Five years ago, Brenda Dietrich started to investigate how IBM’s 40,000 salespeople could learn to rely a little more on math than on their gut instincts. In particular, Dietrich, who heads the company’s 200-person worldwide team of math researchers, was asked to see if math could help managers do a better job of setting sales quotas. As it turned out, it could.
Turning Math into Cash
February 23, 2010