Opportunities for Rewards
To make the sales job even more interesting, as we learned in Chapter 1 the internal and external environment is constantly changing. Salespeople must frequently adjust their sales presentations and other activities to shifts in economic and competitive conditions. At IBM under Sam Palmisano, salespeople have had to shift their emphasis from selling products to selling integrated business solutions. In fact, IBM has recast its focus from that of product manufacturer to a broad-based information technology consultancy. For many people in the selling profession, variety and challenge are the most rewarding aspects of their jobs. Sales jobs offer great opportunity for developing a sense of accomplishment and opportunities for personal growth. As we will see in Chapter 6, these are important sources of intrinsic rewards and satisfaction-that is, rewards inherent to satisfaction derived from elements of the job or role itself, as opposed to extrinsic rewards, which are rewards bestowed on the salesperson by the company.
Make no mistake, though, selling can be a very lucrative profession in terms of extrinsic rewards as well. More important, the growth of a salesperson’s earnings-particularly the earnings of someone receiving a large proportion of incentive pay-is determined largely by performance, and often no arbitrary limits are placed on the maximum amount