This article was originally published by Objective Management Group and written by Kate Barsby. It is shared here with permission. Anthony Cole Training Group is a Certified OMG Partner, helping organizations hire and develop high-performing sales teams using OMG’s industry-leading assessments and insights.

Sales organizations spend heavily on commission structures and contests, assuming money is what drives their salespeople. Objective Management Group’s assessment data tells a different story: only 27% of salespeople are primarily extrinsically motivated, while 52% are driven intrinsically, and just 5% are motivated by a sense of purpose or altruism. Only 17% show a balanced mix across these motivation types, meaning most salespeople depend on a single source of drive rather than several reinforcing ones. This matters because third-party research shows intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of sales performance than extrinsic reward, which means the lever most companies pull may not be the one moving the number they care about. The article examines what OMG’s motivation data reveals about how salespeople are actually wired, and what that means for how organizations should structure compensation, coaching, and recognition. 

The Predictor Everyone Underrates

Motivation gets treated as a given in most sales organizations. Leaders assume it’s there, assume it’s uniform, and assume the comp plan is the dial that controls it. None of those assumptions hold up well under data.

A landmark meta-analysis of the determinants of salesperson performance found motivation ranks among the strongest predictors of how well a salesperson performs, trailing only role clarity and skill level.¹ That finding is decades old, yet most sales organizations still treat motivation as a single, undifferentiated force rather than something with distinct types that respond to different levers.

Motivation is not one thing. It comes from at least three distinct sources, and salespeople rarely draw on all three equally.

Objective Management Group’s assessment data shows 77% of salespeople are strong in the overall Motivation competency.² On the surface, that looks like good news. But strong overall motivation says nothing about what kind of motivation is driving that number, and the breakdown behind it changes the picture considerably.

Three Kinds of Drive, One Word

Sales leaders often use “motivation” as shorthand for a single trait, the way they might describe someone as tall or organized. In practice, motivation splits into three distinct categories, each with a different trigger and a different shelf life.

Extrinsic Motivation

This is the driver most sales organizations design for. Salespeople with strong extrinsic motivation respond to commission, bonuses, contests, rank, and recognition tied to results. It is visible, quantifiable, and easy for a sales manager to pull as a lever. It also tends to plateau. Once a salesperson reaches a stable income level, additional increases in extrinsic reward produce diminishing returns.³

Intrinsic Motivation

Salespeople with strong intrinsic motivation are driven by the work itself. They find satisfaction in solving a customer’s problem, mastering a skill, or simply winning the deal for the sake of winning it. This type of motivation does not depend on an external reward showing up on schedule, which is part of what makes it durable.

Altruistic Motivation

The least common of the three. Altruistically motivated salespeople sell because they believe in the value they are delivering to the customer or the mission behind the product. Research on purpose-driven selling found that a belief in contributing to something larger than oneself was more strongly related to sales effort and performance over time than a desire for financial reward.⁴ It is a powerful driver where it exists, but OMG’s data shows it exists in very few salespeople.

Three different engines require three different kinds of fuel. A sales organization built entirely around extrinsic incentives is optimizing for the driver that is weakest on average and least durable over time, while leaving the other two largely unaddressed.

The Imbalance Hiding Inside a Strong Number

OMG’s data gets specific once you break the Motivation competency into its parts. Among salespeople assessed, the average competency scores are as follows:

Intrinsic motivation nearly doubles extrinsic motivation as the dominant driver among salespeople, and altruistic motivation barely registers. Perhaps more telling is the balanced motivation figure. Only 17% of salespeople draw meaningfully on more than one type of motivation. The remaining 83% are running on a single primary source of drive.

A salesperson who is motivated almost entirely by intrinsic satisfaction will struggle when the work becomes repetitive, undifferentiated, or stuck in a slump with no immediate sense of mastery to draw on. A salesperson who is motivated almost entirely by extrinsic reward will struggle the moment a territory shrinks, a comp plan changes, or a market softens. Neither has a second source of drive to fall back on.

A sales force with low balanced motivation is more fragile than its overall Motivation score suggests. Strong average scores can mask a team that is one bad quarter, one comp plan change, or one flat month away from a motivation problem that looks sudden but was actually always there.

Why the Lever Most Companies Pull Is the Weakest One

The instinct to fix a motivation problem with money is understandable. It is fast, visible, and easy to approve in a budget meeting. It is also, according to the research, not the lever with the strongest connection to performance.

A meta-analytic review spanning more than 77,000 salespeople found that intrinsic motivation is significantly more strongly associated with sales performance than extrinsic motivation.⁵ External motivators such as compensation and bonuses do correlate with performance, but the relationship is weaker, and it weakens further once a salesperson has reached a stable income level.⁵

This is not a hypothetical mismatch. The research points to intrinsic motivation as the stronger performance predictor.⁵OMG’s data shows extrinsic motivation, the type companies invest the most in cultivating, is also the least common dominant driver among salespeople, at just 27%. Intrinsic motivation, meanwhile, is already the dominant driver for 52% of the sales force, largely without organizational investment. Altruistic motivation, which research suggests can be a particularly durable driver when present,⁴ sits nearly untapped at 5%.

Organizations may be spending the most money on the lever with the least leverage, while the driver already doing most of the work goes largely unsupported.

What High-Performing Organizations Are Doing Differently

The organizations getting this right are not abandoning commission structures. They are recognizing that comp plans alone are addressing one type of motivation while ignoring the other two, and they are building parallel systems to reach the salespeople who are not primarily wired for extrinsic reward.

This looks less like a new incentive program and more like a diagnostic shift. Sales managers who know whether a rep is intrinsically, extrinsically, or altruistically driven can coach accordingly. An intrinsically motivated rep responds to autonomy, mastery opportunities, and recognition of skill, not just a bigger number on a spiff sheet. A rep with any altruistic drive responds to a clear line between their work and the customer’s outcome, something most sales training never makes explicit.

The organizations doing this well are also treating the 17% balanced-motivation figure as a target rather than a curiosity. They are deliberately building both intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement into the same role, on the logic that a salesperson with two sources of drive is more resilient than one running on a single engine, regardless of how strong that one engine is.

Final Thoughts

Motivation is not a single dial, and treating it like one leaves most of a sales organization’s potential untouched. OMG’s data shows that the driver companies invest in most heavily, extrinsic reward, is the one carrying the least weight for the majority of salespeople and the weakest connection to performance in the research. Intrinsic motivation, already the dominant force in half the sales force, and altruistic motivation, present in almost none of it, remain largely unaddressed by most sales management practices.

The more durable path is not choosing one lever over another. It is understanding which lever each salesperson actually responds to, and building toward the 17% who have more than one.

References

1. Churchill, Gilbert A., Neil M. Ford, Steven W. Hartley, and Orville C. Walker. “The Determinants of Salesperson Performance: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Marketing Research, 1985. 
2. Objective Management Group. Finding Statistics Tool. Average Motivation Competency Scores 1/1/2025 – 12/31/2025 and % of those proficient in Competency 1/1/2025 – 12/31/2025. 
3. Keller Center for Research, Baylor University. “Improving Salesperson Performance: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation.” 2023. https://kellercenter.hankamer.baylor.edu/news/story/2023/improving-salesperson-performance-intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-motivation 
4. McLeod, Lisa Earle. “New Research Reveals Unexpected Source Of Sales Motivation.” Forbes, April 10, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaearlemcleod/2020/04/10/new-research-reveals-unexpected-source-of-sales-motivation/ 
5. Miao, Chen Fang, et al. “A Self-Determination Theory-Based Meta-Analysis on the Differential Effects of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation on Salesperson Performance.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-021-00827-6 

Summer is a time for family adventures, some outdoor fun and perhaps even some downtime and relaxation for both salespeople and their prospects and clients. But there are plenty of sales strategies that you and your team can still focus on and implement. Here are six that we recommend:

1. Enjoy the journey

As you think about your sales strategies this summer, you must understand that the journey may take longer, and you will likely run into detours, accidents, and slowdowns.

If you do not slow down and enjoy each stop along the way, you will become irritable and frustrated. This will cause you to move things along faster and, when you do, you will miss steps and sights along the way, and potentially damage relationships. Slow down and enjoy the ride!

2. Have a process and follow the process

What we know thanks to our sales evaluation partner, Objective Management Group, is that 95% of top producers (roughly only 25% of all 3 million salespeople assessed) follow a consistent sales process. What is important to note today, though, is that the process is more of an approach to help the salesperson focus on the buyer's process.

Have a milestone-centric system within your CRM so that you can check off each step along the way. This is the best way to make sure that you are following a sales strategy that fully qualifies a prospect, for their sake and yours.

3. Sales growth requires nurturing

No matter where you are in your career, you need nurturing. You must replenish yourself with new information, be reminded of what you've done in the past that led to success, and receive coaching to improve skills and change behaviors.

Find time this summer to search and find new resources to help you refine your sales strategies. Here is our list of recommended reading from our sales experts, and listen to some of the top sales podcasts. Summer is a great time to nurture yourself!

4. Do your homework

It makes sense to do some homework before you call on someone, especially when cold calling. You must get a feel for their business, challenges, organizational structure, and find out anything you can about their current business state. This helps you frame your questions so that you sound well-informed about them and their industry. This knowledge and understanding help you more quickly establish credibility.

Understand that what you think you know might not be true. Not that a company would intentionally lie or be misleading, but understand that they are looking to put their best foot forward. So be cautious, ask more questions, and work to validate what you think you know and inquire about what you don't.

5. Record the adventure

Record your notes in your CRM. Check off steps as you complete them. Any documents you send, make sure you upload them to the prospect's file. One of the best sales strategies of all time is to be willing to discuss your opportunities with others so you can learn, and they can learn.

Go back and look at your notes as you progress through the process, so that you do not have to remember everything. It's DOCUMENTED! This will free you up to pay closer attention when you are meeting with your prospect.

6. Someone always needs help

There are plenty of people in your marketplace that need help. Not just any help but specialized help. To be that specialized resource, you cannot look, act, and sound like everyone else. You must have a different approach, have different conversations, and focus on pressing issues and business solutions instead of your products and services. Summer is a great time to refine your unique selling advantage!

Summer will keep moving whether you slow down or not. The salespeople who come out ahead aren't the ones who push harder through July and August. They're the ones who stay in the process, take care of themselves, and keep showing up for the people who need them. Enjoy the season, but don't check out on your sales strategies. Your pipeline will thank you in the fall.

"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do these every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three: you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be joy or sorrow. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week; you're going to have something special."

- Jimmy Valvano, March 4, 1993,  Acceptance Speech at the ESPY Awards for the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award

So, here you are mid-year 2026. Are you having fun? Do you find yourself in a position to laugh on a regular basis, or do you take this business so seriously that you've lost your passion in sales and forgotten why you decided to get into professional selling? I've said this often over the years: "If you aren't having fun, get out and do something else." Life is too short not to have fun doing what you spend over 25% of your day doing.

Have Fun or Get Out

If you start having fun, you won't worry so much about selling, and the people you meet won't worry so much about being sold. It's kind of funny that way. Sure, you do serious things for your clients, but we're not going to remember the sale you made or didn't make. What your client will remember is you, and how you were there for them when they needed you the most. And if it isn't you, it will be someone else, so you might as well be memorable by having fun. Find a way to laugh when faced with difficulty. Find a way to smile and say something light when dealt a difficult situation. Find a way to ease someone else's burden with a smile and a laugh.

Money Isn't the Point

How much time do you spend thinking? Not only thinking about your next sale, or the coverage, or the terms of the contract, or the features and benefits of what you are selling, but also about you, where you are going, and what you will do once you get there. Certainly, most salespeople get into sales for the money. But then what? If you get reasonably good at what you do (selling), then money problems will go away. And by the way, if you really enjoy what you do, have fun at it, your money problems will go away too. So once you've decided that it isn't about chasing the money, what is it about?

I have a good friend, Tim Mackey. We've known each other now for over 30 years, and in our very first meeting we talked about money. Tim's perspective, which has become my perspective as well, is that money is a resource: a resource that buys you freedom, freedom of time and freedom of choice. Once you have all the money you need, what next? What goals do you have that are bigger than you? What goals do you have that would be beneficial to others? What goals do you have that are a testament that you did, in fact, make the world a better place for having been here?

What Passion in Sales Really Means

Is selling your passion? Or better yet, do you have passion for what you do and what it does for others? Selling the right things to the right people changes lives. It certainly changes your life, and if you've approached your prospect or client the right way and focused on them, not yourself, you change their life too. You bring something to the table that maybe, just maybe, buys them freedom: freedom of time and freedom to make choices. Choices like expanding a business, taking more time with family, retiring early from work, and following the passions of their heart.

Passion Is Non-Negotiable in Insurance

If you are in the insurance business, then you may be the most important person in someone's life when they need someone like you the most. When people face the tragedy of loss, they suffer emotionally, and many times physically and almost always financially. If you've done your job, you can eliminate the financial burdens they may be facing, which in turn will help them emotionally. But the key here is that you must be passionate about what you do. You must decide that your calling is to help as many people as possible.

You must decide that you are the one who will have the greatest impact on their life or business. That defines passion in selling.

Evolving technology, digital banking, and the rapid rise of AI have pushed one question to the top of every financial institution's list: what do customers actually want?

How individuals and companies find and access their banking and insurance solutions is shifting fast, making it harder than ever for FIs to keep pace. According to Maze Research, six trends are shaping customer experience in banking right now:

• Increased desire for high-quality mobile and digital banking

• Balance between self-service and in-person solutions

• Omnichannel strategies for seamless customer journeys

• Personalized experiences are key for retention

• Artificial intelligence for improved customer relationships

• Adoption of blockchain solutions

Understand Your Customer's Journey

A potential or current customer wants their bank or insurance company to understand their journey. Not just their buying journey, but how their current relationships, goals, and transactions build into their entire financial landscape. Because prospects come to the table with more information at their fingertips than ever before, here is what the banker or insurance agent must be prepared to do:

• Stop thinking about your products and services

• Ask enough questions to identify the buying stage and process of your prospect and match your approach to working with them in that buying process

• Understand that to move someone from the assessment stage to the decision stage, you must be more informative — about things the buyer doesn't already know and about things that matter to them

• This does not mean pitching them on the features and benefits of products or solutions offered

• This does mean you must be better at providing useful information, becoming a resource for business solutions, and guiding prospects through their buying stages

• To do that, you must have the skills to curiously and courageously ask enough of the right questions, which are ultimately the building blocks of the relationship

Offer Personalized Experiences for Building and Retaining Clients

It might seem redundant to suggest that the way to offer personalized experiences is also through asking enough of the right questions, but that is the case. Consultative selling is more than just putting the customer first; it's about centering everything around them. It's not "the customer is always right," but rather "the customer is always the focus."

At its core, consultative selling in banking is about understanding your prospect's challenges so thoroughly that your solution naturally becomes the right fit. When done well, it shifts the conversation away from pitching and toward partnering.

Attributes of a Consultative Seller

According to Objective Management Group (OMG), the pioneer and industry leader in sales team evaluations and sales candidate screening, consultative sellers share some core attributes. Use these as a checklist to sharpen your skills:

Aim to Develop Strong Relationships

Real trust doesn't come from surface-level rapport. It comes from deeper conversations. Move beyond small talk and get curious about your prospect's goals, frustrations, and motivations. It won't happen overnight. It's a process.

Ask Great Questions and More of Them

Great questions uncover pain points, highlight opportunities, and open doors. Avoid questions that lead you straight into presentation mode. The best questions help your prospect reflect and reveal what matters most to them. Don't stop when you think you have enough to build a proposal. Probe further. How is this problem impacting their team, their goals, or even them personally? Beneath every issue is a deeper reason to act. Find it.

Listen and Ask with Ease to Uncover Real Issues

Listening isn't about waiting for your turn to speak. It's about truly understanding what the prospect is saying, and what they're not. When they pause, ask clarifying questions. Don't assume you know what they mean. Confirm it. Your product alone isn't the solution. Understanding the true business challenge is. Consultative sellers uncover, and sometimes even help prospects discover, problems they weren't fully aware of.

Understand How They Buy

Forget your sales process. What matters is their buying process. Your job is to guide them through it, not force them into yours. Ask the right questions to help them recognize and gain clarity around their own urgency to address a problem or an opportunity.

Take Nothing for Granted

Even when things are going well, stay alert. Deals can fall apart quickly. The best sellers maintain healthy skepticism, stay curious, and continue to nurture the relationship at every stage.

The world of buying has changed dramatically. It's time to change the world of selling. That is what customers want from their financial institution.

There is one skill that can help you become a better leader, producer, parent, spouse, friend, and communicator. It is one of the most important skills you can develop, but many people do not work on it. In fact, many people really do not like it.

That skill is silence.

Most people are uncomfortable with silence. Even a few seconds can feel awkward. You may wonder if something is wrong, if you should jump in, or if the conversation has stalled. But in sales, leadership, negotiation, and conflict resolution, silence can do a lot of heavy lifting.

Why Silence Matters in Sales

When you are in a conversation with a prospect, client, employee, or team member, silence gives the other person room to think and respond. If you are willing to sit in the quiet instead of rushing to fill it, the person across from you may keep talking.

And when they talk, you learn.

That is where silence becomes powerful. You uncover more information. You hear what is really going on. You gain insight into the issue, the objection, the emotion, or the opportunity in front of you.

Salespeople often feel pressure to respond quickly, explain more, or keep the conversation moving. But you do not learn when you are talking. You learn when you listen.

Silence Can Help You Handle Difficult Conversations

Silence is especially useful when conversations become emotional or tense. In those moments, your instinct may be to defend, explain, or respond right away. But sometimes the best thing you can do is pause.

Jefferson Fisher, a well-known communicator, offers this advice: let your first word be a breath.

That pause can help you stay calm, avoid reacting emotionally, and respond with more intention. It also gives the other person space to finish their thought instead of feeling interrupted or dismissed.

Let People Finish Their Sentences

Another way to get better at silence is to practice letting people finish their sentences.

Many people struggle with this because they think they already know where the conversation is going. They want to jump in, respond, or move the discussion forward. But interrupting too soon can cause you to miss important information.

If you want to become a better listener, a better salesperson, and a better leader, practice waiting. Let the other person finish. Then pause before you respond.

That small habit can change the entire tone of a conversation.

Practice Silence Before High-Stakes Conversations

Like any other skill, silence takes practice.

Chris Voss refers to this as low-stakes practice for high-stakes results. In other words, do not wait until you are in front of a major prospect, a frustrated client, or an employee in a difficult conversation to try it for the first time.

Practice in everyday conversations. Try it with the barista at your local coffee shop. Try it with your mechanic. Try it with friends or family. Notice how often you want to jump in, and work on becoming more comfortable with the pause.

The more you practice, the less uncomfortable it becomes.

Your Best Sales Skill Might Be Being Quiet

People are not born naturally great listeners. Most people are not naturally comfortable with silence either. These are skills, and skills have to be practiced.

If you want to improve your conversations, your negotiations, your coaching, and your sales results, start by getting better at being quiet.

Ask a good question. Let the person answer. Let the silence sit. Listen to what they say next.

You may be surprised by how much you learn.