When asked, most sales managers say that one of their greatest challenges is their ability to motivate salespeople. If a sales manager can figure out what makes their salespeople “tick,” they can help them hit their goal numbers. Motivation seems like hard work because nearly every salesperson values different things. However, there are several steps a sales manager can take to establish a motivating environment for salespeople in order to build a high-performance sales team.
The first step is to recognize that motivation is an “inside-out” job. When the topic of motivation is discussed, we typically think about incentive compensation, sales contests, and recognition programs. All of these certainly encourage sales teams to focus on selling because they are rewards. However, you will gain true engagement and enthusiasm if you create an everyday environment that encourages each individual to identify and visualize their own internal motivation.
Do you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid? The bottom two largest tiers are Physiological and Safety because these are the most basic needs of every individual, including salespeople who are starting at the bottom and working their way up to self-actualization. They must first have income for food, shelter, safety, etc. Only once they have attained all of these basic necessities can they turn their attention to the higher tiers of Love/Self-Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization. This still holds true and is an important concept in building a high-performance sales team!
To put it another way, salespeople do not care about corporate shareholder value unless they are shareholders themselves. What they care about is food, shelter, clothing, recognition, paying for college education or weddings, saving for retirement, etc. These are personal desires and make up the vast majority of things that are important to people. So, the solution is to create an environment where this internal motivation can take place. (See The Dream Manager book by Matthew Kelly.)
Creating a Culture of Goal Setting and Recognition
This means that it is up to you to help your salespeople identify what is important to them. Make the effort to set up time off-site that is dedicated to planning and spend time developing each individual’s dreams and goals. This is time that you will spend on your business instead of in it. Take a day or two to help you and your team take a giant step forward to plan for the future and help them achieve their personal best performance.
Create a process where people can establish personal goals because this is where the motivation comes from. This is also where the passion and desire come from. Hence, this is where the business plan must come from. Very few companies spend time understanding the personal goals of their people, yet they are the basis for any salesperson achieving their goals.
You might position this as though you are the coach and the salespeople are players on a competitive team. Each of you has a part to play so that the whole team wins. Salespeople will usually understand and relate to this because they are competitive by nature. If someone does not get this, they may not be suited for selling. Selling requires desire, commitment, and a need to win.
Create an environment where people get a chance to unplug and sit down to outline their goals and dreams, and establish timeframes, attaching financial values to these items. Once you have attached financial values, you know what level of prospecting and selling activity is necessary for each salesperson. You will also have a much better idea of what realistic standards look like.
Reward yourself and your salespeople when they achieve success. So, as your people go through and identify their goals, and as you sit down as an individual salesperson to identify your goals, be sure to identify how you will reward yourself when you achieve them.
In some ways, salespeople are like kids in that they want to be recognized for their successes. In almost every home in America, we have a kid’s Hall of Fame, otherwise known as the refrigerator door. Every time one of the kids does something great, they come home through the door and look for attention: “Look at this. Look at my art. Look at the A on my science test.” And what do we do? We put their success on the refrigerator door, where everyone can be reminded of this accomplishment.
Somewhere, you will want to create a theoretical refrigerator door for your salespeople to recognize their successes. A visual reminder, even a poster board with a graph and names that is posted where all can see, is a great way to keep everyone motivated and to reward those who deserve recognition.
A good sales manager will also have a system for helping a salesperson get back on track and correct problems that have led to failure. For instance, you must have a conversation with Jane, who did not reach her prospecting goal for the month. You will ask her, “How important is it for you to succeed?” “What do you need to do to fix this problem?” “What kind of process or program could you put in place to get on track to succeed?”
Assuming that Jane has desire and indicates she is willing to do the work, you will say, “OK. This is what we are going to do. Every Thursday at 10 a.m. for the next four weeks, I am going to come to your office and listen to you make prospecting phone calls.” Then, you must follow through each week. This is the kind of discipline and structure that will get Jane back on the road to success. This is also the kind of hands-on coaching necessary for building a high-performance sales team.
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