Are Sales Quotas Counterproductive?

In consultative selling, the rep is supposed to be a "trusted advisor" facilitating a customer buying decision. If that's so, shouldn't we scrap the entire idea of sales quotas?

I was recently discussing this issue with Jeffrey Seeley, the CEO of the sales training firm Carew International. He explained that consultative selling is actually the opposite of peddling (or, as he calls it, "order taking"). Many sales groups, in trying to make the transition to consultative selling, simply graft a consultative sales method atop a set of values that encourages peddling.

Seeley believes there are two ways of thinking about sales: as a set of goals or as a process. Goal-oriented selling focuses on pre-determined milestones, starting with the initial introduction and finishing with the close. Goal-oriented sales reps aggressively push a solution because they haven't internalized that the customer now has more choices and is consequently in control.

Consultative selling techniques appear awkward and weird when executed by a goal-obsessed sales rep. Suppose, for example, you've been trained to ask probing questions to discover customer needs. If you're focused exclusively on the goal of making the sale, the customer will quickly realize that the point of the questioning is simply to elicit answers that lead inexorably towards the close.

According to Seeley, it's only possible to sell consultatively if you focus on PROCESS rather than on GOALS. You don't focus on the day-to-day routine of closing and quotas but on building long-term collaborative customer relationships where the customer actively brings up business and opportunities.

This kind of relationship can only take place through the building of trust, credibility and rapport, which always evolve naturally from the sales process and never from the achievement of a short-term sales goal.

If Seeley is correct, shouldn't sales managers be looking to scrap quotas? I don't know if that's true, but I must say that it does seem to be a disconnect when we expect a sales rep to be a consultant but goal him the same way you'd goal a carnival pitchman.

The theory, then, is that sales quotas create a sales culture which encourages peddling and which makes consultative selling more difficult. What do you think?