The sales department plays a key role in the success of an organization. Also, it has an important role in creating trust between customers and business. Trust is the main reason why a customer selects to recommend your company to family or friends. So, motivation is essential for a sales team to make better performance. Let us discuss about how to motivate your sales team.
As a director or sales manager, you can influence the performance of your sales team in two dimensions. One thing is improving the skill set of your team. The other thing is motivation. Improving the skill set of your team is an objective process. You are able to determine which areas need improvement and act by analyzing the current performance and comparing them to a successful final condition.
Motivation is not an easy thing. There are some external factors that influence motivation. Also, every person needs different motivational strategies and different incentives. There are no doubts that motivated sales teams can enjoy their job more. So, they will try to do their job better. It will create more sales. That will lead the company to success.
How to motivate your sales team
Your sales team will face rejections from peoples on a daily basis. Those rejections from peoples can affect their productivity and efficiency. Also, the wrong selling time and the market downturn will affect your sales team’s performance badly. If they don’t get the motivation they require, it will result in slow sales. Some techniques to motivate your sales team are given below.
1. Build trust with the members on your team
The base of the motivation is trust. If the peoples on your team think that you don’t have their interests at your heart, it is difficult for them to feel motivated by your actions. Also, If you don’t have an open and honest mind to make conversation about their goals and challenges, you can’t motivate them.
Managers need to build trust and sustain that trust. It can be done by engaging with the team in a nurturing and consistent manner. To be completely transparent is the best way to make trust with your team. As a manager, you need to work in a business relationship instead of being their boss.
Parnas Ghosh
2. Provide positive feedback
You should appreciate your team members, if they completed a work well or if they made a particular strategy to achieve the company’s goal. Try to take two minutes out of your day to give a compliment to a salesperson to let them know how impressed you were by their work.
The managers should recognize and encourage members of their sales team who are making a small step forward toward a goal. It will boost their positive mood. Also, it will increase their ability to develop constructive ways to face challenges. Some small things that can motivate your sales team are given below.
Ashwini
- Make positive conversations with your team
- Go with your team out for lunch
- Recognize their anniversaries, birthdays, etc.
- Send an appreciation email to your team members, if they completed a job well.
3. Set goals
You have to give your sales team a goal to achieve. They are not able to know about what constitutes success or what to aspire to, without a goal. Select a goal that is achievable. But, it shouldn’t be an easy task. You need to set daily goals, weekly goals, and monthly goals. Every person is motivated in different ways. Some people are inspired by team-wide sales competitions.
Some are inspired by quota achievement. Some are motivated by qualitative improvements. Some peoples are inspired by their influence in the organization. Money motivates some peoples. So, you need to work with each member of your team to discover what will work best.
Rishabh Rathi
4. Give great rewards
Giving rewards in the form of recognition or monetary incentives will motivate your sales team. You should try to recognize the qualities of your sales representative like positive attitude, being creative, more sales meeting contributions, etc. If your team is recognized beyond the volume of the sales they create, it will more motivate your team to improve the performance. Some types of rewards are given below.
- Give recognition to individuals at team meetings
- In each quarter, award the “Most Valuable Player” title to the best performers.
- Provide cash bonuses and make trips with your team
- Give them an off day
Sweta
5. Track and share the small successes
Say your team to carry a paper, and pen to record all the good things that happened, no matter how small. It includes good things such as positive interaction with a customer, a new content handed out from the marketing team, a new prospecting tip they’ve learned, etc. Sharing small successes with someone else can increase morale.
6. Gamification
This method is considered as one of the popular motivational techniques. Gamification encourages coaching, open mentoring, sales team project management, collaborative sales techniques and information sharing. Also, it is good for fostering good morale and friendly competitiveness.
You need to find the right gamification type depending on the preferences and personality types on your team. In most of the motivational sales games, specific numbers are assigned to several areas of the sales process. For example, if you completed a task, you will get 5 points. You can use graphs or digitized scoreboard to keep track of these points.
7. Team building
If a sales team is too competitive it will lead to a bad work environment and reduce performance and team spirit. Also on other hand, the lack of competitiveness will lead to individual incompetence and bad performance of the team. It is proven that team building will influence the performance of the team. The team members will get fun and relax by engaging in team building activities. Allow your sales staff to cultivate mutual empathy and bring the team to the forefront.
Rishabh Rathi
As a sales manager, you should try to find things that will enable your sales team to go the extra mile. The sales team is considered as the direct link between a company and its customers. Salespeople become more valuable for the company by returning the invested time, money, and effort many times over. So, it is important to keep your salespeople motivated for making your business successful.
