How can you resolve conflicts when sales targets or quotas change?

Remember, managing conflicts resulting from changes in sales targets or quotas requires empathy, understanding, and a willingness to collaborate with your team to find the best way forward. Flexibility and clear communication are key elements in resolving these conflicts effectively. Communicate changes clearly and promptly. Ensure that the sales team understands the reasons behind the changes and the potential impact on their goals. Open dialogue helps in managing expectations and reducing uncertainty Encourage sales team to voice their concerns, challenges resulting from the changes. Actively listen to their feedback and acknowledge their perspectives. This can help us understand the specific issues they face.Finally incentivize adaption

Explain the reasons, the benefits and enforce the objective. Change is for a reason so long as the reason is understandable and communicated correctly, then this will help.

Managers need to be very decisive when announcing sales target changes, since there is a very thin line between being manipulated by your team and successfully adapting them to unexpected situations. You cannot simply revise new sales targets by using simple math! The story again comes down to managers and the extent to which they know about their market dynamics and are aware of team members opportunities individually. The more credit you have on your team, the greater your ownership of unexpected situations. This is your art!

Unilateral changes to sales targets or quotas are rarely tilted in favor of the salesperson . Changes that mean increased effort or decreased compensation will likely be met with skepticism and anger. Therefore might I suggest a "mediated" solution prior to invoking the change? Coming to a consensus on what is or is not reasonable/feasible, will soften the impact of such a change and improve buy in from the sales team.

Lead from the front, are the targets are really unrealistic? It's easy to say you need to sell a thousand, but really? If the market is only half that? Managers need to ask questions of themselves first, train, support, guidance and most importantly, be realistic

Observe how much the new salesperson knows, also identify their strengths and weaknesses before any Coaching stipulations. Try to compliment them on their strengths then help them polish their weaknesses, usually that can be done by letting them shadow your sales interactions with customers. Then you shadow them to see how much they've captured and grown. The same process can be repeated as many times as necessary in order to get them to succeed.