You Can�t Turn A Sow�s Ear Into A Silk Purse
(483 words)

Readability

Passive sentences:               0%

Flesch Reading Ease             63

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level    8.3

Nuts. That�s what�s happening, I�m going nuts. I have a client who wants his sales people to turn over R100 000 per month (R1,2 million per year). It�s not happening. It hasn�t been happening for the seven-odd years I�ve been associated with him.

Whether we cajole, bribe, threaten, motivate or just plain downright beg, the individuals in this particular sales team can only turnover on average R50 000 per month each. Up until recently, we believed that we could motivate them out of their inertia to achieve more. I don�t believe it any more (I think he still does).

The more I live, the more I read and the more I discover in the field of motivation, the more I come to realise � that motivation is an internal thing. No one can motivate us � we have to switch on our own internal dynamo to get ourselves moving. Is inertia a natural state?

Trying to motivate someone else is possibly one of the most draining experiences there is. Causing one to falter. If you keep trying to lift someone up, its tiring isn�t it. Try it physically: hold someone up for as long as you can and see how long you can keep going. Gravity wins every time doesn�t it? The weaker one will always pull the stronger one down.

The reality is that some of us are only capable of so much � and that�s ok. Like you cannot turn a tomato into an orange (well maybe you can with all this Dolly sheepie stuff going on), you cannot turn �a sow�s ear into a silk purse�.

If there are any sales managers or business owners who have the same problem: you cannot get any more capacity out of your team? Follow the advice of hamburger giant McDonald�s.

McDonald�s understands that every store they have, can on average, only turnover $1-million. It doesn�t matter what they try they can�t get it much over the $1-million mark. So what do they do? They just open new stores every month because they realise the more stores they have out in the world, the more money they�ll make.

Maybe this is the solution. When it comes to sales people, perhaps we should hire quantity and instil a modicum of quality in them (training, salary, incentives etc).

In the case of my client � if we had 10 sales people x R50 000/month, he�d turnover R6-million in 12 months. Yes, we�ll lose half the sales people in a year or two. However, with a great customer relationship strategy we could keep the accounts open and profitable for years to come.

This way we don�t take anything personally and get to sleep better at night believing that it is not our failure as sales managers, but rather a human condition called inertia that we cannot fight against.

Copyright 2005 by Jacques de Villiers 

This article may be copied or republished with the following credit:

"By Jacques de Villiers, Inspirational Speaker, Johannesburg, South Africa.
+27 (0) 82 906 3693   www.jacquesdevilliers.com "