Rainmaking Motivators
Product companies spend big to motivate their sales forces. They do it with cash commissions. They also use non-cash rewards, perks and recognition.
Every winter Florida fills up with top salespeople attending their companies’ annual sales conferences. The best salespeople eat, drink and play golf with corporate executives and listen to lectures from professional motivators.
By itself, membership in the quota club, or whatever the groups who go on these yearly junkets are called, is a coveted form of recognition. But there is even more for the best-of-the-best. As the climactic event on these trips, the final banquet is followed by an awards ceremony.
The CEO gives an uplifting harangue about the contribution of the sales force. As he distributes his praise, the VP Sales standing next to him beams with pride. The CEO then challenges all present to do even better next year, and the VP Sales stands tall, jaw forward, chin locked, the embodiment of strength and resolution. (Yes, it’s the same man who intentionally knocked his golf ball into a sand trap that very afternoon to avoid beating this same CEO.)
And then the lights dim, and the best-of-the-best come to the podium one at a time, squinting in the glare of a spotlight, to pick up tickets for their package trips to Hawaii. They all assemble around the CEO. And boom, on come the lights, down comes the confetti, up go the balloons, flash go the bulbs and all present stand to cheer the lords of the day.
Have you puked yet?
I don’t recommend such shenanigans to professional firms. But it would be foolish to fluff off all this motivational expense by saying it is all very well for those who sell furniture wax, brass tacks, gunny sacks and auto jacks, but we professionals are called to our work and need no motivational help.
Selling is emotionally demanding. It is hard work and laden with risk. The highs are glory-halleluiah high, but the lows are deep down Ol’ Man River lows. To carry through the uncertainty and to rebound from the bad patches, some professional firms and some individual rainmakers use external motivators, too.
The founder of one well-known consulting firm used to ask his partners what they were going to commit to buying each year, a yacht, a summer home or whatever. But it had to be expensive. The partners were all paid on a plan heavily weighted towards performance, and performance meant sales.
The head of a regional office of an infrastructure engineering company told his people that if they exceeded their revenue targets, the annual planning meeting would be in Key West or another glamour location. If not, they would hold the meeting locally.
Here are a few examples of individual rainmakers using motivators:
- Several rainmakers would use major sales as an explicit reason to go to an expensive restaurant with their spouses.
- A cost reduction consultant and train buff would buy himself a miniature locomotive when he landed a big client.
- An attorney kept a collection of coffee cups embossed with the names of his clients and given to him at his request by each client that retained him.
This is small potatoes compared with the corporate world, but size isn’t so important. Rather, it’s important to recognize the value of explicit motivators and, if your firm doesn’t provide them, promise them to yourself. So, the next time you land a big client, how are you going to celebrate?
October 1st, 2008 at 8:18 am
Ford:
Good post — thanks. To outsiders, all the sales psychology stuff may look silly, and perhaps some of it is. However, salespeople know better. They take an emotional beating that almost none of their colleagues can appreciate until they’ve done it. They deal with rejection, hostility and setbacks every single day, and they also know that the key to performance is to develop strategies to manage the impact of this. Not a lot of, say, operations people approach complete strangers and hear different versions of “no”, “go away” or “your product isn’t any good” very often. Salespeople hear it every day. They don’t do this stuff because they’re simpler, shallower or dumber than everyone else. They do it because they know they need to.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:18 am
For those of you who don’t know Peter Darling, he publishes a thoughtful blog on business development.
Peter:
Sales people do see the world differently. A friend of mine left consulting to start up a company to sell a product he had invented. Realizing his own limitations, he hired a salesman to take his product to market. After the salesman had been on the job for about a month, my friend spent a day making calls with him. At the end of the day my friend said, “Now I see why you’re so good at this and I’m not. I couldn’t handle all the rejection.” The salesman responded, “What do you mean? I can’t stand rejection.” Where my friend had seen rejection, the salesman had seen something else. He wasn’t simpler, shallower or dumber (or, as many professionals say euphamistically, “contentless”); he interpretted events differently and, no doubt, often correctly. One challenge when helping professionals learn to sell is helping them learn what unreturned phone calls, cancelled meetings, lost sales and the like mean. It’s seldom true rejection.
What the quota clubs do for sales forces needs to be done for professionals, too. The Florida junkets I described work for some. But if they don’t work for your professionals (as they don’t work for me), then, as your comment implies, you need to do something else to manage the emotionals swings of selling. Do you (or any other readers) have good examples of noncash incentives that professional firms use to help manage the emotional swings of selling?
Thanks for the comment.
Ford