Conrey is for Closers

I’ve recently been reading Drive by Daniel Pink
, who you see above in his TED talk. The basis of the book is that people are motivated differently by intrinsic and extrinsic things. Pink argues that for creative work, extrinsic motivation leads to short term success but is not a good long term method of motivation – however extrinsic motivation works great for menial mechanical tasks.

Now if you consider sales to be a menial mechanical task you should probably stop reading here. In fact, you probably should be asking yourself why you are reading this blog at all. If you agree with the premise that sales is “creative” work in the same way that visual design, software development, art, or music are, then it leads to the obvious question. SInce 90% of salespeople’s pay plan is commission based, and commissions as an extrinsic motivator are shown to be a less effective motivation technique, why wouldn’t you pay a salesman a good wage and let the commission structure die on the vine?

Surely a good salesman can make more money through commissions than with a base salary alone, and some salespeople “need” that extrinsic motivator (see Justin’s 2-4-6-8 problem post), you could argue that Pink’s premise is exactly what leads to the 2-4-6-8 problem.

In full disclosure, I’ve been both a 100% commission based employee and worked on salary and the mix of both. The book did stir up my brain though and made me wonder if -as Pink says repeatedly in the book- there is a gap between what Science knows and what Business is doing.