|
I’m not money motivated. There, I said it. I feel better now. Does that make me less than successful? While others may brand me as “soft”, “wimpy”, or out of touch with what makes a sales person successful, I know something that they don’t.
I have a stable of clients and staff that don’t put money as their top priority in sales, yet I’d be hard pressed to find individuals who I wouldn’t want on my sales force. What’s this all about?
These sales professionals also achieve their potential in their field, but still money is not on their radar when they get out of the morning. What gives? How can this be?
On the other end of the spectrum, I have sales professionals who sell low price point, high volume, low commission products, yet are highly motivated to earn more money. They close more units of business than anyone, yet aren’t in the top 1% of wage earners.
I also have, don’t ask me to count how many, cover letters and resumes of candidates who say they want to be successful, want to earn more money, are motivated by the good things in life, yet when pressed on how they will get there, wrinkle up like a cheap suit.
Judging sales candidates by their motivation to earn more money is a short-sighted and incomplete thought. If you use this is as a go / no-go criteria for hire or evaluation, you’re missing the boat on what makes a sales professional successful.
I have a client who sells a low price point product with limited commission potential – our firm recruited 20 sales professionals nationally yet only 3 of them stated "money motivation" as their primary goal. For those hires, their earnings history was less than what we introduced them to with our client, and their passion, desire, and energy, along with their willingness to do whatever it took to be successful made them an easy candidate to bet on for future success.
The other 17 professionals we hired have other motivations, but a majority of sales managers and hiring managers would have taken a pass on them. The candidates would have been perceived as weak, misguided, soft, or not "hungry" enough and therefore, not "true hunters". The team, as a whole, is a stable of B to A players, all successful in spite of their varied motivations after a year and a half of service. Money motivation is not a criterion that is a driving force behind their success.
Our firm, when speaking with candidates in sales, goes deeper into what lies behind a person’s motivation. We’re not satisfied when someone says they are money motivated. Frankly, I’m more concerned with whether or not they are motivated to walk into a sales call on time after they have stepped in a puddle getting out of their car on a rainy Monday. I’m more concerned about whether they will resist the urge to chew out sales support or their sales manager and will instead focus on what they can control, like their behavior.
I have two examples, one a client, one a sales professional who we placed in a client’s company, that are not money motivated. When pressed to find out what got them out of bed in the morning, I found reasons to sell that were extremely powerful.
Next
|
