Seth Godin has a blog about business and marketing that I read regularly. He writes short posts that always get straight to the point, and his points are usually interesting.

I was surprised to read his latest post, ‘Good is not almost as good as great‘, which I find short-sighted and a bit tasteless. Godin talks about his recent poor experience at a Toyota dealership, where the salespeople acted as if they do not care. He thought about the experience and concluded this:

My best advice: Fire half your salesforce. Then, give the remainder, the top people, a big raise, and use the money left over to steal the best salespeople you can find from other industries or even from your competition. You’ll end up with fewer salespeople. But all of them will be great.

And the good guys? Have them go work for the competition.

This is poor thinking. Godin’s advice is like what the NY Knicks have done, trading away half of their players, going after the ‘great’ players, overpaying each and every person in the organization. The mediocre salespeople Godin speaks of, like most players currently and used to be on the Knicks’ roster, are not lacking in talent, but training and motivation. And that’s a problem with the leaders in the company.

As for the tasteless bit - I italicized the part. Perhaps I’m too idealistic, but I believe there is such a thing as integrity in business. That aside, I would also be careful about using money as the main motivation tool - it’s not sustainable, and it would skew the direction of the business, unless the sole purpose of your business it to make money.