# Motivating People To Do Stupid Things

<figure><img src="https://474306782-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F3YVknxQjTY2AXSlwtWgR%2Fuploads%2FdHvumH2lUmI41UsUXBav%2FScreenshot%202026-02-02%20at%2011.47.40%E2%80%AFPM.png?alt=media&#x26;token=f4ebef1f-000c-4a6f-af20-aa2dd890c363" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

The motivational meetings were solving the wrong problem. Tom was attempting to boost activity, but the real issue was that the activity itself was unproductive.

280 cold calls a day. That's the dead horse getting whipped harder. Tom saw that sales weren't where he wanted them, so he motivated the team to make more calls. More activity. More effort. More hustle. Nobody stopped to ask whether making 280 cold calls was actually a productive use of time or just theatrical busywork that looked like sales.

I chose not to engage. It was foolish. While the sales team was dialing frantically to hit call quotas, calling anyone and everyone, I was sitting, thinking, and eating donuts, looking out the window from the 18th floor, trying to decide who I should be calling. While Tom was motivating the team to increase their activity, I was decreasing my activity and increasing my selectivity.

The result? I outsold the whole sales team combined because I wasn't motivated to work harder at something stupid. I focused on identifying what actually worked and implemented that strategy instead.

Tom wasn't wrong that the team needed better results. Sales were low. Some weren't selling anything. The business needed more revenue. Where he went wrong was assuming that low results meant insufficient effort rather than misdirected effort.

The sales team was already working hard. They were making calls. They were following up. They were doing the activities they'd been taught to do. The problem wasn't motivation or effort. The problem was that 280 cold calls a day is an inherently inefficient strategy that produces minimal return regardless of how motivated you are while doing it.

The motivational meetings revealed that Tom confused activity with productivity. Tom believed that making enough calls would lead to a sufficient number of conversions in sales. So when conversions were low, the solution was obvious to Tom. Make more calls. Motivate the team to increase their activity.

I saw it differently. Sales wasn't a numbers game. It was a selection game. Make the right calls and you get sales. Make 280 random calls, and you waste 280 opportunities to identify which prospects are worth pursuing.

Tom was motivating people to run faster on a treadmill. I got off the treadmill and walked directly to where I needed to go.

I realized that relying on volume as a strategy is fundamentally misguided. Volume was not the right strategy—efficiency was. My 'as the crow flies' approach is how I scaled the telco from an initial investment of $1500 to $30 million in just 18 months.