Sales People Are People Too

photo by AMagill

Neil Davidson at Red Gate Software had a great post the other day on their new approach to compensating salespeople.  In sum, they’ve stopped assuming salespeople are only motivated by money and have begun compensating them like everyone else.

Not only has this cut down on the time it takes to manage the process, but it has eliminated unintended, but perverse, incentives and helped to align their sales team with the rest of organization.

As Neil’s post mentions, fear is not a good motivator.  And as I noted a few weeks ago, neither are extrinsic rewards.

Sales people aren’t all that different from everyone else in your organization in that they have values which motivate them and they have professional goals they want to achieve.

In many cases, the exorbitant rewards that come with the ‘eat what you kill’ mentality are a stand-in for something else.  Recognition.  Though they work outside of the company’s walls more than others they want to be a part of a team and be recognized for doing a great job.

With apologies to Adam Smith, that is human nature.

We’ve boiled recognition down to money because it’s the easiest thing to do.  Rarely is it not valued.  But it’s typically not what is most valued.

When rewards (for anyone) come in the form of legal tender then you’re bound to lose them to a higher bidder when one inevitably comes along.  You wind up attracting mercenaries when you really want people who are dedicated, engaged and work well with others.

So let’s stop taking shortcuts to motivate our employees.  Money is nice, but most people just want to know that they are being fairly compensated and that when they do a good job that they will be recognized in a way that is meaningful to them.

It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more effective to try to identify people’s goals and then align the rewards to help meet them.

While I don’t know if Red Gate’s approach will work, I’d like to believe it will.   It just feels right.  I would love to read a follow up post on how this works out in another several months once the existing sales pipeline has been turned over.

What are you thoughts?  Will it work?

No related posts.