An article written by Mike Schultz, President of RAIN Group, talked about what motivates people in sales and what the myth of the industry is. He discusses how many people believe that the only motivation of sales people is a large compensation for their hard work. However, Schultz argues that compensation is not the only motivation of salespeople and is not the biggest motivation for them to do well. He quotes Pink when he says, “The old carrot-and-stick notion of motivation is failing – in large part because it works very well for a type of work that most of us aren’t doing anymore.” Pink is talking about how we no longer work in a simple, algorithmic, and a routine work place, we now are apart of creative, conceptual, and complex work that we are continually trying to be the best at. Shultz goes on to say that the urge to direct their own lives, to strive to get better at something, and working with a true purpose in life are arguably the ultimate motivators. Shultz also provides a list of sales motivations and a lot of them we have discussed in class. The one that is the strongest in my opinion is altruism. For many of us we are trying to pursue a career in sales in order to obviously be successful and make money so that we can move out of our parents’ house but it’s important to remember that helping others is very important to a salesperson. Being a Christian, it is our duty to help others and being a salesman there are many opportunities to do so. Lastly, Shultz talks about how salespeople with defined goals tend to achieve more and do better in a sales environment. A study looked at assessment results of 400,000 sellers and compared the top 5% and the bottom 5%. All the sales people in the top 5% had personal written goals while only 16% of the bottom 5% had written goals. This shows that being successful is not only motivated by money, but goals set by that person.
https://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog/the-sales-motivation-myth-you-need-to-stop-believing
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I find this author that you talked about very compelling. I really like how he said that the old way of selling used to be very effective for its specific purpose, but now so much of the environment for business has changed. I also like how he put it in a Christian perspective for us to understand better.
The carrot and stick method has definitely fallen out of favor with most companies today. While companies still have commission bonuses for Salespeople who perform well, they know it’s not the driving motivator for their sales team. Companies are beginning to focus on their sales team in a more personal and relational aspect, bringing out these goals that you were talking about. Money does motivate, but it is most certainly not the largest one.
This is so interesting. In some ways I think it’s no surprise that people who have non monetary goals will be happier and therefore do a better job but this is a really great article! Its cool that they actually proved this with a scientific study.