Cracking the Sales Management Code

02The Illusion of Managing Sales Revenue

What if I told you that the one thing every sales manager is judged on—revenue—is actually completely out of their direct control? It sounds almost like a paradox, doesn't it? In every boardroom, on every sales floor, and in every quarterly review, the conversation always centers around the financial targets. Did we hit the revenue goal? Are we going to make quota? What is our profit margin on these deals? However, Jordan and Vazzana introduce a concept that fundamentally changes how we must think about these numbers. They present the A-O-R framework, which stands for Activities, Objectives, and Results. Understanding this framework is the most critical step in transforming your management style, because it clearly separates the things you can actually manage from the things you can only measure. Let us start at the very top of this framework: Business Results. These include metrics like total revenue, gross margin, market share, and quota attainment. These are the numbers that the executive board cares about, and they are the numbers that ultimately determine the financial health of the company. However, the authors emphasize a crucial, often overlooked truth: Business Results are lagging indicators. They are the final outcome of a long series of events that have already happened. By the time you look at a report and realize you missed your revenue target for the quarter, the quarter is already over. The game has been played, the score is final, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it in that moment. You cannot directly manage a result. You cannot simply walk up to a salesperson, look them in the eye, and say, "I need you to generate ten thousand dollars right now." It does not work that way. The customer has to agree to buy, the contract has to be signed, and the product has to be delivered. There are too many external variables involved to claim direct control over a Business Result. To make this concept incredibly clear, consider the everyday goal of losing weight. When you step on a bathroom scale, the number staring back at you is a Business Result. It is a lagging indicator of how you have lived your life over the past few weeks. You cannot stand on the scale, look at the number, and command your body to instantly drop five pounds. You cannot directly manage your weight. So, what do you do? You focus on the things you can control. You decide to go for a run every morning, you choose to eat more vegetables, and you commit to drinking more water. These are the daily actions that will eventually lead to the result you want. This brings us to the middle layer of the framework: Sales Objectives. If Results are the destination, Objectives are the milestones along the way. Sales Objectives include things like increasing your win rate, improving customer retention, expanding the average deal size, or acquiring a certain number of new logos. Objectives are the conditions that must exist in order for you to achieve your Business Results. If your Result goal is to increase revenue by twenty percent, your Objective might be to increase your win rate from a quarter to a third of all proposals submitted. Now, can you directly manage an Objective? Not completely, but you have a lot more influence over it than you do over a Result. You cannot force a customer to renew their contract which is a customer retention objective, but you can heavily influence their decision by providing excellent service and regular check-ins. Finally, we arrive at the foundational layer of the framework: Sales Activities. This is where the true magic of sales management happens. Activities are the specific, daily behaviors that salespeople execute. These include making prospecting calls, conducting account planning sessions, delivering product demonstrations, and following up on proposals. Here is the most important takeaway from the entire A-O-R framework: Sales Activities are the only things a manager can actually manage. They are one hundred percent within your control. You can absolutely require a salesperson to make twenty phone calls before noon. You can enforce a rule that every major presentation must be rehearsed with a manager beforehand. You can mandate that every top-tier client receives an in-person visit once a quarter. When managers fail, it is almost always because they are spending all of their time obsessing over the Results and ignoring the Activities. They sit in meetings and badger their team about hitting the quota, creating a culture of anxiety and desperation. But when managers succeed, they flip the script. They understand that the quota is just a target on the wall. The real work is in coaching the team on how to build a better call plan, how to navigate a complex negotiation, and how to properly qualify a lead. They know that if they rigorously manage the Activities, the Objectives will naturally be met, and the Results will inevitably follow. Think about how this shift in perspective changes the dynamic between a manager and a representative. Instead of being an interrogator who only cares about the final dollar amount, the manager becomes a true coach. They become a partner in the process. When a representative is struggling to hit their numbers, the manager does not just yell at them to work harder. Instead, they look at the data and say, "I see your revenue is down Result. Let's look at your win rate—it seems to have dropped off Objective. Let's sit together and review the last five product demonstrations you gave to see if we can improve your presentation skills Activity." This is the illusion of managing revenue completely shattered. You stop chasing the numbers, and you start building the behaviors that create the numbers. Let that sink in for a moment, because once you embrace this truth, your entire approach to leadership will become infinitely more effective and significantly less stressful.

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