Understanding your sales team and what motivates them to sell, succeed and develop, is a key challenge for all Sales Managers.
Some people find the level of supervision they are given, their status within the company, or their relationships with supervisors and peers are vital to their enjoyment of work. Things like company policies, working conditions and job security do make a difference to a person’s job satisfaction, and should certainly be considered when trying to create a happy, harmonious working environment. However, they are more like environmental factors rather than motivators to work hard and succeed.
The main factors to focus on for motivation are:
- The work itself: People will be motivated to do the work if they perceive it to be significant. If you feel your job is worthwhile, you’ll be more likely to approach it with enthusiasm.
- Achievement: People love nothing more than a sense of achievement, to feel they’ve done well and succeeded. Giving your team specific and measurable goals to work towards will help to accomplish this.
- Recognition: Make sure you recognise whenever someone does well, achieves their goal or wins a tough sale. Publicise it to the rest of the team or office. A little recognition for a task well done goes a long way.
- Responsibility: Increasing a person’s responsibility or importance is a great way to motivate them. Put people in charge of small teams or projects and they will run with them with enthusiasm. Keep an eye on anyone you’ve given more responsibility to, as it will almost certainly lead to…
- … Advancement: Getting a promotion is a big motivator for a lot of people. Offering someone the chance to step up in their career is both important to the individual and crucial to enabling business growth.
- Growth: According to Salesforce, over 50% of sales managers are too busy to train and develop their sales teams. You must make time for personal and business development, it’s vital to the success of the business.
This is a tricky one. Many people think that salary, bonuses and commission are motivators. But they are actually more usually seen as factors for job dissatisfaction. People usually strive for higher salaries because they are unhappy with the one they already have, not because they desire to achieve a certain salary which defines success. But undoubtedly, there are some people out there who say they are motivated by money. Whilst a competitive commission or bonus scheme can help in the short-term, try to find something else to motivate these individuals which has a more long-term gain.
The truth is, everyone is motivated by different things; some people place recognition and achievement at the top of their priority list, whilst others are more driven by money. It's important to find out what works best for the individuals in your sales team, as well as what they want from their job or career, and find ways to motivate them accordingly.
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