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Lou Burrows

Lou Burrows

22 Jul 2010 | 08:24

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I realised recently how much I learn from people I meet about the world of work and, in particular, about motivation. For example, I took a taxi ride with a man who used to be a car salesman. My first thought was "Fantastic! A chance to find out how the bonus system worked and what he thought about the pressure". Twenty-five minutes later and I've had a masterclass in how car dealerships work, the bonus calculations and the best way to spot highly motivated sales people. These guys could (back in the day) make two or even three times their salaries on good months - and they earned high basic salaries too.

I asked him if he thought he would have sold fewer cars if there had been no bonus and he'd earned £25k a year more (which would have been a good £75k to 100k less than he earned with the bonuses).

He shot back, "No way! We did it to win - not for the money. But luckily no bugger ever figured that out in our company - could have saved them a fortune, but they loved their bonuses, they did!

"I did it because I wanted to be the best. I wanted the dealership to recognise me as the top sales person. The handshake from the general managers meant more to me than the money. I loved selling those cars because every one that rolled off the forecourt was another sign that I was good at my job."

I was hooked. "Well, did the bonuses drive people who were not good sales people to try harder?" Again, quick as ever: "No way! Those poor guys were always miserable and got kicked out anyway. Some of them did learn, but mostly it's in your DNA to want to sell. I saw far too many people leave the company feeling really, really dejected and like failures. That does something to you really deep down. It’s sad really that the company didn't get it - all those years and thousands of dealerships and they just didn't get it.”

A £16 taxi fare with all that firsthand insight into working in a high-pressure sales environment - priceless!

Comments

1. At 08:51 on 22 Jul 2010, Glyn wrote:

A great post, Lou.

The real-life experience of your taxi-driver is mirrored by much worldwide research on performance-related pay. It makes me wonder why the CIPD has recently made so much of its support for introducing PRP into the public sector.
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2. At 20:09 on 01 Sep 2010, Andy wrote:

What surprises me is that this insight comes as a complete surprise to you Lou. But at least you seem to have learned and hopefully will change the way you think about motivation, the futility of PRP and appraisals etc. The saddest thing is that only very few of us in the HR community seem to have gained and learned from this. The CIPD and HR folks are still wedded to the outdated opinion that people are lazy and need to be motivated by money! Oh how wrong can they be.
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