The question to be asked is why does he consider it
necessary to pay someone more for doing the job that they were employed to do
in the first place and are paid to do anyway?
The news this week that Lloyds TSB bank has been fined £28M
for putting in an “incentive” scheme which frankly bullied the customers into
buying products that they didn’t need and didn’t want merely strengthens the argument.
It may be perceived that I am not a fan of incentives or at
least of financial incentives. The
American psychologist Frederick Herzberg said that the real factors which
contribute to motivation do not include salary or indeed financial incentives.
On the other hand people are motivated far more by factors
such as achievement, success, and reward in the form of praise or recognition.
I firmly believe in any case that we cannot motivate people;
it is arrogant to suggest that we can.
What we are able to do, however, is to provide them with an environment
and a style of management that will encourage them to be self-motivated to
perform.
There are so many examples that justify that statement. I recall the story of an office worker who
had stayed behind late in the evening to finish a task which was rated as very
important and, in this case, without being asked to do so.
The manager was sufficiently impressed by this selfless
attitude that he sent a thank- you card and a bunch of flowers to her home. Six months later a colleague was at the house
and noticed that the card was still on display on the mantelpiece.
The best sales force I have experienced was a large (120
strong) engineering group based all round the UK in a number of branch
offices. That sales force was paid on
the basis of flat salary with no commission or bonus or indeed any financial
incentive.
They were, it is true, paid rather over the market rate but
they earned their pay without any doubt.
One of the most effective members of that sales force was my old sales
mentor, Phil Copp, the Sage of Wythenshawe, who wouldn’t even have understood
the need for so-called incentives.
Perhaps he was typical of the old school; committed,
honourable, loyal and hard working and that is no bad thing. His greatest attribute was that he kept very
firmly in touch with all his customers whether they were large or small.
He would always go in to see the engineer after he had
installed our equipment to check that everything was going well and that the
engineer was satisfied.
I would suggest that this sort of follow-up call is not
usually at the forefront of the thinking of the commission salesman (or
woman). Their incentive is to make the
sale and get the hell out to see another potential customer, not to hang around
or to make another visit merely to see if the customer is happy.
It is a decision for management to make; do we just want
sales or do we want satisfied customers who appreciate good service and
after-sales service?
Instead of financial incentives, think of a few ideas to
encourage your seals people to think more of giving great service to your
customers and ditch those incentives which don’t always do the job anyway.
To generalise, most people are not coin operated and it is
an insult to suggest that they are. People
react favourably to success, praise and encouragement and delivery of that is
entirely in the hands of the leadership.
Download my book "Leading to Success" from the Amazon Kindle store
Visit www.vistage.co.uk
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