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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.
~~~
Sales Candidate
I told this sales professional that my client was concerned about the fact that they were not money motivated. The candidate took a breath and said, in a very authoritative manner, “Bob, my family tree ain’t pretty. I have a gift for working hard, I’m smart, and I have invested in sales training and personal development for one specific purpose. I have the ability to change the way my immediate family and their families look at themselves. I have chosen an industry where I can earn what I want to earn. I’ll either work for this company or I won’t. Money ain’t the issue – money solves money problems. I don’t have a money problem. I have a family problem, and I need time and energy when my family starts to develop and I’m focused on that. If that’s a problem, let me know, I’ll find another team to sell for.
Whew, and I’m going to stand in the way of that freight train!?!?
Client
I have a client who cashed out of a venture that netted him over 500 million dollars personally. Scary, and frankly, unfathomable for the human mind to comprehend. He is a low-key, Midwestern operations type individual who never would strike anyone as a deal maker, and therefore, would probably not be hired by most hiring managers or sales managers because he didn’t put money at their top of their priorities.
I spent some time with him to find out how he dealt with the growth he experienced and what drove him to create the monster application he created. He told me that as the business started to kick in and it was clear the application he was using was going to hit big, he made a conscious decision to not concern himself with money. He felt it got in the way and would only distract him from his stated goal – carve an application out to its simplest, most efficient form, so that his creation would undercut every other service provider, yet still produce wonderful high-margin business.
We all talk about hitting it big and closing big deals, but here is someone who experienced it, who went through it, and did it, yet never allowed his motivation to earn money get into his thinking. Interesting…. It’s your choice whether to take it to heart.
There’s a deeper principle at work here in both of these examples, one which I’ll leave sales professionals, sales managers, and mentors who have impact on these individuals.
When hiring sales professionals, never use criteria for hiring or selection that you haven’t drilled two, three steps further. If you use money motivation as a sole criterion for judging the value of sales candidates, you’re going to miss out on professionals whose goals are purer and will take them and your company further.
When teaching or mentoring sales professionals, never teach a student something that can be overdone. Anything that comes out of a trainer, manager, or mentor’s mouth should have this effect on his student – the more the student executes the desired action, the better the results. If it gets them something less (hoarding commissions, turnover, burnout, etc.), then bite your lip and find another way to get a point across.
-- Bob Pudlock is President of Adgrego, Ltd. (www.adgrego.com), an executive recruiting firm that helps companies of all sizes Identify, Assess, and Capture top sales & sales management talent. Contact him at 866.330.0036 or email raisethebar@adgrego.com
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