The best sales managers have learned that while it may seem natural to want to help boost your lowest performing sales people, the majority of your time should actually be devoted to motivating and acknowledging your top performers. It is your top performers who have demonstrated the ability to achieve, thus they possess the best capabilities of reaching even higher success.
The following real life story, while stunning, vividly demonstrates how a sales manager can lose focus and squelch the motivation of a top performer.
The manager of a financial services firm decided that since his sales reps had been having difficulties meeting their quotas during a temporary downturn in their industry, he would motivate low performers with an incentive. So, he ran a contest for one month which would reward the sales reps that made the greatest sales improvements during that one month period. While his concept may have seemed helpful, it actually put his top performer in a no-win situation and actually punished and humiliated him. The four so- called winners had averaged selling less than 50% percent of their quotas for more than six months; one averaged even less. Over the same period the top performer had averaged 90 percent of his quota, even in the depressed market.
Picture your top performer, sitting in a meeting where he is the only rep of this small sales staff who receives nothing at the awards meeting. “I was so furious,” he told me. “Here was a rep who had averaged less than 50% of his quota for the past six months, picking up a $4,000.00 bonus check while I, who during some difficult months met my quota and overall hit 90% and got absolutely nothing.”
The reality is, there was no way this top performer could have placed; it would have taken a miracle in one month’s time for him to improve far enough beyond his high numbers to have even been in the running.
When the top performer later brought the facts to his manager with a documented chart, his sales manager simply responded that he was just trying to motivate his team.
While I must admit that this is one of the dumbest decisions I’ve encountered by a sales manager, he certainly isn’t the only one that fails to understand that when you waste your time putting major energy —and money in this case—into rewarding poor performance, you simply get short-term motivation and put yourself in high risk of loosing the reps that truly bring home the bacon. It’s a total morale buster; one that can easily result in eventual loss of your best talent. It’s faulty short-term thinking.
What should you do instead? Always spend the majority of your time, energy and money on providing continual motivation for your best performers. Period! End of story!
When you demonstrate appreciation of excellence, you get excellence.
When you reward mediocrity, that’s what you can expect going forward.
Now go tell your best sales people how much you appreciate them. And do it publicly so those laggards will get a clear picture that says— if you want rewards, do your job.
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