Daniel pink- do commissions motivate? Only way to motivate?

IndieBound

800 CEO Read

July 16th, 2012

Are commissions the only way to motivate salespeople?

Let’s face it. Salespeople aren’t like the rest of us. You and I want a decent paycheck, of course. But we also seek much more from our work – the chance to learn, to contribute to the world, and to climb the ladder of self-actualization.
But not the folks in sales. They are — and here comes the adjective we deploy most often – coin-operated. Slip a quarter into the slot and they’ll do a little dance. When time runs out, insert another coin or they’ll stop dancing.
In the new Harvard Business Review, I’ve got a 2-page article challenging this view. It explains why commissions sometimes backfire — and introduces a few places that have eliminated commissions and seen sales rise.
You can read it here. (Free registration required. UPDATE: Article is now free and outside the firewall.)

***As it happens, this question — Are salespeople different from the rest of us? — was one of the first questions I got from readers after publishing Drive. And I became so interested in the broader topic of selling that for the past year, I’ve been writing a book about the subject — the first book on sales for people who’d never read a book about sales. You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming months in advance of its January launch.