What are the sales goals for Geico Sales Reps?

In a freemium model for SaaS, how do you handle commissions for sales reps where some of the leads assigned to them converted on their own automatically through your product without the sales rep doing much, if anything to convert them?

• All leads that sign up from our home page automatically have their contact info go from our site into our CRM, and are then automatically assigned to a sales rep. Around 30%-40% of those leads convert on their own without any help or outreach from a sales rep. Would it be best to "delay" sending all leads from our site into our CRM to see if they convert on their own before assigning them to a rep? We obviously want our reps focusing their time on leads that haven't converted yet and don't want to be paying commissions for leads where no sales work was done to convert them (and yes, we have more leads than our reps can handle).

• Answer:

  Yeah, in the early days, this will seem so frustrating. You bring on your first rep, your second ... and it seems like half of what they are doing is closing deals that would have closed in any event, without them.  Am I just flushing my money down the drain on these so-called "sales reps"? Here's the thing -- this will always be the case.  And it doesn't matter.  It's just part of the model of how you comp sales reps.  While it may be most obvious on the freemium side, where deals literally can close without a human ... it's also true in larger deals.  Your reps will get "one call close" deals that a customer support rep could have closed without any expensive commission.  And even your Big Enterprise Deal reps will get an occasional deal that is borderline packaged up for them. It's just part of Sales.  It's just part of leads.  As a rep (and even as a founder) ... you get a few One Call Close Leads.  A few Good Leads.  But also, quite a few Mediocre Leads.  And Cr*p Leads.  It's part of the package every rep gets. So what do you do? The simplest thing is, two-fold: 1.  First, just bake these Would Have Closed Without The Rep leads into the comp plan.  If those leads make it "too easy", and they are say 20% of the overall leads ... just increase the quota by 20%, or decrease the commission by 20%.  It doesn't really matter. 2.  Make sure you are (constantly) running an A/B test with your sales reps, especially at the low end.  This will really prove if it all pencils out.  For example, if these 100 leads a month would have yielded $20k in ARR without a rep, what do they yield with a rep?  If they yield $40k in ARR instead ... the rep will more than pay for herself.  Even if half the leads would have closed without her ... And don't forget, even if the leads would have closed without the rep ... it's both good training for the reps ... and also, maybe, the rep still increases the odds the deal will close.  The A/B test will prove this out.  Many prospects just plain like talking to someone.  I know you probably like to buy stuff on the web without having to talk to a sales rep.  But, it turns out most people aren't like you and me, when it comes to web services.  They actually want to talk to a sales rep.  If that person also knows how to close ... magic will happen.