by Mark McClanahan
Dale Carnegie once said, “People work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise, and rewards.” And in a recent Forbes article, a top-10 list of contributors to employees’ happiness listed “appreciation for one’s work” as No. 1, with compensation trailing far behind, in eighth place.
At Mosby, we try to make it a practice to ask our associates, “What’s working, what’s not, and what can we do to make it better?” In a recent weekly sales team meeting we posed these questions and received some valuable feedback. The very first response was that they want more recognition for their successes.
On the outside this may seem like an obvious behavior for management, especially considering what Carnegie and Forbes state, but at the time we were in the mode of “Get it done!” We were pushing and pushing to get results. This caused us to ignore our team’s successes. I’m grateful for our team’s honesty. So, how did we respond?
During this weekly meeting we started presenting a trophy to the top salesperson of the week. We have four divisions, so there is a trophy for each division. The top salesperson of the week is awarded the honor of keeping the trophy until the next sales meeting, at which point he or she presents the trophy to the new week’s top salesperson (or sometimes keeps the honor).
How is this working for us? Well, for sure the team is overall more upbeat in these meetings. And whether this is directly related or not, our sales have improved.
Mark McClanahan (mmcclanahan@callmosby.com or 314.909.1800) is the president at Mosby Building Arts.
Submitted 8 years 178 days ago