Tuesday, May 26, 2009

L&D and the bottom line

An extract from Jay Cross's latest book:

A manager for a major pharmaceutical firm in Canada told his sales trainers that henceforth their bonuses would be tied to the sales of the people they trained.
Under those circumstances, would you get a bonus? The response from the people in the extract is “Hold on. We don’t have anything to do with that.”

I guess the only comeback to that is "Really? Then what's the point of you?"

Challenging thought!

4 comments:

Jason Allen said...

As a sales trainer for a mid sized corp for the last three years, my bonus depended entirely on the sales of the people I trained. I wouldn't have it any other way...now that I'm a sales training consultant, it's not my bonus that depends on my trainees' results, it's my paycheque...
I guess having been a straight commission sales rep for a few years prepared me for all this. :)

The upsycho said...

@Jammasterjay That's living on the edge, that is! I have had several short attempts at sales jobs, and have always failed miserably. I have never run any slaes training, either, because I find it all very uncomfortable. I hate being asked the 'closing question' I can't bring myself to ask the closing question, so I certainly can't see myself teaching others to ask the closing question!

Alex said...

I'm not sure. Would a rugby club withhold the physio's bonus for the team's failure to accrue the target number of points? Probably not.

But they would dock the bonus if the physio had failed to reach their taregt of getting injured players back on the field.

For me it's about influence and control. A sales trainer can deliver first-class tools, insights, structures, ideas etc to the individual salesperson, but if that same salesperson is being managed by a douchebag, then their poor performance is entirely beyond their influence.

Organisations need to understand what a professional learning function can and can't achieve.

The upsycho said...

@Alex I think you've picked the wrong person in using the physio for your analogy. But ask the question would the coach lose his bonus under the same circs and the answer is yes... and his job.