PSYCHOLOGY ‘‘
A goal orientation is both a character trait as well as a state of mind.
people suddenly feel helpless and basically give up,” the professor ex- plains. “It happens everywhere in our society – from the schoolroom to the workplace. One striking example in the classroom is when a student flunks a math test. After that type of failure, students often come to view math as beyond their ability. This type of thing occurs in the sales arena all the time, when an initial setback will make a salesperson feel helpless to improve. It usually follows from a person’s as- signment of personal, permanent and pervasive reasons for failure. For in- stance, saying to yourself, ‘I blew that sale because I am no good at selling to East Coast clients. I will never be able to understand their thinking.’ “The main point I make in my inves-
tigation is that, when these initial set- backs happen to a salesperson with a learning orientation, he or she will still continue working hard and working smart. This is not true for salespeople with a performance orientation. If you have a performance orientation, this adversity will cause you to put forth a greater effort. But, if the increased ef- fort and harder work do not produce results, a despondence can over- whelm you. You not only quit working hard, but you also quit working smart, which causes you to lose perfor- mance. This is learned helplessness. While you may survive at your job, it becomes very unlikely that you will ever become a top performer.”
HOW TO MANAGE SMART WORK
Because of past discrimination in favor of the hardest workers – those willing to go the extra mile – sales organizations have predominantly pursued, hired, and focused mo-
tivational efforts on people with performance orientations. Today, the professor says, this may well be the worst managerial policy. “In the past and still to this day,” he explains, “the hiring process has been very astute with regard to land- ing salespeople with the performance orientation. The hesitant interviewee traditionally does not get very far. Employers just tend to shy away from people who may be distracted, in favor of bringing in the more gung-ho types. Then, once they’ve recruited the right people, managers merely encourage their salespeople to work harder. They don’t think about how they might mo- tivate the sales force to work smarter. This can lead to a greater incidence of learned helplessness and stagnation within the sales organization.” The professor’s research indicates
that, with the correct approach, managers can help salespeople de- velop their learning orientations and increase their ability to work smarter. “A goal orientation is both a char- acter trait as well as a state of mind,” he says. “It is quite possible for some- one’s goal orientation to change over time. Students, for example, when left alone, tend to be tremendously learning oriented. That’s because they need to adapt to a new environment and to learning new skills. Unfortu- nately, in the classroom we often destroy their learning orientation by focusing so many outcome pressures on them in the form of tests, exams and getting the ‘right’ answer rather than exploring questions. In exactly the same way we take inexperienced salespeople – many of whom are very learning oriented at the beginning – and place so many pressures on them to perform immediately, that they slowly lose that desire to learn more. Now this isn’t to say we shouldn’t place any external pressures on them; it’s just that we have to be very careful about destroying the learning orienta- tion in the process.”
SMART MANAGEMENT STEPS To foster salespeople’s learning
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orientation and ability to work smart, the professor suggests three specific modifications to traditional sales man- agement methods. “First of all,” he says, “I believe
that a sales manager should not put new salespeople on a quota system immediately. This way the sales- people have the opportunity to learn the ropes without fear of reprisal for lack of production right away. I’m not suggesting that this last a long time – maybe six months, depending on the industry, the complexity of product – and then ease them into a per- formance orientation. At this point they’ve already gotten into a learning cycle and it should continue. “Second, as an application of at-
tribution theory, sales managers can impact how salespeople view suc- cesses and failures. One direct way is to tell salespeople that an order was lost because he or she used a poor strategy. If that seems too direct, then – rather than criticizing the amount of effort they invested – a manager might focus on how a salesperson could have approached the customer differently or done a better job inves- tigating the customer’s needs, or how to consider alternative strategies for use in the future.” His third suggestion involves plac- ing as much customer information at salespeople’s disposal as possible. One key source he recommends is market research information. “The idea here is that an adaptive salesperson is very good at classify- ing the customer and then changing his or her behavior to be in line with the customer’s needs. Good market research will help salespeople in this process of accurately classify- ing their customers. Admittedly, this is not a common practice, but, when you consider how much a salesperson’s success depends on understanding customer needs, the benefits are readily apparent. Plus, it compels them to consider strategy and work smarter.” While the professor’s research dem- onstrates the importance of motivat-
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