I’ve recently returned from a week mentoring start-up businesses in South Africa. It’s the second time I’ve been lucky enough to visit this fantastic country and I have to admit it, I’m a big fan!
Perhaps one of the reasons why I like the country so much is that, like me, most South Africans are passionate about sport, with rugby being a particular favourite.
Few genuine rugby supporters that are old enough to remember (and anybody with any sense of humility) can forget that moment when Nelson Mandela presented the Rugby World Cup to Francois Pienaar to unite the South African people in 1995 after such a divided and turbulent past.
What relevance does this have to sales I hear you ask? The relevance is the common goal, the environment, the sense of togetherness and bonding that we all feel when we’ve managed to achieve something special – in modern business terms, we call it ‘culture’.
You may well be lucky enough to have one or two superstar performers in your business at the moment, and that’s great, however – one small warning:
‘Money alone is unlikely to maintain momentum for long periods of time’
In order to achieve sustainable engagement with your sales team, and your wider teams for that matter, you need to be able to develop and maintain a positive and united culture. Without such a positive environment, you will inadvertently provide them with far more influence on the potential gains and losses of your business than you’d ever feel comfortable with – i.e. the cost of losing superstars is outrageously high!
There is no doubt in my mind that Mandela was a very special person, and clearly had an amazing ability to make people feel wanted and engaged.
In summary – by all means pay your top performers well, but if you pay them well, value them and also provide a great environment for them to work. You will be far more likely to achieve the sustained growth that we all aspire to – and it will be with significantly reduced risk!!
