Sales Lessons from a 6 year old: It’s all about the cash

http://www.quotacrush.com/index.php/2009/10/09/sales-lessons-from-a-6-year-old-its-all-about-the-cash/

by ciscoriordan • 17 years ago

5 9 17 years ago

swombat• 17 years ago

Ooh, that's a dangerous, dangerous path. It's well known that adding financial incentives can have all sorts of negative side-effects.

Beyond the obvious "gaming the system" problems, there is the well-known fact that paying people to do what they should want to do by themselves can have strong negative effects on motivation. Once the payments stop, his son will probably feel like he's being wronged because his dad's not paying him to play football anymore, and turn his back on it. Net result is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Exactly. He's conditioning his son to whine about all kinds of stuff so he'll get money in order to perform.

School grades and so on. I'm really not sure if this is smart. Such tricks work both ways.

I've sent my son to karate, I never had to 'push' him there (or bribe him) and if he didn't want to do it any more then that would be fine with me, even though it is beneficial to him.

There are plenty of choices, and if you can only get your child to do what should come natural because of a monetary incentive then that will come back in some way in the future.

mojonixon• 17 years ago

He is not your employee, he is your son. If he doesn't want to play football, he shouldn't play football. It is not the obligation of our children to make us proud. Frankly, this is just fraked up.

allenp• 17 years ago

So I wonder what your opinions would be if we replaced "$20" with "1 hr of video games per night" - do you have the same reactions?

Or, alternatively, what if the kid had a $20 allowance / week, and if he did something "bad" he would lose some amount of it per occurrence? Would you feel better about that situation?

NathanKP• 17 years ago

The child shouldn't be punished for bad performance on the football field. Physically he may not be as strong or as qualified to play in sports. It would be quite unfair for the parent to punish the child for not doing well in sports.

The only way in which a punishment (loss of allowance) system could work is if the child lost video game privileges for example for not doing homework and not putting enough effort into their work.

But punishing the child for not performing well in situations in which their performance is beyond their control would just be cruel.

jcl• 17 years ago

Psychologically, there is a big, big difference between offering cash and offering almost anything else.

In "Predictably Irrational", Dan Ariely ran an experiment where people were asked to perform a certain task, where each person was offered one of three payments for the task: $5, $0.50, or nothing. The people who were offered more money worked harder at the task... But the people who were asked to work for free worked harder than either of the groups that were offered cash.

Then he performed a similar experiment, except he offered candy equivalents: cheap candy, expensive candy, or nothing. All three groups worked with approximately the same amount of effort.

Then he performed the same experiment -- offering candy -- except that he told each participant how much the candy was worth. People worked as hard as if they had been offered the candy's equivalent in cash.

http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/Predictably-Irrational

marklarosa• 17 years ago

I don't necessarily disagree, but the point was about salespeople - who ARE motivated by financial incentives and SHOULD be motivated by financial incentives.

You can criticize my parenting for sure - but I claim to be an expert sales guy - not an expert parent!

In this talk, Dan says that when you put certain incentives on - you narrow the focus of thinking. EXACTLY!! You WANT to focus the salespersons thinking and have them focused on MONEY. Both for themselves and the company.

Salespeople are not like the rest of you. If you want to motivate a salesteam, you need to re-do all of these tests with only salespeople.

If I was presented with the candle problem, I'd sell the candle and use the money to buy a dripless candle!

Sales people are NOT NORMAL!! We operate on a different frequency. Sometimes 100% of what we do is based on financial rewards. True - may not work for most people - and maybe I'm screwing up my son (although I think he is a future salesguy), but I stand by my position that the right financial rewards drive sales.

javanix• 17 years ago

Good business lesson? Maybe.

Good parenting lesson? Hell no.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

There's plenty of time later in life to work hard. Having time to truly play is what's at a premium. If a 6 year old's performance on in a sport can make you angry then maybe it is time to re-evaluate. Sure, I can see the point about applying yourself 100% to something, but maybe that's not the right question. The kid isn't really demonstrating that he is unwilling to take things completely seriously, only that he's not willing to take this sport completely seriously. Kids don't always take things seriously, it's part of being a child, don't take that away from him.

Sales Lessons from a 6 year old: It’s all about the cash

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