Sales & Marketing Management - November/December 2008 - (Page 27) More diverse teams, sensing less company loyalty, expect more autonomy and influence than ever before. They look to make work more rewarding within a career, not just lucrative this quarter. Companies that want talent to stay need to help salespeople find “balance” and “opportunities for personal growth.” A house with two homes The work that salespeople do to build future capabilities translates into dollars. When firms turn their backs on committing to salespeople’s future security, the relationship changes—each is suddenly chasing very different goals. It’s like a separation taking place in a home with a divorce around the corner—the residents are still sharing a house, but with separate entrances and pursuing separate goals. There is a clear, emerging disconnect between what leaders believe employees want and what employees actually consider important. For example, employees rank personal “growth” and “earnings potential” second only to “compensation” and “benefits”—a focus on “my” future needs. A great place to work is just a prerequisite. It may not be possible to fire up pensions and long-term career paths, but companies must find ways to build longerterm relationships with salespeople. Sales Blazers learn how to properly harness and leverage the new knowledge and innovation-creating employee that is emerging. Leaders are in a unique position both to repair the relationship and benefit financially. Chaquita’s home Our observations of Sales Blazers made me think of my first ride on Chaquita. People aren’t horses, but our study reminded me of a universal principle I learned as a young boy. I visited Thousand Peaks Ranch, which was owned by a family friend. It is no ordinary ranch. Thousand Peaks encompasses an entire beautiful valley, high in the Rockies, surrounded by mountainous spires. That first day, we decided to go horseback riding. I rode Chaquita. We took the horses up through the forest and beyond the river for a long ride. Chaquita was a gorgeous, obedient horse, and I could feel her pick up as I prodded her along. Occasionally, she’d get distracted and slow down to graze, but a gentle tug at the reins was all it took to get her on the path again. We finally reached the summit, where we stopped for a breathtaking view of snow-capped mountains. I’ll never forget what happened next. As I pulled the reins toward home, my legs felt an explosive series of tremors from the horse. The massive change in momentum was instantly terrifying, and the direction www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com certain and unstoppable. In the following moments, we covered more ground than we had in an hour on the way up. I was helpless to stop this powerful animal; all I could do was dodge the branches. Chaquita was going home, and there was no stopping her. My role changed from director to passenger in the instant the ride became a pursuit. All horses are different, but a welltreated horse on a large ranch loves to go home. Home is where there’s food, security, the herd, pecking order, freedom and play—everything important. That day I learned that, for Chaquita, her own motivation was a more powerful and permanent source of incentive than reins and spurs. Even an apple didn’t compare to everything important to this horse. For Chaquita, the powerful change in effort and direction was what I now call sparking a performance pursuit. This powerful change in effort and direction, if charted, would look like a spike in sales. While salespeople are not horses, humans have an even stronger passion for higher needs like self-actualization. Sales Blazers gain top performance from all the people in various salesrelated roles in similar ways. They find a way to employ “horses headed home.” The most talented salespeople, like horses, don’t mind hard work; they just want to pursue what is most important to them. Sales Blazers we worked with found opportunities to learn an individual’s hierarchy of needs discovered by Abraham Maslow. They listen for physical needs like why the person really left the previous job, belonging needs like how the person feels about his or her place on the team, esteem needs like how recognition should come and self-actualization— There is a clear, emerging disconnect between what leaders believe employees want and what employees actually consider important. higher aspirations. The conversations were not formal with forms and schedules. The conversations were casual chats. In the book Sales Blazers, we use the main pyramid at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico as a model to “chat” about individual versions of these human motivations. The multidimensional pyramid reminds us to consider needs and passionate pursuits from all four sides of life: personal, career, the current job, but to also avoid the intimate side. The final stroke of genius of Sales Blazers is that these extraordinary performers found creative ways to involve the pursuits in discussing the responsibilities and tasks of the job. This allowed those being led to see the work as their own, and adopt the work that sales takes as a way of “getting home,” like Chaquita. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 SALES&MARKETING MANAGEMENT 27 http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com
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