5 expert tips to motivate your sales team
Leading a sales team that is always 100% motivated, resulting in always hitting their goals, sounds like heaven to sales managers all over the world. However, it is not a practical reality as a lot of sales teams are highly disengaged. Research by Bain & Company has shown that the productivity level of demotivated and disengaged employees is a massive 25 to 50 percent below their peers, so it’s a no-brainer that striving for a motivated sales team should be one of the highest priorities of any sales manager. Not only for better bottom-line results, but also for the wellbeing of their teams.
Developing a motivated and engaged sales team is something every sales manager is capable of doing, they just need to know and apply the right methods to do so for long-term impact. Motivated sales teams love their jobs more and perform better, so here are our top 5 expert tips on how to drive motivation and better sales performance.
1. Be appreciative and reward behaviours, not just results
Don’t wait for something massive to happen to show appreciation toward a team, but make sure to celebrate the small successes, such as the timely follow-up of a lead or entering detailed meeting information in the CRM after a day full of meetings. Reward behaviours, and not just results. If sales reps work hard and get better at what they’re doing, or contributed to company success in any way, let them know their efforts are very much valued.
Being appreciative of these small things will drive daily motivation for day-to-day tasks and keep employees engaged. Want to double the effect of appreciation? Take it public. Show recognition in a meeting or share it via internal communications so everyone can talk about it and congratulate each other.
Recognising even the smallest accomplishments with written or verbal praise will boost sales teams’ morale. Of course, you don’t need to hold back with the celebrations when there’s a big team win.
2. Introduce gamification
Want to have the highest possible boost to morale? Give team-centered gamification a try. Here, the pressure to win is spread across several individuals, who encourage each other to do their best so their team can come up on top at the end. On the other hand, individual-centered gamification can be a bit trickier. Make sure to level the playing field, otherwise salespeople might have the feeling they can’t win, and using gamification will have a demotivating effect.
Introduce gamification in sales and you’ll be amazed at what can be achieved. Just make sure to follow these golden rules to successfully implement gamification:
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- Keep competitions short and targeted
- Aim at motivating a single behaviour per competition
- Broadcast results publicly
- Engage executives
- Be creative, don’t use the same ‘recipe’ every single time.
3. Set clear goals
This might be an obvious one, but it’s so important. Having no clear goals can feel stressful for salespeople as they won’t know or are uncertain as to what they’re working toward and when they’ll be successful. Setting and creating goals that are clear, challenging and yet achievable will help drive a positive spirit. Furthermore, it’s best to have a healthy mix of short and long-term goals to drive maximum engagement. Working together with individual salespeople to set goals aids in finding out what works best for them and makes it easier to motivate and engage them.
4. Be a good, and personal coach
Coaching is a pretty big element of successful sales teams. Sales managers are tasked with being salespeople’s coaches, but often don’t fulfill this role properly. More often than not, sales managers only start coaching reps when they notice something negative has happened, like losing a deal or making a costly mistake. This results in salespeople associating coaching with failure and will only create a downward motivational spiral. What’s better is to regularly check-in and ask individuals how they’re feeling and tell them what you think.
Showing commitment to coaching will boost morale, as salespeople know they have someone to talk to for coaching and support. Also, a good coach is aware that people have different personalities and that not everyone wants to be managed the same way - so develop a personalised coaching style for every single salesperson to be as effective as possible.
5. Build and maintain trust
You can’t have motivation without trust, it’s as simple as that. Lacking trust between a sales manager and the sales team will make it almost impossible for the team to be motivated and engaged with their day-to-day tasks. Sales managers need to make clear they have the team’s best interests at heart and be open to having honest and transparent conversations about their challenges and goals. What’s even more important is to maintain the trust that has been built by focussing on a helping and supportive mindset. Try to solve problems as soon as they arise and create a comfortable sales environment for reps by helping them to grow and improve.
Motivating your sales team with salesnudge
Motivating your sales team may seem like a daunting task at first as you might not be sure where to begin or how to get started with some of the tips mentioned above. What helps is having the necessary tools at your disposal to drive the behaviours that will lead to increased motivation and engagement. Of course, you could pick one of the many gamification solutions out there, combine that with a separate coaching tool and personally recognise all accomplishments to boost motivation, and therefore performance. But wouldn’t it be easier if all that could be done in one single solution?
Salesnudge enables you to introduce gamification in your sales and act as a personal coach. On top of that you can set up automated nudging to further boost motivation and performance among your sales team. Interested in finding out more about our solution and how it can help you drive the behaviour that leads to improved sales performance? Our experts would be more than happy to help you, so feel free to request a demo or contact us for more information.
