Territory design, segmentation, and coverage models quietly shape outcomes long before a rep ever picks up the phone. Add AI into the mix - surfacing patterns, biases, and signals we couldn’t see before - and the way we measure performance is changing fast.

In this episode of SalesTV, Paul King joins us to discuss how sales leaders can separate rep capability from structural design, and what modern sales operations should really be accountable for. Sales leaders are constantly asked to “fix performance.” But too often, we jump straight to coaching, comp plans, or pressure without asking a more uncomfortable question: Is this actually a performance problem, or did we design a broken system?

We’ll ask questions like -

* How do I know if poor results are the rep or the territory?

* What signals indicate a structural design problem not a people problem?

* How should sales leaders rethink performance measurement in 2026?

* Is AI improving sales performance management or just adding noise?

Paul King is a senior sales strategy and operations leader at Salesforce, where he partners directly with sales leadership to design territory models, operating rhythms, and performance systems that scale. His career spans sales operations, frontline sales leadership, and GTM strategy - giving him a rare, end-to-end view of how design decisions upstream directly shape results in the field. His current focus is how AI can automate the routine, sharpen decision-making, and fundamentally reshape modern sales operations.

Join us live and be part of the conversation.

This week's Guest was -

• Paul King, senior sales strategy and operations leader at Salesforce.

This week's Host was -

• Adam Gray, Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite.

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2026-01-13

Adam Gray [00:00:02]:

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of Sales TV Live. And I'm joined by my good friend Paul King from, from Salesforce here. And we're going to talk about all sorts of things to do with sales performance management and what the, how we measure the figures and real time data and how we get the best out of our sales teams and how we understand what's working and what isn't how and a whole host of other things that I'm sure we won't have time to complete talking about today. But welcome Paul and a happy new Year to you and introduce yourself to everybody.

Paul King [00:00:37]:

Yes, thank, thanks for inviting me on Adam. It's.

Adam Gray [00:00:41]:

Yeah.

Paul King [00:00:42]:

So I'm Paul King, I specialize in sales operations and I've worked For the last 25 years in all sorts of different sales support functions, be it sort of sales operation directly or partner roles or sales specialist roles, that sort of stuff. So currently at Salesforce have been at Microsoft in the past as well. And actually I started my career working for a small consultancy back in the day where that was kind of my first taste of operations management and I was a fee earning consultant for a few years and then managed to get into the, the sales operations of that team when it was just 100, 100 consultants. And yeah, my career has taken off from, from there into this specialized role which, which I know, I think when we spoke about this you were saying that I'm probably the first person that you've interviewed like this in this kind of operations role. So yeah, hopefully something a bit different to, to talk about today.

Adam Gray [00:01:46]:

Yeah. And, and you know, when we were riffing beforehand and when we spoke before Christmas, there's like so much stuff that we can, we can cover here. But, but I think we both had a couple of things that we wanted to, that we wanted to go over and, and certainly when we were talking last time we, we've, we sort of settled on or, or stumbled upon that paradox of the benefit and simultaneously the problem of real time stats on sales performance. And you highlighted a really interesting issue which comes to light as a result of having this real time data. So explain that again to me just to be sure that I've got it clear.

Paul King [00:02:35]:

Yeah, well, I guess so. The story is when I started in this kind of role earlier on in my career there weren't all these CRM systems around like we were using spreadsheets and whiteboards to do our forecasting and, and that kind of stuff and it's obviously evolved massively over the last last few years. And I have to say that given the work at Salesforce, great CRM system, obviously everyone needs to go buy that.

Adam Gray [00:03:02]:

It's not a market leader for nothing, is it?

Paul King [00:03:04]:

That's right. But you know, I think from what we were discussing was I guess around accountability, right. And how that constant availability of data, that constant ability for sales leaders to reach in, have a look at exactly what's going on with the business has, has had an impact, I think on behavior and sales. Sales behavior, both from a sales leader perspective and an account manager perspective. Because that feels like, from, I guess from a account exec perspective that feels like constant pressure, constant inspection because it's available all day, every day to everyone who's got access to that data. But from a sales leader point of view as well, it's, I think, I think I was saying to you before Christmas, it's like watching your kids grow. You know, when you see them every day it doesn't feel like they grow. But then when you know, the great aunt visits them once a year and they're like, wow, it's gone up again, huge amount.

Paul King [00:04:04]:

And, and I think it's, it's kind of that with, with CRM like you, you don't see some of the changes that are happening, but if you take a step back and look for over a six month or an annual timeline, that's when you actually see the bigger change. And, and I think part of what I do at the moment is to try and whilst I've got access to all of that data, right. And that's, that's part of my job is to, to create those reports and create that analysis. I think part of my job at the moment, what I'm, what I'm seeing is that we have to, then I have to encourage the sales leaders to then take a step back and actually see that bigger picture of what's changing over time. And we just didn't have access to that 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when someone wrote up on the whiteboard that that was what they were going.

Adam Gray [00:04:54]:

To hit for the quarter.

Paul King [00:04:55]:

That's kind of what you had. You just wrote that down in your notebook and kept coming back to that and there wasn't really anything else around it.

Adam Gray [00:05:01]:

Right.

Paul King [00:05:02]:

So that we held those sales managers to account at that time against that number that you sort of jotted down in your notebook.

Adam Gray [00:05:07]:

Yeah. And I guess that nowadays, you know, I've told you that I'm going to do a million dollars this month and then when we speak tomorrow and I say I'm Only going to do 980,000. You go out, it's only 0.2%. Who cares? It's not a big deal really. But 0.2% today and then the same tomorrow and the same the day after. And this gradual whittling back of those numbers, you add it, it's like if I, if, if you turn your back and I steal one of your French fries, isn't it, you know, you don't notice I've stolen one of your French fries. If I steal 50 of your French fries, you do notice it.

Paul King [00:05:38]:

Right?

Adam Gray [00:05:38]:

Right.

Paul King [00:05:39]:

And I think the other thing that's happening with here is that we have, we have the ability to have so much data and we can slice and dice it in all sorts of different ways. There are so many different angles that people come at it from, and quite rightly so, especially in a complex business like where I, where I kind of specialize in that Enterprise Sales SaaS area. It is complex. Right. And everyone's looking at different product SKUs or marketing are coming in and looking at kind of leads and events and impact from that point of view. And everyone cuts that data in so many different ways that you can just end up in tons and tons of meetings talking about that data and struggle to kind of see, see that big picture of what impact you're actually making on the business. And I think the other, the final thing around that is, I think what I've noticed over the last few years is those, those things that you set up as the KPIs of the business that you want, you want to be able to see is kind of the reflection of how well the business, the business is doing is now, unfortunately, kind of we're almost putting the cart before the horse because we're rather than those sort of reflecting on the health of the business, we're now setting those as targets. So people are chasing those targets and we're kind of going down those rabbit holes within the data to make sure that the business looks right.

Paul King [00:07:03]:

But actually that carpet for the horse thing is sometimes that you don't actually then see that growth that you're expecting to see. See, you're kind of fixing the KPIs, but not actually doing that. The KPIs are not now the leading indicator or the indicator that they once were because you're now trying to chase them down and it's not having the impact that you want to have.

Adam Gray [00:07:27]:

Well, I think the other thing is that often the KPIs, you can either set the KPIs because you think they make a difference to the performance. So you can set the KPIs because they're KPIs that can easily be drawn from the system. And that's, that's one of the issues, isn't it? It's like, you know, we've, we've got a million dollars in pipeline currently today, which is five times coverage on my number, which is exactly what you expect me to do. But actually the key thing is, are you actually going to close any of that business? Well, no, I've been busy building this pipeline because that's what I'm measured on.

Paul King [00:07:58]:

Right.

Adam Gray [00:07:59]:

And I think that, that many times, you know, it's, well, this is easily easy to draw out of the system. Therefore I'll report this because it's, it's a comfortable metric, I guess, or it's a comfortable thing to be able to show.

Paul King [00:08:11]:

That's right. That's right. And I think you need that strong leadership then just to say, well, let's put those ones aside. We might have access to those, but we can keep an eye on them. But actually these are the ones that are going to make a difference. And let's keep coming back to those same ones because it's like that, that going back to that whiteboard figure, you kind of need that clear whiteboard figure that someone's written down in the notebook to say that's what it hit, that's what you need to keep going back to. And I think we, to your point, there's that erosion of it just chips away over time. But I think also we just can get back bamboozled with all of these other KPIs that we go and fix and then we come back and find out that that thing that we wrote on the, the whiteboard, that one that we really need to commit to, we've kind of lost sight of that.

Adam Gray [00:08:59]:

Yeah, absolutely. Now, now, now another thing is that I, looking at the questions that we had kind of discussed ahead of, ahead of the session today, I remember that I was, when I was at Oracle, I worked with the sales guy that was actually, he's the best salesperson I have ever had the privilege of being in the same room with. And he's one of those people that, that kind of is a super overachiever of things. And when we were dividing up the territories that we were selling our product into, he was the one that got Middle East, Africa, Russia, you know, basically, you know, this, this was what I had considered to be a truly dreadful territory. And there was no way he was going to sell anything at all. He was, of course, the person that carried the rest of the team on his back because he was a good salesman and he saw, and he saw the opportunity within those territories. So one of the questions is that if a sales rep does not achieve their objectives, how do we know whether it's because the salesperson isn't very good and they need training or help or support or to be managed out of the business or whether or not it's just a territory or a vertical that has no buyers in it?

Paul King [00:10:21]:

Yeah, I think it's really, it's a really hard question to solve, but I think there's probably two bits that you can do around.

Adam Gray [00:10:27]:

There's.

Paul King [00:10:28]:

One is what you need to do in the moment, but probably the biggest side of it, and the bit I'm passionate about is that there's an annual cycle that you need to go through around the planning. And I always advocate for that to start much earlier than most people think it should start. There's this especially in, again, in a complex environment like this with all sorts of products and all sorts of different sales lead times that you need, that you need to start planning pretty early to get some of this stuff right. And I think if you, if you do that planning and you size the territory and you segment the customers correctly and that you also have a, an open negotiation with the sales leaders. I actually used to, I know most people hate this, but I used to love the negotiation of the quotas and the quota setting because I got to have that, that conversation with all of the sales leaders to say, well, you know, from what I can see, this is sort of growth that we should be looking at. And of course everyone would, would come back and say, no, no, I can't possibly do that. But my, my target in quota setting was to make sure that everyone was equally unhappy. So we didn't have anyone who is going out the room saying, yeah, I've got, you know, I've got an easy one, or people who were just like, this is ridiculous, I'm going to go and resign and go somewhere else.

Paul King [00:11:47]:

But you got to, you got to even it out and you've got to give everyone, I think, you know, an equal challenge. Right. But if you haven't got that right, then, then you start to get into those problems of, well, I don't really know if it's the territory is wrong or where there's a capability problem. I think if you do more planning and a lot more work around, you know, where, where are we strategically Going, are our customers segmented correctly at the territories, cut and carved in the right way, that it's a fair challenge for each of those salespeople, then you can be much more confident that, you know, if there are performance issues that you can, you can maybe have a look at the territory again. But there's probably more reliance on the AE executing against that, that quota than just not putting enough time and effort into the planning. And then you end up in difficult conversations. Especially once, once that, once that person signed up to that quota and got going and it's three, four, six months down the line, it's a bit late then to kind of start saying, well, that's a bad territory. So you need that upfront discussion.

Adam Gray [00:12:55]:

Yeah, no, absolutely, that makes, that makes perfect sense. So, so I'm just interested to know what happens when I say you, I mean the management team rather than you personally. What happens when you get it really badly wrong? So what happens if two months in I'm at 600% of my number and the stuff isn't even really starting to come in yet and you're just like, oh my God, we're going to be bankrupt paying this guy. So how do you reconcile that equally with the guy that's. You can see they're working flat out and they're simply getting nowhere.

Paul King [00:13:29]:

Yeah, well, I think there's. When I certainly advocate for our sales leaders to hold their A's to, to account in a very structured way. And, and the way that I learned this off a book, Mike Weinberg, I think his name is Sales Management Simplified. And within that there's a really good chapter around, around holding your AES to account. It's a very, he advocates for like a very short meeting where you just really look at three things and the first one is hitting a number, basically being responsible for in your number. And actually if they've hit the number for the month, the quarter, whatever you're looking at, kind of the meeting's over. It could be like a two minute meeting. The next thing you would look at though, if you've missed or forecast against something and missed that forecast, is that you'd have a deep dive on Pipeline.

Paul King [00:14:25]:

And this is not going into coaching as what he was quite clear about in the book. It's not an avenue to then go off and coach and give advice. It's really to look at do you have enough to cover the gap, get back on track to hit your numbers in the next month, the next quarter, whatever you're looking at. And again, if that's a no. Then you start to look at activity and looking at who are they meeting, where are they going, what sort of prep are they doing, what are their campaigns that they're running, all that kind of stuff around the activity. And I think if you hold to those three, I mean it sounds really simple and is really simple, but it's not necessarily simple to do and people can be quite reticent about, about having those kind of accountability meetings. But if you, if you do that and you hold people to account and it's based on, you know, a good amount of thinking that you've put into the territory design and the targets that you've got, you should be able to hold people to account to hit those, to hit those goals. I definitely advocate for that because I think we definitely, especially again, in these sort of complex areas where you can hit your number in all sorts of different ways and you've got long sales lead times you can get very wrapped up into.

Paul King [00:15:46]:

Well, this person did this really well, but still didn't quite hit their number on that. Or actually they've driven a lot of pipe gen this year and it's going to be another year till they hit it and all those sorts of things. But that's where I think really the planning comes in of let's be really clear about the vision for that territory, what number you're going to be able to hit, where it's going to come from and have that conversation up front early rather than just kind of landing someone in a patch and saying good luck and then you get the arguments coming back.

Adam Gray [00:16:13]:

Yeah. And I think that Patrick's comment here about, about the activities, focus on the activities that, you know, drive the outcome that you, that you want. And I think one of the things that's really interesting is that that, and I say sales people, this is true of all of us. You know, we're, we're very good at, at playing the game that's put in front of us.

Paul King [00:16:35]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:16:35]:

So, you know, the, the, the challenge with Pipeline is that actually how much of it is real pipeline. So Tim, Tim often tells a story about when he was, when he was working at Oracle. Tim, my business partner B, when he was working at Oracle, he said that they were having a deal review and somebody said, yeah, I'm confident that this is going to close this quarter. And Tim said, how many people in that account are you connected to on LinkedIn? And the person's like one, the decision maker. Tim's like that that's not going to happen. And it didn't happen of course, you know, for whatever reason. But, but, but so much of this is like, you know, I can fill out the CRM and it can be a tapestry of lies because, because that's the next layer of stuff. If I don't hit my number well, I'll make it up in the CRM.

Adam Gray [00:17:25]:

So how do we differentiate between fact and fiction in terms of what you're putting into your CRM?

Paul King [00:17:33]:

Yeah, well, I mean I think that that's where that single meeting really helps because you start with are you hitting your target? And I think we need to be really clear in our line of work that we are here to go and get their revenue for the business. It's, it's unlike other areas of the business. Sales is, is simple in that respect.

Adam Gray [00:17:58]:

It's very.

Paul King [00:17:59]:

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think we shouldn't be scared of the fact that if, if, if it's a fair quota and a fair territory that we should be holding people to account to hit number. And, and if you're not, then you, then you need to do something about it. But it's, and, and there's, I think the other part of that is by doing that, planning that pre work, you're ensuring that you as a company have set those people up for success. Because that's, that's a critical part of it, right? Is that we're not going to throw any, someone into a, into a territory and give them a quota when they, when they can't do that. And I think that's by doing that preparation as an organization and thinking that through, you're then setting them up for success. Otherwise it's not fair. And also you'll create that gap between the organization and the salesperson and you want that to be a much more collaborative especially again in complex sales where they are going to need to be, you know, effectively the CEO of their territory and be, even though they might be an individual contributor, they're going to have to go and be a leader and, and create like a little V team with the level of support that they will need.

Paul King [00:19:16]:

Whether it's from BDR resources or, or marketing or specialists. They're going to get, have to go in and get that. So you need them on site, you need them bought in, you need them motivated with something that, that they feel that they can go after and go and hit.

Adam Gray [00:19:31]:

Yeah, I think I've heard the expression before. It needs to be out of reach but not out of sight. It needs to be a stretch, doesn't it? But it needs to be something that you think there is some chance of you.

Paul King [00:19:42]:

That's a much better way of describing it than equally unhappy.

Adam Gray [00:19:47]:

I think the reality is that for many people it is that though, isn't it? You know, it's like we're none of us going to get the easy ride that we, that we'd hoped for. So one of the questions that you wanted to touch on, I think is how should sales leaders rethink performance measurement in 2026? And, and I guess that to a certain extent, where we're like the joke, you know, guys driving through an unfamiliar town and he winds down the window and he says, excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Main Street? And the person says, well, it wouldn't start from here if I were you. So, you know, we've got all of these, these performance metrics that are a given. You know, why do we measure this? Why am I holding you to account for this particular thing? And the answer is, well, because that's just how we do it or that's how we've always done it. So, so what should people be doing different? And I think again, back to Patrick's point, this is about focusing on the activities and measuring the things that we genuinely believe are going to drive success rather than things that, well, you had to make 100 cold calls a day, so I had to make hundred, so now you're going to have to do it. And that kind of almost like a bullying behavior of some of these, Some of these things.

Paul King [00:20:57]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we're in this situation now, particularly with the amount that AI is going to impact sales. I think there's all sorts of things that are coming already, already out there. You know, there are SDR style apps that are already out there where someone goes on a website and clicks a button, then the AI will instantly call them back and help qualify. So there's all sorts of different tools and I think AI is going to impact our sector quite significantly. But I think at the end of the day, and again, in kind of enterprise sales, people still buy from people and we need to use AI in a sensible way so that we can be more productive as sellers. But, but also to help us create that personal connection. We can't sit behind a computer screen and use AI to do the work for us.

Paul King [00:21:57]:

We actually need the AI to kind of lift us up and create that connection. And that's certainly something that I think particularly like post Covid, there's a lot of homeworking and everything else that goes on in video calls. But actually there's still something to be said about, you know, having the boots on the ground, getting into the customer site, meeting them face to face and creating that, that personal connection. I think, you know, obviously you're a big advocate of that as well.

Adam Gray [00:22:23]:

Yeah, well, it's really interesting actually because I'm, I'm, I find a very much got like a dichotomy in terms of how I feel about AI. So, you know, it does provide incredible opportunities for streamlining and speeding up processes and, and that side of things. However, it's in everybody's psyche to be as lazy as they possibly can be to get the result, to get. And that's, that's, that's a reflection of human nature rather than any people in, in. In specifically. So we're seeing AI developing leaps and bounds on an almost daily basis. And I have very recently started to play with Notebook LM so Google's kind of tool that does that. And what's really interesting about this is that yesterday I was having a play with this and NotebookLM created me an absolutely fantastic infographic, an absolutely fantastic video and some absolutely fantastic other content.

Adam Gray [00:23:34]:

So like show cards and slide deck and stuff like this. And the reason it did that is that I began the conversation with it by pouring in over a hundred of the blogs that I'd written, things that I had invested a huge amount of time in thinking about and putting into it and the resources for that, such as, you know, Sixth Sense reports, Gartner reports, Forrester reports. So it had not just a view of fact, the output from these reports, however you choose to present that, but also my thinking. So then I showed it to my wife in the evening, said, look at this, this is, this is remarkable, and played the video. And it's an American accent, but it was like she said, wow, it's your words. It's as if you're. And my point is that, that the challenge is that most people don't have the 100 bits of copy content to put in there. So it's like you said a moment ago, people buy people.

Adam Gray [00:24:31]:

Absolutely. So actually what you want is you want to differentiate yourself from everybody else in the marketplace. And you can't do that by just typing into chat GPT or whatever, write me a blog about. Because it'll access exactly the same stuff that it does for when you do it, when he does it, when she does it. So, so you have to do that pre work. And I think that the challenge here is that that's the Bitter pill that most people don't want to take. From what I've seen, they want the shortcut now.

Paul King [00:25:03]:

Yeah, well, and we've certainly been playing with a lot of these things in our team notebook. LM is great because you can actually go and research on the Internet of that organization's strategy or their annual report or whatever it might be. Feed it in. Feed it in with your content of your use cases in that industry or something and actually get it to map it together, which would have, you could have done. And it might have taken hours for you to do, and they can do it in 15 minutes and give you some sort of output. And I think we need to use those sort of tools really well.

Adam Gray [00:25:42]:

In.

Paul King [00:25:42]:

Our area of the business. I did hear that you should kind of treat AI a bit like an.

Adam Gray [00:25:48]:

Intern that they can very clear, doesn't know anything.

Paul King [00:25:52]:

Well, yeah, exactly. So it might do an amazing amount of research if you give it enough context, enough guidelines. But it also might get it like horribly wrong. And I think that's a good thing to kind of keep in your back of your mind when using these things. I think the other side of it is the customer side, right? I mean, they're using it as much as we're using it. They will be typing into AI which, which provider would be the best. Best for me based on this. They're gonna, they're gonna use it to become a lot more educated as well.

Paul King [00:26:22]:

So again, kind of the stuff that you advocate for of like building your network, creating those personal connections, you want to be that person that someone calls up and say, hey, I've, I've been doing that research. I've learned about this, that and the other. But I still need someone to kind of take me through the solution and understand exactly how I could do this. You want to be that person rather than, rather than kind of spamming people on LinkedIn, trying to, trying to get your foot in the door.

Adam Gray [00:26:47]:

Absolutely. Spam, you know, cold is cold no matter how you do it. So we are, we are approaching the end of the time. You wanted to talk briefly about personality types, didn't you?

Paul King [00:26:58]:

Well, I just. Yeah, I just wanted to. I mean, it was something when, when you said in December that this would probably be the first time you've spoken to someone in this kind of role. And it just made me think about the personality types because I've always been told through my career that I think differently. And I think that's probably within sales. We tend to go towards the personality types of sort of red Yellow type, personality type, very goal orientated, very people orientated which is exactly what, you know, what sales people need to be. I on those personality charts I am like solid blue. I love a spreadsheet.

Paul King [00:27:38]:

I love kind of looking at that analysis and so that, I mean that's just in my role kind of. But I, I think that's sort of common in, in the sort of sales operations area is that we are, we do think differently and, and that actually that sort of diversity of things thinking is often what a sales team needs because you are in that environment where creating relationships, being goal orientated, you know, loving the fact that you got a quota to go and hit doesn't, doesn't necessarily map to someone who sits in.

Adam Gray [00:28:10]:

The, in the blue.

Paul King [00:28:11]:

But you need that analytical mind to help to help think you through the strategy, have a look at the analytics, do all those sorts of things that we do in our field. So yeah, I think we're somewhat of a rare breed. I mean you haven't had too many.

Adam Gray [00:28:27]:

But people talking about we've all got blind spots. And I think that the, the key thing is that having having somebody that plugs those gaps in your knowledge and your understanding is really important. And you know, I, I can, it's like I can imagine nothing worse than being stuck in a room full of people like me. So you know, because part of the joy of, of doing stuff is having differences of opinion and different perspectives on things because that's how we all learn, isn't it? Yeah. So Paul, I mean what fascinating chat. We need to make these things longer really. That's the long and the short.

Paul King [00:29:03]:

I really enjoy that it's gone quickly.

Adam Gray [00:29:05]:

Yeah, well they, they, they normally do. I hope so. I, I hope you will come back and be, be a guest again for us because this is all stuff that we need to explore more. So to everybody in the audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for your comments and everyone that's subsequently going to be watching, thank you very much as well. If you would like to be a guest, please scan the QR code and fill out the form and we would love to hear from you. So until next time, thank you all very much indeed. It's been great to have you, great to have Paul on talking and we'll see you all next week.

@SalesTVlive

#PerformanceManagement #SalesPerformance #TerritoryPlanning #SalesOperations #RevOps

#Sales #SalesLeadership #LinkedInLive #Podcast

________________________________________

About SalesTV: SalesTV is a weekly talk show created by salespeople, for salespeople. Each episode explores sales, sales training, sales enablement, and social selling, bringing together sales leaders, enablement professionals, and practitioners from across the globe.

About the Institute of Sales Professionals: The ISP is the only body worldwide dedicated to raising the standards of sales. Its Sales Capability Framework, certifications, and member community are designed to address their one goal: To Elevate the Profession of Sales.