不接地氣的銷售目標對企業有害無益

My first job was in sales.

我乾的第一份工作是銷售。

In a grim rented flat above a row of shops, I worked through a pile of leads.

在一排商鋪上面一間租來的陰森森的公寓中，我仔細推敲着一堆線索。

I phoned people who had entered a competition and fixed meetings for prize reps whose real aim was to flog double glazing and fitted kitchens.

我打電話給那些參賽人員，併爲獲獎代表安排會議，他們的真正目的是推銷雙層玻璃和整體廚房。

Every time I reached my goal, our hyperactive team leader would ring a bell, heralding a later bonus if the meetings I had arranged resulted in a sale. (They never seemed to.)

每次我達到目標，我們極度活躍的團隊領導人就會敲鈴，宣告如果我安排的會議賣出了產品（這些會議似乎從未賣出去產品），就會有獎金。

In line with my then employer’s Hobbesian view of the greed of sellers and buyers, the job was nasty, brutish and — for me, a holiday temp — short.

這份工作難幹、低俗而且短暫——對我來說，這是一份假期臨時工作——符合我當時的僱主關於買賣雙方均貪婪的霍布斯式觀點。

But I doubt I would have got it done at all in the absence of any target.

但我懷疑，如果沒有目標的話我根本幹不了這份工作。

Goals and rewards are an important ingredient of sales motivation.

目標和獎勵是銷售激勵的一個重要元素。

Pick virtually any recent scandal, though, and pressure to reach an ambitious goal is also a noxious part of the recipe for disaster.

然而，隨便挑出最近發生的任何一起醜聞，就會發現實現宏大目標的壓力也是導致災難的因素中有毒的部分。

The current poisoner-in-chief is Wells Fargo, whose executives urged staff to aim for the Great Eight — cross-selling eight products to clients.

如今的首席投毒官是富國銀行(Wells Fargo，見上圖)，該行高管們敦促員工以八大爲目標——向客戶交叉銷售8種產品。

Many created accounts without customers’ consent.

許多員工在未獲客戶許可的情況下開立了賬戶。

Some 5,300 staff have been sacked.

大約5300名員工被解僱。

Recent reports have singled out the mishandling of goal-setting as a factor in the failure of UK bank HBOS (aggressive growth targets), Barclays’ Libor manipulation and mis-selling of payment protection insurance (staff blamed a culture of fear), and even increased deaths in the 2000s at Stafford hospital in Britain, which suffered from a focus on reaching national access targets . . . at the cost of delivering acceptable standards of care.

最近的報道將目標設定不當列爲英國蘇格蘭哈里法克斯銀行(HBOS)破產（激進的增長目標）、巴克萊(Barclays)的倫敦銀行間同業拆借利率(Libor)操縱案、違規銷售支付保護險醜聞（員工指責存在一種恐懼文化），乃至本世紀頭十年英國斯塔福德醫院(Stafford)死亡人數增加的一大因素。英國斯塔福德醫院的問題是着重於達標……卻犧牲了令人可接受的護理標準。

Abolition of product sales goals — the radical action announced by Wells Fargo’s chief executive John Stumpf — seems the obvious solution.

廢除產品銷售目標——富國銀行首席執行官約翰•斯頓夫(John Stumpf)宣佈的激進舉措——似乎是顯而易見的解決辦法。

As US senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out acidly in her excoriation of Mr Stumpf last week, Wells Fargo’s target was set not because you ran the numbers and found that the average customer needed eight banking accounts. It is because ‘Eight rhymes with great’.

正如美國參議員伊麗莎白•沃倫(Elizabeth Warren)上週在指責斯頓夫時尖刻地指出的那樣，富國銀行設定目標不是因爲你經過計算髮現普通客戶需要8個銀行賬戶，而是因爲‘8念起來朗朗上口’。

A similar oversimplification led to the disastrous Ford Pinto project in the 1960s.

在上世紀60年代，福特(Ford)類似的過度簡單化的做法導致了災難性的平託(Pinto)項目。

Ford boss Lee Iacocca challenged his team to produce a car weighing under 2,000lb and costing less than $2,000.

福特老闆李•艾柯卡(Lee Iacocca)讓他的團隊生產一款重量不足2000磅且成本低於2000美元的汽車。

Under pressure to meet these goals to a tight deadline, Ford managers pushed the car out with a flawed design, later blamed for a number of deaths and injuries.

由於時間緊和任務重，福特管理層推出了設計有缺陷的汽車，後來該款汽車被指造成許多人死亡和受傷。

Scrapping goals, though, can leave teams aimless.

然而，廢除目標可能讓團隊沒有方向。

Maurice Schweitzer, of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, is co-author of a 2009 paper, Goals Gone Wild, which included the Pinto case and warned about the dangers of overprescriptive goals.

賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)沃頓商學院(Wharton School)的莫里斯•施魏策爾(Maurice Schweitzer)在2009年與他人合著了論文《瘋狂的目標》(Goals Gone Wild)，文中提到了平託案例，並對硬性規定目標的風險提出了警告。

But he maintains they are an essential managerial tool.

但他堅稱，目標是必不可少的管理工具。

He told me: If a manager hopes to motivate employees, goal setting has got to be part of that process.

他告訴我：如果一名管理者希望激勵僱員，目標設定就必須是這個過程的一部分。

A second option then would be to adjust targets to avoid their sometimes lethal consequences.

那麼第二個選項將是調整目標以避免它們有時產生致命的後果。

In the vexed area of executive pay, for instance, if boards spent less time focusing on the amount paid and more on the period over which managers were rewarded, they could encourage them to act for the longer-term success of the business.

例如，在棘手的高管薪酬領域，如果董事會少花些時間關注薪酬數額，而是更加關注經理人獲得薪酬的期限，他們就能鼓勵經理人致力於更長期的企業成功。

The ghost of targets past has a habit of haunting staff.

昔日目標的陰影往往還會困擾員工。

After investigating Barclays’ culture in 2012, lawyer Anthony Salz warned the bank not to replace individual sales goals with indirect targets such as branch league tables that may still encourage bad behaviour.

在2012年調查巴克萊文化之後，律師安東尼•薩爾斯(Anthony Salz)警告該行不要用分行排行榜等仍可能鼓勵壞行爲的間接目標代替個人銷售目標。

At Wells Fargo, how teams hit targets should have been as important as whether it reached them.

在富國銀行，團隊如何實現目標本應與它是否實現目標一樣重要。

A third way of improving goals is to augment them with conditions on, say, customer care or satisfaction.

改善目標的第三個方法是用比如說客戶關懷或滿意度等條件來作爲補充。

New ways are emerging to measure goals such as these, which are harder to quantify, using surveys, social media and other information.

使用調查、社交媒體以及其他信息來衡量這些較難量化的目標的新方法正在出現。

But a strictly numerical approach requires caution, too.

但嚴格數字化的方法也需要謹慎。

With their false promise of clarity, data have a mesmerising effect on executives, even in areas that are harder to quantify than mere revenues.

數據可能會讓人錯誤地覺得情況一清二楚，它令高管着迷，即便在比單純收入更難量化的領域也是如此。

Goals are extraordinarily powerful.

目標效果非凡。

Abolishing them disarms a company’s sales team.

廢除目標讓公司的銷售團隊失去動力。

Adjusting or augmenting them can dilute or even pervert their impact.

調整或擴大目標可能稀釋乃至敗壞目標的效果。

But companies really court catastrophe when they set unrealistic goals and oblige staff to chase them.

但是當公司制定不切實際的目標並強迫員工爲此努力的時候，它們真的是在自討苦吃。

One brutal extreme of sales culture is summed up in a famous speech from Glengarry Glen Ross — the 1983 David Mamet play that budding salespeople still analyse for tips about the good and the bad of selling.

《拜金一族》(Glengarry Glen Ross)中的一篇著名演講概述了一種殘酷的極端銷售文化——《拜金一族》是大衛•馬梅(David Mamet)在1983年編寫的劇本，講述了剛入行的銷售人員仍在分析銷售利弊的技巧。

In it, a star salesman, played by Alec Baldwin in the 1992 film version, offers his charges expletive-laden advice and three prizes in a contest to determine who is best: a Cadillac Eldorado, a set of steak knives, and Third prize is you’re fired.

在1992年根據該劇本改編的影片中，由亞歷克•鮑德溫(Alec Baldwin)扮演的明星銷售員向他的手下們發表了髒話連篇的建議，並決定爲最佳銷售員競賽提供3項獎品：一輛凱迪拉克Eldorado、一套牛排刀具以及第三名的獎勵是被解僱。

As in many scandals where hard goals trump softer but better priorities, the shame of the Wells Fargo case is that by urging staff to go for first prize, the bank forced many to act in ways that ensured they would come third.

在許多醜聞中，公司重視硬性目標、而非更溫和但更好的優先事項。同樣，富國銀行事件的恥辱在於，通過敦促員工爭搶頭名獎勵，該行迫使許多員工以讓他們排名第三的方式做事。