Paul Cherry among interviewees in Richard Keller article -- Money Isn't Everything.

LENEXA, KS | May 22, 2008 | AgProfessional Magazine’s June 2008 issue will include the article — Money Isn’t Everything: Sales Persons Can Achieve Success Without Commissions — by editor Richard Keller. PBR managing partner Paul Cherry is among those quoted in the article. The current text of the article appears below.

Money Isn’t Everything:
Sales Persons Can Achieve Success Without Commissions
By Richard Keller, Editor

Today, employees will bypass job performance money for working at the best possible place of employment—working for the company that has supportive management and gives employees a sense of worth.

“People are going to weigh compensation more if the quality of the relationship with their manager isn’t positive,” said Paul Cherry, president of the sales and leadership company Performance Based Results and the author of Questions That Sell.

“Freedom and independence, these are emotions that drive most people and why sales people are attracted to sales because of the sense of flexibility or of being their own entrepreneur,” Cherry said.

Butler point of view

“Empowering individuals” is a philosophy that Dan Butler, president of Butler Machinery Company, explained at the Agricultural Retailers Association annual meeting last winter.

Empowering sales people is part of why Butler Machinery pays associates a salary instead of making them account for every hour as viable sales time. “Because they are salaried, they can work with customers, sit down and ask how the customer operates their business, where we can help, if we can help to lower their costs—put more money in their pockets,” Butler said. He said that good sales persons are competitive by nature.

“We try to find people who want to win but who aren’t necessarily driven by a pay check. In many cases, when dealing with our customer base, the talk is about how we can lower their costs.”

Cherry said, “Most sales people are driven by some sort of competitiveness or success factor. They want to feel important, they want to feel successful and they want to feel in control.”

Butler further explained why a salary arrangement works for Butler Machinery and might fit in ag retailing, too. It comes down to matching the personalities of sales persons and customers, he noted. “By having our sales persons on salary, we can move people around in a territory. If a customer doesn’t get along with salesman A, we can put salesman B over there if that is who the potential customer might prefer to deal with. We can make a switch quite easily,” Butler said.

Employees want empowerment

Cherry asks managers, “How do you help or empower employees to make decisions as though they are running their own business?”

He said, “It is important compared to dictating or telling a sales person what to do. Lead by asking the right questions and help that sales person come to the conclusion that you are looking for—reinforcing the right value.” Managers and owners “need to train, coach, engage, support, encourage, recognize, reward, promote and compensate” employees in ways that “exceed their expectations,” suggested Michael Guld in a recent explanation of recruitment and keeping prime employees. Guld is president of The Guld Resources Group business consultants.

He has written that employers have to create an atmosphere that results in employees saying, “I love my job.” He suggested different age groups of individuals say they like their job for different reasons although there are some similarities from generation to generation. “A baby boomer’s motivations may be dramatically different than those of a 25-year old Millennial [youngest generation employees]. Therefore, the golden rule is evolving to, ‘treat people the way that they want to be treated.’”

Attracting and keeping Gen-X employees, who are becoming the backbone of many companies, is important and requires owners and managers to think in terms of establishing “warm climate” companies, wrote Deanne DeMarco, a business coach and author of Speaking of Success and Pocket Resource: Coaching Tips. “When at work, they (Gen-X) want to feel supported, included, challenged, rewarded and encouraged to think up new and diverse ideas,” DeMarco contends.

Simple things important

For that warm climate place to work, she has suggested managers must never dismiss employee ideas out of hand with responses such as, “No. That’ll never work.” She further expanded this concept by writing, “Fairness is a fundamental building block in creating a supportive culture; it creates diverse thinking and ideas and sends the message that each employee is as important and valuable as the next.” Two practices that Guld outlines as necessary by company management are simple but make major points toward a warm climate or the “I-love-my-job” place to work. Guld said handwritten notes congratulating employees on successes plus random acts of kindness are two top motivators. But Guld takes the note writing a step further than the employee by recommending employers need to know employees enough to send appropriate notes to employees’ spouses recognizing achievements and thanking the spouse for such things as permitting excessive time away from family. For unmarried entry-level, young employees, handwritten notes to parents even make sense, he said.

Going along with the notes should be small gifts of “random acts of kindness” such as gift cards, dinner certificates, entertainment tickets, etc.

Most ages similar

Employers should be able to motivate all ages and levels of seniority employees, according to the business consultants. Cherry suggested that those at the top with the most job responsibility aren’t as money driven as might be thought. “As one progresses higher up the ladder in terms of responsibility and compensation, according to research, compensation becomes less of a motivator. Again, what really seems to have the impact is the quality of the relationship between the manager and the sales person,” Cherry explained. “A manager shouldn’t look at helping a sales person decide who to call on but help the sales person think more strategically so that the sales person asks, ‘Is what I’m doing right now having a direct impact on the bottom line?’ Get the sales person to think about this every business hour, every day and every week so that they are focusing on the right actions.”

Cherry said that managers have to bring out each sales person’s drive and “steer that drive to the next level.”

All of the business experts stress communications between managers and employees. They note that managers rarely ask employees about what drives them. Many owners and managers expect money to be the root of employees’ motivation.

Cherry summed it up best. “Start talking with your employees about what motivates them, and really listen to what they say. You’ll be able to tailor your encouragement to each staffer’s needs, jump-starting their zest to do their best.”