Corporate E-Learning

Sales can be a tough job, and it can be hard to keep your sales team motivated to pursue leads and close deals day after day. Rejection is sometimes part of the job in sales, and that can make some days more difficult than others. Developing a solid set of strategies for motivating your sales team will not only increase your bottom line, but will increase team member satisfaction and retention. Taking the time to figure out how best to prepare and motivate your sales team is one of the best investments you can make in your organization.

Motivation isn’t just an intrinsic drive, nor is it the application of an external force at specific times. Motivation is something that exists in our environments. An environment that is not motivational promotes stagnation, procrastination, and poor morale. On the other hand, creating a motivational environment leads to team members who are excited about what they do, are fire up to work towards shared and individual goals, and who are eager to do their best for their own personal success and the organization overall success.

Studies show that organizations with open, frequent communication between management and employees tend to foster motivation. Communicate with your sales team often to help keep the motivation flowing. Also encourage your team members to communicate with you. By keeping the lines of communication open, you are better able to head off problems, learn what the team needs, and understand what will motivate both the whole team and individual team members.

One of the best investments you can make in your team is training! We often think of training as something that happens at onboarding, or something that only needs to take place when procedures or technology changes. However, continuously offering training to your sales team helps keep them motivated, invested in their work, an in a mindset of continuous improvement. Find ways to offer training and growth opportunities to your sales team, and you will find them fired up and ready to take on new challenges.

When looking for ways to motivate your sales team, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There are a number of best practices that have been proven to motivate sales team members – seek them out and emulate them! Look to industry leaders, and even across industries, for examples of motivated and successful sales teams. Figure out what these organizations are doing right, and then find ways to bring those practices to your own organization.

No matter how talented and motivated he or she might be, no one can succeed without the right tools. Taking time to determine which tools your sales team members need, and then to provide those tools, is vital to motivation. A team that is continually deprived of the tools necessary to do their job effectively is a team that will lose motivation and investment in the work. On the other hand, a team that is supplied with the best tools at the right time is one that is excited about and invested in their work. Providing your team with the tools they need demonstrates organizational investment in their success, and your team will recognize and reward this investment by doing their best work.

Each person is motivated by something different. The simplest, and perhaps most overlooked, step in motivating employees is to find out from them what would be motivating! Before investing time and resources into a plan to motivate your sales team, you should take the time to discover what would be most motivating to the actual people in question. This way you can know from the outset that you are providing resources, tools, and incentives that will actually provide the motivation you seek.

A team at its best is a unit, working toward shared goals. However, we cannot forget that teams are made up of individuals. And however much team members are working towards shared goals and visions, they also have their own goals and motivations. Take time to tailor rewards to the individual members of your team, and you will motivate not only the team as a whole, but each individual component – creating a healthier overall team.

Teams have to work together to achieve shared goals. One way to keep everyone motivated to work toward common goals is to create team incentives. Your knowledge of what individual team members find motivating will be helpful here. Taking time to discover what would motivate the entire team is also useful. Providing incentives for the whole team helps create another shared goal, rather than having people working for their own personal rewards.

When you’ve determined what will motivate both the entire team and its individual members, it’s time to implement incentives. Incentives should be implemented in a way that is understandable, regular, and consistent. If employees don’t have faith in the incentive system, it will do little to motivate them. Create an incentive system that works for your organization and which will be motivational to your team.

One of the most motivating things for most people is recognition. People want to know that what they do is noticed and matters. This can be especially true in team environments, where it sometimes feels as though individual get lost. In large organizations with broad goals, individual teams may also feel lost in the shuffle. Take the time to recognize achievements by both individual employees and whole teams, and you will find your people more motivated and invested in their work.

Although this workshop is coming to a close, we hope that your journey to learning how to motivate your sales team. Please take a moment to review and update your action plan. This will be a key tool to guide your progress in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. We wish you the best of luck on the rest of your travels!