Pushing the Right Button

Not every employee can sell products or services to potential customers.   The selling process requires an employee to possess a particular set of interactive and persuasion skills, as well as a compatible personality profile (garrulous, self-confident, unafraid of rejection, etc.).   While some employees enjoy the challenge, most want no part of it and only a minority are neutral about the idea.  For those tasked with a selling job it’s typically a reflection of individual personality that would generate success or struggle. 

For compensation practitioners having the right person involved in the selling process can be more important than the compensation program itself, because dangling potential rewards in the face of the wrong person can be a waste of money and represents lost business opportunity.

It's All About Motivation

Success in the selling process depends upon the right motivating elements aimed at the right employee personality.  To do this correctly within a sales compensation program requires the design to take that into account, to focus financial rewards toward whatever engages, whatever motivates the employee to perform in the manner the organization wishes.

Costly mistakes can be made when an organization assumes that all employees will react in the same fashion to the same stimulus.

Have you considered what motivates your sales employees?  Chances are that not everyone would have the same answer.

• Money: Everyone’s first response is that all you have to do is offer the opportunity for a cash bonus and the employees are off and running.  But in chasing the almighty dollar, employees could also drive your company in the wrong direction - even off a cliff - because they may take the path of least resistance (difficulty) and greatest financial reward.  If those activities fail to align with what the company needs to assure business success, money is not only wasted but used to reward behavior that could be detrimental to the company.

Do you really want to reward the sale of a money-losing or low margin product?

• Mission: Especially prevalent with not-for-profit organizations, many employees have a “fire in the belly” belief in what the organization espouses, be it products, services or awareness.  This internal value system often provides motivation enough to ensure concerted efforts.  In such a scenario, money is deemed less important (though not dismissed) as a motivator.  Employees are already motivated by the worthiness of the organization's mission.

Helping others or helping a cause can be reward enough for some employees.

• Brand identification: If you identify with the organization’s offerings and have a belief in what you are selling, you're already halfway to becoming an effective sales representative.  For these employees the ingrained belief in what they sell is already present; they just need a bit of training.

Employees are proud to be associated with a particular product or service.  They're always wearing the logo shirt and are the organization's biggest fans.

• Self-motivation: Here the employee possesses an internal reserve of self worth that helps to make excellence its own reward.  It's a state in which success in one’s endeavors is self-fulfilling.  The reward system for these employees is often a nice addition but isn’t necessarily the prime motivating factor.

A certain level of performance would be forthcoming, no matter what financial rewards are offered.

• Challenge: The mindset here is the joy of climbing the hill, especially if there’s a pot of gold at the peak.  Similar to self-motivation, some personality profiles relish a good challenge, and if you provide a reward for goal attainment, so much the better.

For such employees, the game is always afoot.  They enjoy breaking down barriers, solving problems and reaching for the brass ring.

• Competition: The fierce desire to be better than others; where winning (which means that others lose) is critically important.  Note: such employees might not be effective team players.

Sometimes this motivational factor is less about achieving company goals than simply doing better than other employees.  Like a loose cannon, these players may have their own definition of winning, which may not be synonymous with yours.

The takeaway point here is to understand what motivates your employees and then to place your rewards in front of them in a fashion that leads and directs their behavior.

Because if you design your incentive program with the wrong assumptions about what engages your workforce, you'll risk missing your targets, misspending your financial assets and perhaps not even achieving the required level of success - regardless of the money paid out in rewards.

Chuck Csizmar CCP is the founder and Principal of CMC Compensation Group, providing global compensation consulting services to a wide variety of industries and non-profit organizations.  He is also associated with several HR Consulting firms as a contributing consultant.  Chuck is a broad-based subject matter expert with a specialty in international and expatriate compensation.  He lives in Central Florida (near The Mouse) and enjoys growing fruit and managing (?) a clowder of cats.

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Comments

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Thanks, Chuck, for the totally essential reminder that everyone has a different button of varying shape and diverse color that connects to that particular value proposition that drives the behavior of that individual.

My years in Training & Development paired with many decades in overall HR confirmed beyond doubt that the best supervisors know that. Overseeing the behavior of direct subordinates is a lot tougher than "managing" a function or a department where knowledge of the personal motivations of individuals is unnecessary. Every test, study and reality-lesson proves that while the best bosses may not share the same prime "motivators" of their people, they understand exactly what brand of fuel in which octane level is required to activate their personal engines. And it is rarely the same for each of them.

That is grossly simplified, of course, but it remains true. All who forget it or ignore it will fail as a Total Rewards professional.