My manager just increased everyone's target

A furious and short message came in the evening:

"My manager is a d..k!

One of the Sales Rep in our team quit and he just announced us that he will add his sales quota on top of ours.

Wtf?"

Well, this things happen! Let's see how we can help.

Answer:

Hi Robert, (I believe that is your name – I deduced it from the email)

First of all, looking at your message I see you are very upset, and I don’t blame you for that.

Take a deep breath and try to let the bad feelings aside, they won’t help you solve the problem.

You are right, splitting the target of the Sales Representative that quit, to the rest of the team, is not correct and is quite a bad idea.

Probably your managers should have foreseen this and mitigate it by hiring a replacement or postpone the departure until the replacement started.

I’ve been in this position myself over the years and I remember that one time I’ve even split the target of the new Sales Rep that I hired as a replacement with myself, so no member of the team got hurt.

So, there are solutions and you plus your teammates should talk to your manager and find a better solution than increasing the quota of every team member.

Thank you,

J.J.