Before you hire your next salesperson, decide what kind of sales culture you want in 2016, a productive culture or an efficient culture.

          To be efficient is to utilize a particular commodity or product with the least amount of resources or effort possible, as in a fuel efficient engine.

          To be productive is to have the power to abundantly produce, generate or create, as in a productive vineyard.

          Efficient media sales cultures assume the amount of available revenue is finite, and they initiate policies, systems and procedures to capture share of that finite revenue with the least resources and effort possible.

          Productive media sales cultures believe that revenue potential is infinite, and is generated and grown with creative effort and talent.

          Our friends in digital media were able to generate revenues from firms that initially had no digital media budgets with their creative new ideas and products.

          You must choose which culture you want in order to attract sales people that are a fit within that culture. To not choose is to create a lack of direction which eventually will lead to failure.

          Choosing an efficient culture has its merits as it is relatively easy to find people who will follow the policies and systems that make you efficient. Choosing a productive culture is much more challenging because you have to find and cultivate talent that can create revenue where there was none.

          Personally, I would choose a productive culture because revenue in that culture has no limits. While a fuel efficient engine has its merits, I don’t think NASCAR or Formula One would attract many fans to racing with efficiency as the goal.

          Let’s choose to start our engines and let them roar in 2016 and break all of the revenue records!