HBR's 10 Must Reads on Sales (with bonus interview of Andris Zoltners) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)

The Right Way to Use Compensation

by Mark Roberge

I WAS THE FOURTH EMPLOYEE hired at HubSpot. I’d met the two cofounders when we were all pursuing graduate degrees at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. They’re smart guys with a big mission: to help companies transform their marketing by using online content to draw potential customers to their websites—a practice known as “inbound” marketing.

My job was to build the sales team. An engineer by training, I’d never worked in sales—I’d begun my career writing code. But my background proved to be more of an advantage than I’d expected. It led me to challenge many conventional notions of sales management, using the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which I’d been trained to see the world. ...