In the video below, Motley Fool analyst Brendan Byrnes interviews Lisa McLeod, and discusses the "power of purpose" and how properly motivated and incentivized sales people can make a huge difference in a company's performance.
This concept has typically gained attention in the consumer space, where companies like Starbucks (SBUX -1.02%), Panera (PNRA), and Whole Foods Market (WFM) empower their customer-facing employees to "make a difference." Lisa contends that the effects of this mentality are amplified when considering the B2B space. For a company like Rackspace (RAX), Lisa explains that the sales narrative becomes more important as the employee targets big-ticket sales that involve significantly more revenue than the average consumer-facing employee. Simply said, convincing a buyer at a large corporation like General Electric (GE 1.30%) to sign up for Rackspace's services has a significantly larger impact as a percentage of Rackspace's total business than the sale of a single latte at Starbucks.
