5 Simple Techniques to Increase Your Sales Team Motivation
Have you ever wondered what is the main driving force behind the effectiveness of your sales team? Why do they stay late at work, follow up on closed deals and build a personal relationship with your clients? In fact, there’s an answer and that is motivation.
So what is your sales team motivation? For each person the source of encouragement is different. Some get motivation from a paycheque, while others from growing professionally and receiving recognition from their management. Sales managers are able to influence their team performance either by encouraging to improve their skills or by motivating them to perform better.
Some employees are self-motivated, let’s say, by their own interest in performing well. No matter if they’re at a junior, senior or a C-level position, everybody is eager to learn, develop within the field and go up the career ladder. Another source of self-motivation is a sense of achievement after accomplishing a task or a project.
However, how long does the self-motivation usually last? How much time do your employees need to get unmotivated and, therefore, inefficient? It lasts for exactly as long as their manager recognize the work they do.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it”, as concluded by the U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. To learn this art and be successful in motivating your sales team, you need to set a goal and have a clear vision why you do this. Do you want your team to be more effective delivering even better results or you want them to fill more comfortable at work? No matter the reason, there’re techniques that could help your sales team motivation.
1. Money
The most obvious motivation for an employee is, without doubt, his or her paycheque. According to National Research Business Institute, “Money is a crucial incentive to work motivation. It is a medium of exchange and the means by which employees can purchase things to satisfy their needs and desires”. It is a verified trampled path of a sales team motivation which doesn’t require much effort. You basically pay a commission to your employees which you previously specified in the contract.
Industrial psychologist Edwin Locke, a retired Dean’s Professor of Motivation and Leadership at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, conducted his own research on employee motivation. He compared four methods: money, goal setting, participation in decision making of the company, and job redesign to give workers more challenge and responsibility.
What he found was no surprise, money turned out to be the best motivator for increasing employee performance. “He found that the average improvement in performance from money was 30%, compared to an increase in performance by 16% for goal setting, less than one percent improvement from participation in decision making, and a 17% improvement from job redesign.”
It’s because people need more than just a paycheque for delivering their job on the top level. Those incentives such as well-being at work, friendly atmosphere, teamwork, respect and being valued are making people to wake up on Monday mornings and to arrive at work with a smile. And you cannot buy those things.
Maybe money is the biggest sales team motivation but not the only one and not the one that works for everybody. Just think about it, all businesses would prosper and blossom if it would take just money to motivate their employees to work better. Thus, let’s take a look at options which require more efforts, imagination and how surprising it is — motivation from a manager’s side.
2. Communication
Dan Tyre, a senior level software executive at Hubspot, with nearly 30 years in sales, says: “Just as different prospects will require different selling styles and effective salespeople understand how to adapt to those styles, effective managers understand that the best way to get results out of their team is to fit into their reports’ worlds, instead of forcing one method of communication or strategy on everyone else”.
He suggests simply asking your employees what motivates them the most, how they’d like to be managed and how often to meet. He asks his directs: “If something I do gets on your nerves, will you let me know?”.
Maybe you wouldn’t go as far as asking such questions, however, it’s rather a good idea to have face-to-face meetings with your employees on a regular basis. Such meetings allow to reflect upon your employees’ efforts and achievements. Find out how they feel at work and what according to them might be improved. In addition, you can discover your employees’ goals for motivating them in the right direction.
3. Recognition
Reward your employees with acknowledging their even smallest achievements. Take a moment to thank them or point that they did great. For you, it’ll take a moment but for them, it’ll add the feeling of being valued and increase motivation to do even more.
Even though, we’ve already discussed that money is the greatest motivator, when it comes to recognition, non-cash incentives are proven to be more effective than monetary compensation, as shown in the report by Aberdeen. In fact, 31% of top performers do prefer non-cash rewards such as a gift card, a trip, a new device or an invitation for a dinner from their manager.
Dan Tyre suggests to let your employees choose what they’d like to have as a reward. He simply asks his sales team if they need motivation form his side and what exactly do they want to receive as the reward given the X amount. This way, they get a sense of involvement choosing the prize they’re going to compete for. It increases their level of excitement even before a challenge begins. In the end, those who win receive the reward they chose for themselves.
Another way to recognize your employees is to promote them. When hiring for a senior role, take a closer look at one of your juniors before inviting somebody from outside the company. They already fit your company’s atmosphere and know all the team’s specifics better than anybody else. By promoting your sales reps you’re providing them with a greater motivation and getting loyal employees.
4. Trust
Trust is the foundation of your sales team motivation. If you haven’t won the trust of your team, it’ll be difficult for them to accept your motivation. Without trust, you won’t be able to have an open and honest conversation with them about their goals and challenges. In fact, managers who are building trust with their employees simultaneously evoke them to create it between each other.
Thus, start building trust with your employees by being completely transparent with them. You might show them the big picture: what the company has accomplished so far with their help. The research by the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017 found that the “sense of purpose” is one of the main reasons that 6 out of 10 millennials choose to work at their current company. So it’s truly important to your employees to know they have a value at their company.
A purpose of a manager is to keep his or her employees engaged and aligned with a company’s mission. Find out what their opinions are on upcoming projects or discuss how they can grow and develop further within the firm.
5. Working environment
Create a good working environment for your employees where they’ll feel safe, comfortable and inspired to do their best. Encourage friendly competition. Leaderboards work well too, acknowledging a leading person makes others work harder. A game or a competition might be an appropriate incentive for teaming up and pushing each other to win. Also, it’s a more pleasant and effective choice for reaching goals and quotas. Again, you need to communicate to your team and find out what works best for each of them.
Offer them help or a mentorship. Especially it’s important for juniors or newcomers who still have a little experience at the position. Or, you might find a person who works longer at your firm and is willing to mentor them. Both ways newcomers will acclimate to work much faster and build a better relationship with the rest of a team.
Provide your sales team with an opportunity to distract themselves from work a little bit. In this case, a ping pong table, VR set, PlayStation, a massage chair or other relaxing activity could help. Even 10–15 minutes will help to unwind one’s brain, especially that doing something completely different boosts the energy level significantly.
To sum up,
Even though money is an important source of a sales team motivation, there’re many other incentives that can be even more crucial for your employees. I find communication to be one of the most crucial ones. Sales managers need to find the source of their motivation for each of their team members.
Also, it’s important to have a clear understanding what difference motivation makes for your team and your company. It’s necessary to conduct meetings frequently with your employees to discuss their work, ideas, challenges, and ways for improvement. In fact, it may be a good idea to build an action plan or a strategy for your employee’s motivation.
What do you think motivates salespeople — recognition or money? I’d be happy to hear your own opinion. Please, leave your comments below.
Originally the article was published here at @CrazyCall
