SKO Day 2: I WON!

I WON! ...No, not at the gambling tables. I actually lost $300 in less than 10 minutes at blackjack Thursday night. And no, I didn't win at the marathon or even 5k run/walk of SKO. I woke up with a headache this morning after staying out too late and having one drink too many again last night... though that's at least a decent showing. 😅 I won a President's Club award at the SKO awards dinner last night.

This win surprised me. I wrote in my blog just before dinner that I didn't expect an award this year. The irony of that was completely unintentional.

In retrospect I see that I was infected with a down-on-myself attitude that I had worked to overcome in others. I was down on myself— and certain others were down on me/the situation as well— over a sales deal a few months ago that wasn't the huge success we were all aiming for. It was still a medium success, but many of us were victims of our own expectations. Because it wasn't as big as we wanted, we tended to think of it as coming up short. No! We sold the customer more software than they were licensing before, increasing their annual spend with us by around 50%. That's a win.

I quipped in my previous blog that there's no A for effort in sales. I think I was wrong. My boss knew how hard I worked on that one deal— plus how hard I worked on another deal around the same time that also came in with a sizable increase in revenue. In fact the latter deal was also recognized as "Deal of the Year" for our Americas team. My boss advocated hard for me to win the award. Across a team of almost 40 globally in my role 4 such awards were given.

I really appreciate this recognition.

Related: What's "Club"?

What's "Club"?

I posted earlier today that I made President's Club at my company. I was surprised and, of course, excited. But you might be wondering what it even is.

President's Club, or just "Club" as it's sometimes referred to shorthand, is a reward for top performers in enterprise sales organizations. It's both a form of recognition among everyone in sales (totally one we put on our resumes, too!) and a special type of compensation. "Club" usually involves a fully paid trip to a resort destination. Everyone in Club goes there together for, say, 5 days. In past years my company has held Club at places such as Aruba, Cancún, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I went to club in Cabo San Lucas in 2019.

Typically sales reps who beat their quotas "go to Club". People in adjacent roles, such as me as a solutions architect/sales engineer, can get the award, too, for distinguishing themselves as high performers. For the reps the criteria are fairly objective: they've got a number to beat. For people like me, who don't carry a quota, the criteria are squishier. Often it's a qualitative decision made by an executive leader based on their own opinion and possibly other managers' recommendations.

Not all companies that do enterprise B2B sales do Club. Among the software companies I've worked at in the past umpteen years it's 50-50. In companies that don't offer Club it's often derided as "too expensive" or a boondoggle. The thing is, it is a boondoggle. But it's specifically a form of bonus compensation for top performers. In the context of overall employee compensation it's not too expensive. In fact it's planned in as part of the compensation program.

Where will we go this year? Right now we don't know! There was turnover among senior leadership in the past year, and a decision on this was one of the things left for the new executives to choose. We might do Aruba, Cancun, or Cabo San Lucas again. Personally I'd prefer somewhere else as I've been to all three of those places. But since the company's making these plans at the last moment their options are constrained. Our CRO joked that Club might be a camping trip this year. I told him afterwards that I had half of the gear with me in Las Vegas already: boots, a trekking pole, and a day pack.