PUZZLING OUT
MOTIVATION
CASSI ROPER, Sales Director of the Year at BESMA 2018, explains why the real motivator for great salespeople isn’t commission
W
hen you talk about being a salesperson, people often assume that the biggest motivator, perhaps the only reason for doing the job, is commission. The more you reward someone for making a sale, the more sales they’ll make, the happier everyone will be – or so the thinking goes. The problem is that this is simply not the case, a view backed up by lots of research papers. One from the London School of Economics analysed 51 studies and found that financial incentives 12 WINNING EDGE
actually reduce motivation and have a negative impact on performance. Instead, you need to give people what the best-selling business writer Dan Pink outlines in his Ted Talk, The Puzzle of Motivation, namely, autonomy, mastery and purpose. They have the urge to direct their own lives, the desire to get better at something that matters, and a yearning to do something larger than themselves. It sounds counter-intuitive, but at Redgate Software we’ve found that it’s the ideal building block for a selling approach that is professional, ethical and good for the business. Commission ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
