Richard Terry-Lloyd
A dark slate field split down the middle. On the left, in muted grey, a clock reading eleven at night beside a stack of fading late-night message cards, above a quota bar that stops well short of its dashed target line at 68 percent. On the right, in glowing amber, a pipeline of deal stages climbs steadily to a bright closed node, above a quota bar that runs past its target line to 120 percent.
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The Last One to Leave

·Richard Terry-Lloyd
SalesLeadershipCultureNetlify

"He is always the last one to leave. Must be committed."

I've heard versions of this for 25 years.

He was at 68% of quota.

In reality, he was committed to being seen, not to closing.

Visible effort is the easiest thing in sales to fake. Late-night Slacks. Weekend pipeline cleanup messages. CRM notes timestamped at 11pm.

It's great theater, but it doesn't close anything.

The rep who logs off at a normal hour and hits 120% of quota has something different:

  • A calendar that is 70% buyer-facing
  • Same-day follow-ups
  • Prospecting at 9am instead of performing it at 9pm

I've managed teams at Salesforce, SAP SuccessFactors, Zuora, and now Netlify. The best reps I have ever worked with were rarely the loudest. They were the ones whose pipeline moved.

If the number is there, the hours are none of your business.

The worst thing a sales leader can do is reward the performance of effort instead of the production of results. You end up with a team that optimizes for being seen instead of being effective.

Measure what the account does. Not what the rep is seen doing. That's what I'm proud to say we focus on at Netlify.