Fear Will Motivate Them


by Phil Grisolia - Date: 2006-12-18 - Word Count: 315 Share This!

That's what the man said, "Fear will motivate our sales staff," adding, "They'll either meet their quotas or they're gone." This was a vice president of sales for a large publishing firm talking. And it was clear that he believed every word of what he'd just said.

The man had been VP of sales for more than a dozen years, this after spending the previous dozen as a salesman for the same company. And during that more than a quarter century, he had obviously learned very little about motivation.

Several consultants, including myself, had been called in by this company to help promote the advertising sales for a new magazine with potential readers who had not previously been targeted by other publishers. During one particular meeting, when asked what "spiff" or incentive the firm's advertising sale people could anticipate for selling ad space in the new magazine, "fear" was the answer we got.

Fear - unless it is for your own safety or the safety of people you love - is not a very effective motivator. Certainly not a long-term motivator. Fear of having your job taken away might work for the short term - until you're able to line up another job - but as one member of the sales team responded later, "It sucks, big time!"

Having heard his VP's comment, the president of the company opted to take a different tack, suggesting an incentive program that not only worked, but worked extremely well. "Reward," he later said proudly, almost as if he was the first to discover the phenomenon, "works much better than fear or punishment."

Whether it's a sales staff made up of adults or your own child you're attempting to motivate, rewards - when appropriate to the desired result - work much better, with effects that last much longer than do those for either fear or punishment. In fact, an entire science - behavior modification - has been created around that very concept.


Related Tags: fear, business management, selling, management, motivation, sales, inspiration, sales management

© 2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC

Phil Grisolia is by profession a "wordsmith" - occasionally with a sense of humor. An accredited Certified Business Communicator (CBC), Phil is also a consultant and business coach to owners of small and start-up companies, an author, educator and an award-winning copywriter. To learn more about Phil and the types of help he provides for his clients, visit PhilGrisolia.com . While there, sign up for a free subscription to his best-in-class newsletter - Making Sense of Marketing™.

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