this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas (arstechnica.com)
submitted 4 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/technology@piefed.social
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[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 35 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Sooo.... If you mis the target, you don't admit defeat, you move the target

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Probably more likely to fire sales people than the dumbass execs that set the targets, too...

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Looks like they need to fire around 50% of them..

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, yeah. The AI stuff is selling, just not as much as they thought. So you adjust your targets and change your business model to account for that part of the business not doing as well as planned.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Give up. Lemmy understands business... I don't have a metaphor. They don't understand business. At all. But yes, that's how sales targets work.

[–] Taldan@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

The original sales targets were poor judgement, but isn't this the best response Microsoft could have had after the fact?

They realized the targets were unrealistic, significantly lowered them, and didn't blame the sales people. Many orgs would keep the unrealistic targets and just fire half the sales people

[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 24 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They shoulda replaced their salespeople with AI.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

Maybe we should make you CEO at microsoft! :)

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

microsoft executives

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I wanted to try load one in as an internal knowledge broker, rather than managing a gross knowledge base on SharePoint or some document library or something. Nope. Have to get the license first. I have no idea if it will even do what I want it to do. I made a two page checklist of training items to grade it and I couldn't even point it to an SP library.

So obviously I won't be pushing the org to buy anything. Will wait for some other idiot to do it and potentially get blamed, then do my testing on the back of that. I don't have very high hopes because Copilot is awful and even failed several times in configuring the agent.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 months ago

Oh. This was supposed to drive sales, huh. Not just investor hype?

[–] Chais@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Cowards! Stick to your guns! Commit to the bit!