Pt 1. What sales compensation and cocaine addictions have in common
I won't lie when I learned of this connection it sorta blew me away and at the same time, sort of didn't surprise me. It was more of an ‘ah-freakin’-ha’ moment than anything. I have spent almost all of my professional career near and around sales teams and salespeople. It also helped connect a lot of dots of experiences I have had in the past.
I realize that I sort of buried the lead a bit, but let's just cut to the chase already and get into the meat of this wildly interesting topic.
In the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, they spoke of something that resonated deeply with me and my experience working with sales teams.
They talked about how the center of your brain that reacts to monetary incentives is the exact same part of the brain that relates to pleasure and pain. This happens to be the same system that is involved in cocaine addiction.
They wrote about a study where participants were connected to MRI machines while performing certain tasks involving monetary rewards. While in the MRI machine the subject's pleasure center was surprisingly lighting up when they received a monetary reward and they showed that when the monetary reward was larger, the higher the feeling of pleasure that was received.
What was additionally interesting was that they showed that over time, the same monetary rewards got less of a stimulus-response. So the same amount of money that once gave them a strong response eventually got much lower pleasure derived from it.
What this infers is that just like a drug addiction, to get a similar level of joy, excitement, or pleasure, that the monetary value being derived must also be equally as high.
Now, what wasn’t mentioned that is also interesting to note about the dopamine system in your brain is that it's a system that helps motivate us. It motivates us largely based on an anticipated reward. So that means, the pleasure you’re getting from something is largely based on how you think it will make you feel.
Dopamine isn’t just derived from things like drugs and money, but you can receive a flood of dopamine when you’re very thirsty and get to drink a lot of water. it could be a love of dark chocolate, and how good it finally tastes when you have that first bite vs your 15th bite. It's the same way addicts feel the sense of ‘relief’ when they have anticipated a hit of pleasure they have been fixating on. That could be smokers, alcoholics, cocaine, and even sugar. They all play on the dopamine reward system in your brain.
So back to sales and why this is important.
#1. The effect of money is diminishing.
#2. It is the anticipation of the reward that drives this addictive behavior.
#3. Be careful how much you only focus on the reward, their focus will influence their pleasure.
Overall, what once drove your reps to great heights and achieve great things, won’t hold the same drive month in and month out. This is most likely why good reps might peak at certain times and then ‘coast’ the rest. Money only motivates so far. We need to find new and different ways of motivating reps beyond just money (and yes that includes stocks/equity).
