How to motivate your sales team
How to motivate your sales team”
Sales play a vital role in any organization's growth and the sales team is the face of the organization. Salesforce develops most loyal clients and turns new prospects into clients. But at the same time sales is hard. The role challenges your Sales executives and Sales Managers’ confidence and can drain their energy. So, in such instances how can you motivate the sales team and maintain its motivation to get the best results?
Not all minds think the same, different things motivate different people: money, recognition, or even fear of losing their job. As a leader, it’s difficult to create an environment that will appeal to everyone, so it’s your job to find what motivates each employee. Motivation usually has two elements: fear and desire. Let's look into a few simple ways of motivating Salesforce:
Restructure your compensation plan
The sales compensation plan is an important part of motivation as it relates to sales performance. Many times you’ll see a compensation plan compiling all the concessions given over the years. In the end, this plan is more difficult for your sales force to understand than it is a motivational tool.
To initiate this process, evaluate the situation carefully so you can fix you compensation plan permanently!
Try to think some questions about the current compensation plan:
Is your plan attractive and retain top salespeople?
Are your compensation plans aligned with the company’s strategies?
Is your plan giving you the liberty to adapt to the changes in the motivation of your salespeople?
At last, is your compensation plan helping you to sustain steady growth?
If answers are “no” then your compensation plan isn’t bringing out the best in your players.
Try to acknowledge the employee’s personal goals:
Once you review the compensation plan, motivate your team by taking the time to learn more about their objectives. Money is not always an end in itself, you can also motivate people by gifts, rewards, satisfaction in job, and the most important source is usually the personal goals your representatives set for themselves.
You must ask the sales team what they want, where they see themselves later in life and provide them incentives to help them achieve their goals. Acknowledge their performance the times they meet or exceed expectations, or do something as simple as mentioning a member’s success in front of the rest of the team during a meeting.
Replace the bottom 10%
If nothing works then it’s time to evaluate an individual’s performance and dismiss the bottom 10%.
You can’t have salespeople who want to remain in a state of conditional commitment regarding success -- people who will only do what they are comfortable or in agreement with. You need salespeople who want to be the best; individuals who aim to become the next sales superstar and who are ready to do whatever it takes (legally and ethically) to get there. You can usually discern those who want to succeed from those who are just looking for extra money in their pocket.
Naturally, in dismissing the least performing salespeople, there will be a positive impact on the motivation of those other salespeople who will want to excel, for fear of being the next ones to be dismissed.
