Is anything more frustrating for sales managers and executives than an unmotivated, poor-performing salesforce? Imagining all the potential revenue that goes unrealized is enough to make any sales manager’s head spin.
As businesses begin to recover from the destabilizing effects of the pandemic, competition is ramping up. So now it’s more important than ever to build a roster of motivated, engaging, and committed salesforce to serve your customers.
Identifying how to motivate your sales team can drive revenue to new and exciting heights. We’ve compiled seven strategies to motivate your sales team in any industry.
Creating a professionally and personally fulfilling environment for your sales staff is a major key to consistent motivation.
One way to support fulfillment is to share customer feedback that touches on how your product or service improved their life.
Real-world examples are a great reminder that your sales team’s work isn’t all about increasing the bottom line- they help people, too.
Competition may have driven sales during the 80s. But workplaces and business practices have changed almost as much as hairstyles since then.
Now, companies are waking up to the power of collaboration for fueling successful sales activities. Competition may be an effective short-term motivator, but collaboration is king to the consistently high-energy sales team.
It can be tempting to dictate sales strategies and scripts from the top-down.
Conversely, leaving room for sales teams to apply a personal touch to their sales activities sends a message of trust and autonomy to your sales staff that can be more motivating than conventional incentives.
This tip is great for optimizing sales motivation, plus your individual sales reps are free to discover a whole new world of innovative strategies and practices to benefit the company.
Heard sales reps are happy sales reps. Encourage your sales team to communicate regularly with each other and their leadership. Openness and mutual respect foster a positive work environment ideal for motivating sales staff.
Accessible communication also allows managers to understand the team’s individual needs and preferences regarding management style, incentivization, and performance feedback.
Celebrate individual and collective wins with your entire sales staff to provide a motivation double-whammy.
Praise urges the individual to continue producing high-quality results while the rest of your sales team strives to match their energy and success.
Team celebrations also build healthy camaraderie around the office for a positive environment that bolsters consistent motivation.
The less enjoyable truth about sales management is that a large portion of your responsibilities falls under the category of ‘tough conversations.’ Chief among these tough conversations is addressing lagging or sub-par sales performance with your reps.
When a situation requires disciplinary action, meet with the individual in question privately to shield team motivation from the fallout.
This strategy can also earn sales managers increased loyalty and trust from their staff, so it’s worth remembering even when the sales team is firing on all cylinders.
Demotivated reps often need reinforcement that they’re part of a genuine team. Committed sales managers and leaders work alongside sales staff and display the qualities they want their team to reflect and facilitate a healthy team mindset.
This strategy provides a clear example of what a motivated, productive sales rep looks like in action, building team morale and trust through shared effort and goals.
There’s a reason every sports team has a coach. A team needs someone to cheer them on when they succeed, and pick them up, dust them off, and show them how to perform better when they fail.
Sales teams are no different. Motivation is a key differentiator between low-performing sales teams and those that consistently blow past quotas to drive growth quarter after quarter.
Effective sales managers don’t expect to solve motivation issues by merely throwing money at the problem.
While financial incentives can be a valuable part of a sales motivation strategy, failing to build alternative productivity methods will likely result in recurring motivation problems.
Instead, implement employee appreciation events, shout out positive customer feedback and success stories, and align sales activities with your overarching company mission.
Many sales managers struggle to motivate unhappy sales teams. The daily grind of phone calls, pitches, and rejections can wear down the best of us, including sales veterans.
Inject a dose of fun into your sales routine with friendly internal competitions, like raffles that sales reps earn tickets for with successful sales activities.
If your company makes data-driven hiring decisions, encountering laziness is probably rare. However, companies that fail to modernize and optimize their sales hiring process often find themselves managing lazy sales staff resistant to motivation.
In this situation, maintain an open and honest dialogue with your sales reps who display indifference. Try to identify the source of their lack of motivation and productivity, and work together to build an actionable solution.
PerceptionPredict specializes in optimizing hiring processes to create world-class sales teams. Utilizing cutting-edge predictive analytics, PerceptionPredict creates a unique candidate ‘sales DNA’ model called Performance Fingerprints.
Performance Fingerprints harness the power of predictive analysis to forecast essential key performance indicators, empowering companies to make hiring decisions that yield a healthy ROI.
Our decision support platform analyzes personal and professional beliefs and values so companies can identify candidates with the required skills and uphold the organization’s overarching mission.
Interested in learning how predictive analytics can fill sales ranks with top-performing go-getters? Book a demo to speak with an expert.