Millions of articles on keeping employees motivated have been written in the past, and I am sure there are many more to come. And it’s not without a reason.
52% of American employees are disengaged at work. This leads to a lack of motivation and a decrease in productivity. While it is a global phenomenon and impacts all professions, it seems like some professions are more prone to burnout than others.
Salespeople face a lot of challenges, they are under constant pressure to perform well and to hit their sales targets.
Every salesperson irrespective of how awesome they are experiences rejection from time to time, and it’s ok. However, hearing a “no” too frequently is quite demotivating.
The best performing salespeople are also the most motivated ones. So if you want your sales team to hit their monthly quota on a regular basis you better make sure they stay motivated!
We have asked some world-known sales experts about their tips on how to keep salespeople motivated. Here’s what they said.
6 Expert Tips to Keep Your Salespeople Motivated
Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy and Author of Sales EQ
#1 Spend some quality time with them
Stop staring at dashboards and start spending time with them, human to human, coaching, and training.
Deb Calvert, President of People First Productivity Solutions
#2 Increase the level of employee engagement
The key to keeping salespeople (any employees, actually) motivated is to increase the level of employee engagement.
Engagement is defined as the emotional connection employees feel that causes them to apply additional discretionary effort.
Emotional is an important word in that phrase. Emotional connection is proven to yield significantly more results than rational commitment will.
So, for salespeople, bonuses, commissions, and incentives are rational causes to be committed. But an emotional commitment yields even better results than those rational causes.
Sales managers are directly responsible for emotional commitment. The behaviors of a sales manager will directly impact the engagement level of a salesperson.
To emotionally engage people, managers must do two things. First, they must enable salespeople. That means helping them grow in their capacity, confidence, and competence.
It means giving them feedback about how to succeed. It means collaborating with them to ensure what you are asking is reasonable and adequately resourced.
But enablement alone doesn’t create emotional commitment. The other half of this equation is ennoblement. To ennoble someone means making them feel worthy and important.
Salespeople have inherent barriers to feeling this way, thanks to all the negative stereotypes and reactions they encounter every day.
That’s why it’s so important for sales managers to help salespeople see the higher purpose in their work and to infuse it with meaning that goes beyond the commission check.
For sales managers who are interested in building employee engagement, People First Productivity Solutions offers a daily checklist.
Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, World-Renowned Leadership Expert
#3 Their motivation is internal; inspire, persuade and influence
Always remember that motivation is internal. You as a sales leader can’t motivate your team. You can inspire, persuade and influence them; but ultimately they motivate themselves.
Focus helping them see the meaning in their goals – for themselves as well as their customers and the company. Great leaders help people stay connected to the “personal why” that drives internal motivation.
Keenan, CEO of A Sales Guy Inc., Best Selling Author
#4 Give your salespeople complete ownership of their goals
Give them ownership, get your salespeople complete ownership of their goals and outcomes. Too often we dictate to salespeople what we expect.
Few people are motivated to do other peoples work, to deliver on things they didn’t feel they had a say in.
The best way to motivate salespeople is to get them to own their own success. Challenge your reps to come up with their own goals and success criteria, and what it would mean to them to achieve them.
What would it feel like after they reached the goals? How would it change their life, their job etc?
Then ask them what they feel they need to do to achieve the goals.
Once they have their own goals and an understanding of what it’s going to take, all you have to do is provide the support, coaching, and reminders about what it will look like and feel like once they’ve achieved THEIR goals.
They will do the rest.
Lori Richardson, CEO & Founder of Score More Sales
#5 Motivation comes from within
My tip to keep salespeople motivated – Sales managers cannot motivate, motivation comes from within each rep. Find out from them directly what motivates them – everyone is different – and help them determine how to get to a specific goal they have.
Managers can inspire, however – and one great way is through sharing success stories, helping to find answers, and keeping an optimistic attitude.
Elinor Stutz, Smooth Sale, CEO and Author
#6 Make them aware of their weaknesses
The truth does set us free, so we may advance to become the person we wish we could be. Admitting our weaknesses to ourselves is the first step toward personal development.
Taking baby steps each day toward improvement with a commitment to continued learning will have you one day realize just how far you have come. The recognition is the perfect time to begin mentoring those following in your footsteps.
“The first glass ceiling to break through is that of self-doubt. Positive thought increases positive results.
An open mind opens many more doors. Flexibility transforms today into an improved tomorrow.”
I hoped you found the article useful, do you have any tips on keeping your salespeople motivated. If you do, let us know in the comments.
