Greetings from gorgeous Portland, Oregon. I’ve just spent an amazing 10 days with my two sons touring Washington and Oregon. We’ve gone every where from the high deserts of Spokane and the Colville Indian Reservation to the amazingly lush forests of the Oregon Coast. Aside from 6+ hours of Amtrak delays it has been incredible.
Now let’s get down to business. I’ve coined a term called Salary Surfers. I have googled it a couple times and there is nothing on the first couple pages, so I’ll take credit for it until someone shows me otherwise.
A Sales Salary Surfer is a sales person who gets a sales job with a decent salary, never makes a sale, and surfs it until the owner can no longer pay the salary and breaks the wave. The Salary Surfer then catches another wave and rides it until they break that owner as well. The surfer can make a whole career out of this and never actually make quota or otherwise contribute to the owner’s business.
Now before you get to riled up about Salary Surfers you need to know one more thing; salary surfers are made, not born. The best coaches, mentors, and creators of salary surfers are guess who? YOU. Through your unwillingness (notice I didn’t say inability) to develop your sales management skills you ruin POTENTIALLY GREAT sales people and create a salary surfer.
I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in the sales world; some of them great, some of them awful. And some, in a different category all together. I’ll call them the potentially great. One friend in particular is definitely a potentially great. Unfortunately the owner of her company has no interest in becoming a great sales manager so she does the least amount of work in order to get the minimum results. No she happens to be a great sales person but has very little intrinsic discipline. She could be phenomenal if the owners of her small company would actually pick up a book and work on their sales management skills.
Sooooo….where does this lead us? It leads us to a new feature in the JO-SH.com blogging empire. Check back frequently for actual videos, posts, and tips from the Salary Surfer. She’ll be making regular appearances all in the effort of helping you recognize a salary surfer and how to avoid ruining another potentially great sales person.
Hope you enjoy!
The Salary Surfer
