It didn't just get me through probation. It also gave me a commission that doubled my monthly pay.
That was the moment I was hooked.
Two Pipeline Reports
Since then, I "automatically" started keeping two sales pipeline reports.
One for my CEO.
One for myself — with a Commission Estimation column.
Every Monday morning, I would only open the second one and work on those qualified leads with the best commission potential. I fell into a sales career — by chance.
And I was not alone.
The "New Commission Plan" Phenomenon
Later, I worked at a Singaporean Internet Service Provider in Hong Kong.
Every six months, when a new sales commission plan was released, the entire sales team would disappear for the whole afternoon.
Why? We gathered to reverse-engineer the new plan — figuring out which combinations of solution sales would generate the highest possible commission. We were essentially building version two of our pipeline reports together, almost in real time.
The commission plan wasn't just motivation. It was a strategy document for sales performance management.
Applying the Right Driver for Sales Performance
Twenty years later, the factor that drives sales performance is still the same: money — as confirmed by more than 500 salespeople in North America and the UK last Friday night.
That gap matters.
While you're pushing your reps to log activities and update deal stages, ask yourself: have you given them the one motivator that actually works — a clear, real-time view of what closing each deal means for their own pocket?
The second pipeline report existed because the tools didn't provide it.
Maybe they still don't.