Breaking Out of Skinner and Patterson's Box

The Secret to Successful Sales Management

"None of my salespeople are willing to cooperate. Each one works alone with their own methods, each one a star in their own right – uninterested in what's happening in the team or other departments, not in marketing, not in content, not in development and production, nor in customer service – just selling as much as possible."

Sounds familiar, right?

This is indeed one of the biggest mysteries for most sales team managers.

Is it really in the DNA of salespeople, persuasion skills, and associated abilities to be inclined towards a lack of cooperation and solo play?

When I ask managers what they think the reason is, almost every one of them responds that they are the first who want their salespeople to cooperate, have a team spirit, learn from each other, nourish and be nourished by relevant departments in the organization. Every manager will also say that they tried everything but have learned to pay the price – these are my salespeople, but at least they sell.

Indeed, it's a mystery, and to solve it, we need to take a short trip into the realms of behavioral psychology.

The Box and the Cave

Psychologist B.F. Skinner conducted a famous series of experiments with pigeons in the past century, demonstrating the principles of operant conditioning. He used the "Skinner Box" – a special cage designed so that a pigeon could peck at a disc or lever to receive food.

Initially, the pigeon moved randomly around the cage, and at some point, it accidentally pecked the disc. Skinner programmed the box so that when the pigeon pecked the disc, it received a grain. The pigeon, experiencing positive reinforcement following the peck, began pecking the disc more frequently. Over time, it learned to associate pecking the disc with receiving food, and the pecking behavior became a conditioned response to the disc stimulus. When Skinner changed the frequency of receiving grains, for example, receiving a grain after every five pecks, the pigeon learned to peck five times to get a grain. But when Skinner made the condition for receiving grains completely random, meaning the number of pecks required to get a grain changed each time – sometimes one peck, other times ten pecks, and so on – what did the pigeons do? They pecked the disc incessantly.

Well, that's pigeons. What about us humans? Sherif also conducted an interesting experiment in the 1950s, known as the Robbers Cave experiment.

Sherif divided boys into two groups at a summer camp. In the first stage, the groups were separated and engaged in different activities to build internal cohesion. In the second stage, the groups were placed in competition over limited resources, leading to hostility and even violence. In the third stage, Sherif created situations where the groups had to cooperate to achieve a common goal (such as fixing a water pump).

Results: The enforced cooperation led to a significant reduction in hostility and the creation of positive relationships between members of the different groups.

The experiment demonstrated several things:?

1. How changes in conditions can shape people to behave cooperatively, competitively, or even conflictually.?

2. How cooperation for a common goal resolves conflicts.?

3. How environmental and situational factors shape social behaviors.

A Few Words About Patterson's Box

John Henry Patterson, the father of the modern sales method, created a system to motivate and professionalize sales agents based on individual performance, thinking it would create a stronger incentive to sell and succeed. One of the elements he introduced into his method was competitiveness – he encouraged healthy competition among sales agents through rewards: prizes, bonuses, promotions, recognition, and respect. The immediate effect was successful, and the entire Western culture praised the model and adopted it.

A competitive environment, where the reward depends on individual performance, conditions the agents to focus solely on sales. This comes at the expense of cooperation, teamwork, and their personal well-being, and sometimes even at the expense of the customer's well-being.

In fact, from a social perspective, Patterson created another social experiment here, a sort of "Patterson's Box" for sales agents. A competitive environment, where the reward depends on individual performance, conditions the agents to focus solely on sales. This comes at the expense of cooperation, teamwork, and their personal well-being, and sometimes even at the expense of the customer's well-being. Additionally, while the original thought was that this conditioning would increase the agents' motivation and productivity, the social-emotional aspect wasn't quite taken into account.

When you condition the team to compete in the style of the Robbers Cave experiment, you might create the following effects:

- Harm to cooperation: Instead of helping each other and sharing information and techniques, agents might hide information or sabotage others' work to gain a competitive edge.

- Decrease in morale: Agents who fail to meet targets might experience a drop in motivation, self-confidence, and job satisfaction.

- Loss of talented employees: Talented but non-competitive agents might leave the company due to dissatisfaction with the competitive and stressful environment.

- Damage to the company's reputation: A hostile and competitive work environment might harm the company's reputation as an attractive workplace and conditions the agents to succeed even at the expense of customer well-being – as long as they sell.

Breaking Out of the Box

So, "why won't my salespeople cooperate?" the manager asks. You don't need to look for the answers in the salespeople. The answer is clear: everything is in your hands. You define the conditions: the leading value, the culture – competitive or cooperative, what you reward, give prizes and bonuses for, and what you demand daily from your salespeople.

Clearly: like any experimenter, you define all the conditions that can create a cohesive and winning team that grows, learns, and is an essential element in the organizational body – or alternatively, a burned-out team with high turnover rates, isolated from the organization and damaging it from within and without.

"But, all this is nice and fine, but what will motivate my salespeople to sell, fight for every customer like lions, and ultimately bring profit to the bottom line?"

Unlike the unfortunate pigeons in the box, your salespeople, and especially you, can do a lot to reprogram their conditions. Unlike the pigeons, the team can design their sales model to promote a cohesive team whose members learn from each other and share tips and experience, a team whose members support each other mutually, socially, emotionally, and professionally, a team that brings their field experience to all relevant departments in the organization and draws and nourishes from them to become the best representation of the organizational brand. Such a team also aims to bring something real and good to the customers, seeing them as true partners and a place where each salesperson can fulfill themselves as someone who brings good into the customers' lives. Finally, beyond high employee engagement and high talent retention rates, such a team will also become a magnet that attracts talents – who wouldn't want to be on such a team?

Building the Box Anew

I believe many sales team managers reading this article will agree with the central idea. And here's the real mystery – why isn't anyone doing anything about it? What's missing here?

The issue isn't the methods and models, nor the statement that the manager dictates the majority of the organizational culture.

Beautiful words and high ideals, even if embodied in a detailed sales model – all of this won't be enough.

The issue is that both the manager and the agents, all of us, in fact, are immersed in the existing box, a basic operating system mindset of "profit for myself and that's it." As long as this isn't addressed by the manager and the team, this is the natural automatic value that governs the culture, the team spirit, and the ability to establish an alternative sales model.

The good news is that you can change the situation and dictate the conditions for yourself!

To bring words and ideas to life, to turn a detailed model that builds a brand team and loyal partners among customers into something sustainable, you need to install an additional operating system called: Connection and Customer Well-being. This value needs to be instilled through deep education, designed to help you and your team start thinking, feeling, and acting differently. When this value exists, your team will build the culture, the suitable sales models; they will know, together with you, to ask themselves the right questions, and together with you, provide the most appropriate answers. And here it's important to emphasize – such a team is committed to selling the product/service, because that is their job and that is what they are paid for – and the organization lives on profits. But the culture and values that will lead you and your team will determine your existence: inside the box or outside of it.

In the end, the answer to the mystery from which we started is not in the psychology of the salespeople themselves but in the situational factors, the values, and the organizational culture that you as a leader weave into the team daily.

In the end, the answer to the mystery from which we started is not in the psychology of the salespeople themselves but in the situational factors, the values, and the organizational culture that you as a leader weave into the team daily.

Now, as a manager, you just need to start training yourself and your team for the new mindset – and from there, the path to success is paved.

I'm sure many of you reading this feel ready to embark on a journey and change values, thought patterns, and emotions and instill a new culture.?

If you feel you need guidance in the process, I invite you to join me on a shared journey, where we will shape together a team that transforms your salespeople into connection people – leaders who unify teams, the business, and the customers.

References:

1. Skinner, B.F. (1938). The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. New York: Appleton-Century.
2. Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
3. Sherif, M. (1956). Experiments in Group Conflict. Scientific American, 195, 54-58.
4. Sherif, M., Harvey, O.J., White, B.J., Hood, W.R., & Sherif, C.W. (1961). Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment. Norman, OK: Institute of Group Relations, University of Oklahoma.
5. Gross, D. (1999). The Making of the National Cash Register Company, 1884-1913. Business History Review, 73(4), 711-722.
6. Watson, R. (2003). John Henry Patterson: Pioneer in Sales Management and Training. Journal of Management History, 9(3), 191-206.