Is Winning More Important than Money?

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."

He might have something there, but I'm wondering what my brain trust (that's you) thinks. So here's a poll:

[poll id=16]