I was reading an article by Seth Godin called “Good Is Not Almost As Good as Great” where he mentions firing half of your sales force of “good” sellers and keeping the “great” ones. That really kinda struck home with me due to a recent experience.

We play at a convention where we have a regular group of sellers. They were good-hearted kind people who don't earn any money by helping us sell. They just get free entrance and some CDs. They love our music, but I'm not sure how great they are as sales people. It's kinda hard to say.

Well coming up soon is that same convention, but this time we will have our DragonCon sales team there. They are fantastic sellers! We'll find out just HOW fantastic at the convention.

I guess maybe if we were paying our sales team, maybe we should consider better sales people. But as we are using fans, who are unpaid, it's hard for me to not hire someone back if they are just “good” instead of “great”, because they are fans and we have a history together. They ‘may' not be great sellers, but they are great friends and fans. It's more about loyalty

I guess ultimately, that's a different dynamic to consider than when you're paying someone. For that, I think Seth is probably correct. And mayhaps if we wanted to continually improve our sales, we would hire great sales people and make up the sales difference through great help. But for now, I'm happy to have someone who loves our music selling our CDs and doing a “good” job at doing it.