RainmakerThinking is proud to present edited excerpts from Bruce Tulgan's new book, Winning the Talent Wars (coming January 22, 2001 from W.W. Norton).

After enduring an elaborate selection process, Rick was hired as a territory manager for Ecolab, Inc., a $3 billion-a-year sanitation products company. He was told his job was to visit customers in his territory and increase product sales. During his training at a company-run facility, he received mostly sales-related product information, but a surprising amount of the training was on equipment maintenance. Rick continued his training through the next few months, first alongside another territory manager and then his regional manager. Ecolab was really making an investment in Rick.

Here's the catch: Rick's job wasn't really a sales job. Whenever customers had problems with Ecolab equipment, they would contact Rick to repair it. Despite his training, Rick wasn’t a skilled mechanic. He was told, "It takes time. You’ll get the hang of it." And he did. But Rick still wasn’t a mechanic. And his incentives were tied to increasing sales, not fixing machines. "That’s just part of the job," he was told. Well, it’s hard to find people skilled at both sales and mechanics. But at some point, Ecolab decided to combine the two roles. And it’s harder to convince a skilled mechanic to do mid-level repairs and sales than it is to get a salesperson who is willing to learn and perform mid-level mechanical tasks.

Don't let your training investment walk out the door forever.

In the workplace of the past, Ecolab could expect Rick to stay long enough to get good at mechanical tasks. Even if Rick felt the job was a poor fit, he would have paid his dues for a few years anyway. After all, if he quit before then, it would have been a black mark on his resume. But in the free market for talent, Rick sold his Ecolab training, experience and customer relationships to another company: Sofco, Inc., a $200-million-a-year paper goods company. The hiring manager at Sofco saw right away that his company could reap the dividends of Ecolab’s investment in Rick. In his new job at Sofco, Rick just sells. His rewards are tied to his sales performance and he is earning good bonuses every quarter. It's a great fit.