Embarrassment as a Motivator?

Spoke with Jim Burns from Avitage!, and conversation moved towards what are the strong selling points when marketing into the Sales function. Jim spoke about Embarrassment as a huge motivator...

Even in light of the current economy, few are receiving relief from their sales objectives. In fact, the job is much tougher as those objectives need to be met with fewer people. The last thing any sales manager needs is to be off-course with their plan. They need to be completely accurate and on-target with their sales efforts, from forecasting to sales pipeline management to closed revenue.

So to this end, 2008 may have been quite an embarrassing year for many sales managers, as they did not live up to what they promised. Throughout the year, the sales manager has been making periodic (weekly, monthly quarterly) assessments of the sales pipeline, and they have had to go back and readjust over and over and over again...to the downside. If they were lucky enough to survive the year, then at the very least there was egg on the face in every single meeting. Now that's embarrassing.

The LAST thing our intrepid sales manager needs is to continue to be embarrassed, so those tools and services that can help him/her stave off embarrassment would be greatly appreciated...and purchased.

Think about it: if you're marketing into the Sales function, what has embarrassed your audience? How can you help them save themselves from continued embarrassment?