Motivating individuals after goal failure poses a critical challenge for marketers and firms. We theorize that comparative benchmarks—either self-referential or peer-based—can address this challenge. Although prior research finds that benchmarks often fail to motivate or even backfire for low-performing individuals, a large-scale field experiment in a global pharmaceutical company shows the opposite: providing self- and peer-benchmarks to 1,549 salespeople who had previously missed their sales goals increased performance by 4.17 to 4.62 percentage points, translating to $2.4 million in additional revenue. Critically, we find that benchmarks are most motivating for goal strugglers when they provide downward comparisons. Five preregistered lab experiments (N = 3,734), together with a second field experiment involving 3,468 salespeople, (1) demonstrate that only downward comparisons motivate goal strugglers, (2) specify the underlying psychological mechanisms, and (3) establish a theory-driven boundary condition: self- and peer-benchmarks motivate goal strugglers but not those who have previously succeeded. Together, this research provides the first simultaneous test of self- and peer-benchmarks in a workplace setting and introduces a heterogeneity-based explanation (goal strugglers vs. goal attainers) for when benchmarks motivate.