This article explains how treating every job as though it is commission based,for simply 5 minutes a day, can result in more money, or at least better job security, no matter what your field, job title, or compensation package.
First of all, let us put ourselves into a sales field. Pretend for a moment you work in a furniture store, selling beds and making your living via commissioned sales. You can sell just about any brand you want, and have some control over the pricing of the beds. If you found out that a relative of yours went out and bought a bed from a local competitor, without giving you the option of earning a commission, you would feel annoyed, slighted, and hurt, correct? He or she awarded your commission check to someone else, and in turn chose not to help you make your next car payment. As a commissioned sales person, you would certainly do your very best to make sure that everyone in the world, not just your immediate friends and family, knew to talk to you if they were in the bed market. You would not just wait for people to show up at your store, and hope they bought a bed; you would actively market yourself to everyone that would listen. The commissioned sales person knows that there is a direct correlation between how many people know to come see him or her, and how much money he or she is going to make.
The difference between a commissioned sales job and a non-commissioned sales job is that the correlation is not always as visible between your job performance and your paycheck on Friday. Simply because the correlation is hard to see does not make it non-existent. This brings us to example number two. Our second example is one of a small business that is not commission based. Let’s pretend you worked as the manager in a small pizza shop, with two or three employees under you, and an owner who comes in for about 30 hours a week. You come to work, do your absolute best for 40 hours a week, and go home. When you clock out, you don’t think about pizza at all. You never tell anyone about the quality of the pizza, or the speed of your delivery, or anything about your business at all. When someone asks you what you do, you say, “I work at John’s Pizza,” and that is the end of the discussion.
You are just “Doing your job.”
If the pizza store goes under, and you no longer have a job, should you point at the owner and say, “You didn’t take care of me. You failed me.” Maybe, but I would suggest that you also failed yourself. The reality of the situation is this: Everyone who works for a company, no matter what the industry or pay scale, is also responsible in part for the PR for that company.
I can already hear naysayers saying, “No sir! My job at my company is XXX. Let someone else worry about PR. That’s what the guy in the suits at the corporate offices do.” That was true in the past, but we are now in the time of New Media, when all information is democratic. Anyone can write a review about a restaurant that can be seen by potentially millions of people. You no longer need to work solely for bon appetit to get published. One can simply go to Yelp.com to publish a restaurant review. So PR is no longer solely in the hands of your company’s marketing department. Everyone now has the power, and I will go further and say the Responsibility, to be a part of the PR team.
Everyone is Public Relations
Let’s return to example two, for a moment. If you, the pizza manager, spent 5 minutes a day bringing in new business, and your business stayed open when the shop across the street closed, you would say that you had a hand in keeping your business open. I certainly would think that you had. I would think that if every one of your employees had an active role in keeping new business coming in the door, by taking 5 minutes a day, you could help the business grow enough so that the owner would be able to pay you better.
The best news is, you don’t have to do anything you aren’t already doing. I am not suggesting that you start cold calling people, and saying, “Come to my business! We will help you with XXXX product.” All I am suggesting is that you take an active role in your establishment’s social media campaigns. Go onto your company’s facebook page at night, when you are already on facebook anyway, and comment here or there as you the person, not you the employee. If your company has a blog, and you’ve read it, comment on it, even if anonymously. Follow your company’s Twitter stream, and if they Tweet something you agree with, re-Tweet it. The more active your company’s social media is, the easier it is to attract customers. The more customers, the more money the company makes. The more money the company makes, the more job security, and better chances of getting raises. That is why the answer to the question, “Could 5 minutes of your free time result in a raise?”is a resounding,
“YES.”
