More than Money
Top producing salespeople invariably confront an almost spiritual crisis as they demand meaning from their work. It’s a well established fact that healthy, well-adjusted people require more from a job than just money; jobs are the way people make friends, discover opportunities to learn, and, in general, enable individuals to feel they are making a difference in the world.
Salespeople are no different. Some try to find that missing ingredient of meaning in a management position. But they discover administrative challenges don’t generate anywhere near the satisfaction found in pursuing and closing a big deal. But it’s either start over again someplace else or hunker down and put up with the stress. Countless are the managers who look back on their days in the street as the best years of their lives. But now, there’s just nowhere else to go.
Mentoring not Managing
Let me propose another way, an alternative to the traditional administrative or account management career paths. I’ll refer to it as mentoring. Mentoring is the process of duplicating one’s success in others.
Pete talks to the VP of sales about his concern for Jennifer. They decide to build a mentoring career path for Jennifer. Pete retains the bulk of the administrative functions such as hiring, compliance, and interfacing with senior leadership. Jennifer is given her own private secretary and two new account reps who will service the majority of her existing accounts. Jennifer is freed up to do what she has proven she does best – generate new business and develop client relationships. She takes the account reps under her wing to train them as she wants. Jennifer gets a cut of any new business generated by the account reps. She is freed from time and resource limitations to grow her business as large as she desires.
Mentoring isn’t new. It’s a model used in stock brokerages and some law firms to reward those who have proven their value to generate new business. The biggest impediment to the success of mentoring in most organizations is the political kingdom-building of front-line managers who can become very territorial and perhaps even a little paranoid with anything but the most clear-cut power hierarchy.
The mentoring career path requires careful organizational planning and preparation. The secret is to design a matrix management approach rather than a linear chain of command. Account reps assigned to the mentor have a dual report – administration issues go to the sales manager and accountability for activity and sales results to the mentor. This model works especially well in marketing and highly technical sales which require salespeople to suddenly change hats after finding a prospect to become an analyst or designer. I’ve yet to see a dual role salesperson do either role very well. Better to have a dual report for lower-paid rookies than to dilute the efforts of senior sales talent.
Jennifer and Pete had a couple of rocky sessions at first, but with time and a mutual commitment to teamwork, they worked through most of the issues. In fact, Pete and Jennifer both learned valuable lessons in creative conflict management that both had never before experienced. The problems became opportunities for acquiring new skills. Sure, other salespeople complained about Jennifer’s preferential treatment, but Pete set out the criteria by which any rep could become a “career sales specialist.” A few of the more lethargic begged to be Jennifer’s account executives, but Jennifer knew they were looking for a gravy train, not a career path.
Successful salespeople are a company’s greatest asset. As Pete once said in summing up the mentoring experience, “It’s a lot less expensive and less frustrating to create a career path for top performers like Jennifer than it is to find ways to replace them.”
Jennifer’s delighted that in her 21st year of selling, she’s finally getting that all important fourth year of sales leadership experience.