Motivating Story for Sales - How to Earn More Money

One of my fellow HR Community member Saumitra Yadav narrated this wonderful story about motivating his sales man. I thing this is one of the unique motivating story I have ever heard of:

Long back when i was  working as a Branch Manager for a Paint Company , I had one sales representative who was very lethargic & lazy bone. I found he was not visiting regularly the market & our sale was hampering in his area. The region where our office was located had a communist government & any direct confrontation was asking for serious trouble from active labor union. So i have to plan my action very carefully & in friendly manner.One fine late morning i went to the desk of this particular person. I sit there & started talking about his hobby & his family. He was newly married so i asked him in his next weekend where he is taking his wife to. He replied to me & mentioned one place where he would like to take his wife but he can't afford the cost.  I told him he can afford it in near future if he likes to. He asked me how, at my present position i am not going to get higher raise & there is no chance of promotion as there is no vaccancy for his immediate successive position as there was already a sales executive. I asked him why should not he try for other good paint company for senior position. He was getting excited by now.

I told him nobody will hire him as he is not visible in the market. dealer does not know him well so they will not refer his name. Last but not the least he has not aquired the required experience for the position. I  suggested to him that he should regularly visit the market. Improve his relation with dealer's. Enjoy the selling. The more he will be in the market, people from competitive companies will take notice of him & who knows in future they offer him a job. He worked for another two & half years like mad man & increased sales like anything. After that he got an offer from a much bigger paint company than us & joined them. When he was putting his paper's he just thanked me for showing him the path of enjoying the work.

I was happy for him & me too as whatever period he worked for me after that special day he generated good sales for the company. i had a guilt feeling too, was it a good idea to sell about joining other company.  ultimately i thought on a macro scale, one person from a poor performer changed to a good performer, that's enough for me. My organization can always recruit a good salesman.

Saumitra Yadav

Great going Saumitra! Keep it up!