You and I are an investment.
Hey no offense, when you were hired, your manager took a risk. He or she made a bet that you’d bring more in revenue to the company than you took away. As salespeople, we have the luxury (or curse) of being able to approximate, fairly accurately, our own return on investment. By definition, we bring in sales, which are easily quantified.
Make no mistake, however, we’re not the only people who are measured. Everyone else, from upper management to the assembly line, is as well. We all have a price tag and are expected to add more than what we subtract from the bottom line.
Methods to Pursue Value Can Differ
Whether she’s a supportive friend or an unrelenting driver, your boss will always need you to produce. Did I say produce? I meant produce MORE – more than you did last year or even last quarter. And, management styles can vary wildly. Whether she uses motivational sugar or spice, it’s your numbers in the end, that had better be nice.
Sadly, no matter how much they liked you and vice versa, your favorite boss still needed you to produce. Maybe it was your sales results that allowed them to treat you with such care and respect. This is not to say it didn’t matter. Some “leaders”can be so self-focused as to consider praise of a subordinate as weakness.
Resistance to ROI is Futile
Face it. It’s ingrained in the way we think about work. When we come home, we’re individuals and when we arrive at work, we’re part of the machine. To make a profit, a firm’s income MUST be higher than it’s expenses. And, it’s the existence of profit that attracts investors. Stock prices rise based on the anticipated value of the stock. Nobody invests with the goal to lose!
Consequently none of us are allowed to lose which begs the question, who is to blame? Your sales goals don’t start with your manager. Instead, look to upper management and investors themselves. However, before you condemn them, understand even they are just guessing. After all, what is a revenue forecast other than a highly-researched guess? Also, consider that without a rosy forecast, the share price of a company tends to go down, losing money for all invested.
It’s A Hard Life – As An Investment
What a cold, heartless, and vicious cycle being measured and evaluated like shares of stock! Hell, we even do it to our kids with their grades and sports. Everyone, in the end, must prove their own worth, right?
People who ascribe to this belief tend to believe they can control others. The idea that we can determine the value other people assign to us is a comfortable fiction. It protects us from randomness. In reality, we can ride the crest of stellar sales performance one quarter and be thrown against the rocks in the next – all with the same or greater level of effort.
Therefore, are we doomed to watch our own value tick up and down like the price of a pork belly? Not if we refuse view ourselves as a commodity.
We Can Stop the ROI Cycle – If We Choose To
To stop the ROI cycle you must decide who you are and what you do has a value that cannot be quantified. Your paycheck and your annual review, they’re still going to have numbers on them. Read them, learn from them, and move on.
Ironically, we also put some pressure on ourselves in the way we invest. As we complain about our goals, we contribute to their increase by buying our own company’s stock and expecting to profit. Whether or not to continue is your call.
The real hope lies in the way we evaluate ourselves. I suggest, when you start each day, resolve to be the one person to whom you don’t have to prove yourself. You’re not the investment, you’re the return. The purpose of your job is to support you, not vice versa. So go ahead, quantify everything you do, just not who you are.
Sincerely,