Chocolate bunnies, winning, and motivation

This posting by Geoffrey James on Bnet.com is provocative and intriguing.

Earlier this week, I had long conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel, author of “Simple Selling: Common Sense That Guarantees Your Success.” He’s one of these old-school sales guys who started selling door-to-door and ending up running big-money sales organizations.

We were talking about motivating sales professionals to do prospecting (aka cold-calling) and he said that, contrary to popular management belief, such motivation was easy to generate. “All you do is put some goofy prize on the shelf and announce that the first person to land three customer meetings gets the prize.” In his real life example, Crowel used a chocolate bunny that he picked up after Easter… for less than a dollar.

When I questioned whether such a small prize would work as motivation, Crowel said: “Kid, salespeople are motivated by winning. To the best sales reps, winning is more important than money.”

Hmm. Interesting concept. Somehow I don't think my salespeople will be motivated by chocolate bunnies -- but if you are using competitions as a motivational model, might as well keep the prizes inexpensive!