Sales people have a reputation of being financially motivated. Whenever sales is mentioned I bet most readers picture a guy in a fancy suit with a gold watch, shiny shoes, and slicked back hair. It is an often captured stereotype. Unfortunately this image doesn’t illicit a ton of trust in people and the financial nature of sales adds to the belief that all sales people care about is money.
Even the companies that employ sales people tend to fall subject to this unconscious bias. Organizations advertise high On Target Earning packages (OTE). To retain talent its all about Sales Program Incentive Funds (SPIFFs) – essentially mini bonuses for achieving certain results in a smaller time frame than the fiscal year. President’s Club trips for top performers get doled out yearly. But is this all that sales people care about?
Is building a high performing team of sales people as simple as inserting money into the “sales machine” and out comes revenue?
It makes sense that people think of sales reps as coin operated. After all they make a lot more money than other individual contributors, get paid commission, and tend to leave a company if conditions are no longer lucrative. Every person is different, but I would argue on the whole, sales people are primarily driven by achievement and competition. Money needs to be there, but more than that, sales people care about how often they win.
To create conditions that make it likely for a sales person to win frequently, companies need to put their people in the best position to be successful. Make sure the following is in place:
- Tools & Technology – like Gong, CRM, LinkedIN Navigator, etc…there are tons of sales tools out there and some may be more or less valuable for your business.
- Internal Resources – like good solutions engineers, sales development, marketing support, effective legal support, and customer success.
- Intangibles – like a good pricing model and balanced territories.
- Product, Product, Product – you’d better be at least top 2 products in your market.
- A Voice – front line sales often knows whats going wrong before anyone else in the company. Listen to them.
Once all of the above is in place, then start thinking about compensation as a lever you can pull to perhaps move the quality and performance of your team up by a couple of basis points.
The best sales people want to win and they want to win often. Get the conditions right and sales reps will perform. Get the conditions wrong, and no amount of money poured into compensation and SPIFFs will grow the business.
The Ferment 