Business Motivation: 6 – Key Points to Motivate your Sales team

Business motivation “How do I motivate my sales people?” This is a recurring question that most business executives are asking, and that becomes a source of frustration over time to time. Motivating can prove to be a tricky and ambivalent maneuver depending on who you have to do. Incentive provides you with a 360-degree view of the factors that most impact business motivation.

A common mistake of business leaders is to believe that motivation comes from a unique, personal or magical initiative. Indeed, it comes from a multitude of factors that make up your general organization and your management. It is the implementation of different key points that will awaken the best of your sales people. To begin correctly, it is important to recall that the notion of motivation is mainly science and psychology.

To activate and develop this motivation, one of the main goals is to implement an external stimulus that will be an integral part of your teams’ daily lives. Proper application of this stimulus will ultimately allow each of your team members to develop personal and intrinsic motivation. Knowing how to combine and correctly apply several stimuli will allow a real change on the involvement of your sales forces.

6 – Key Points that Influence Business Motivation

Below are 6 key points to influence business motivation while seeing the other factors of sales in business.

1. Competition, a Source of Motivation

Competition is a source of performance improvement in all activities we know. In the sport, athletes train and surpass themselves constantly to reach new records.

This principle also applies in the professional world even if some have more predispositions to competition than others. Some companies prefer to hire salespeople who already have that spirit, rather than try to develop it. It is for this reason that the establishment of competition in the daily life of your teams is essential to the positive evolution of these. A commercial challenge well done, with interesting stakes, and adapted to your sales forces will become a significant source of commercial motivation and implication.

Knowing how to set up these challenges nevertheless requires real preparation work. How do you imagine your challenges? Will your teams feel involved? How to exploit the best of these challenges? A poorly implemented challenge could have a negative impact on your teams and on your initiative. Learn how to achieve a motivating challenge in 2017.

2. Gamification, a Versatile tool

In simple terms, Gamification consists in transposing the motivation techniques of the game into a non-playful domain, such as work, for example. These techniques include setting goals, reward systems, positive competition, gifts; real-time management … Gamification modernizes the competition to a whole new level. Use digital rankings, objective badges, bonus rewards or honorary titles to unleash the competitive spirit of your sales people. Bringing games into your challenges and the daily life of your company will allow a natural click of your teams. Combine challenges and Gamification and you will get a winning duo.

Targeting, measuring and analyzing the behaviors you want to develop will allow you to have strong performance management. The use of tools combining challenge and Gamification as our coaching platform and commercial animation Incentive will make it easier for you to manage your incentives. Gamification is a tool that can be very effective if it is used well and if you put in place the 10 key steps for a successful Gamification.

3. Create Opportunities

Is there any motivation for achieving your results? For your sales people to reach them, you must show them the opportunities they have to succeed. A poorly carried out prospecting strategy, a non-personalized vision, and a too firm management will be factors that will prevent your teams from being motivated. Indeed, if they do not see the possibilities of achieving these objectives because of poor overall organization, no commercial motivation management tool will be effective.

Let’s take an example: “You must climb as high as possible on a ladder but it is faulty, it is wavering and you risk falling at any time trying to reach the top. Whatever management tools are used to motivate you to climb, you know in advance that you will have very little chance of reaching the top. “

If your teams feel that you are not putting them in a strong position to win, they will be discouraged. Use sales productivity tools like sales-force, boomerang or Trello to facilitate and improve their daily performance. Adopt a flexible and adapted management and propose to your teams strategies adequate and effective to enable them to exploit their full potential.

It is this creation of opportunities combined with a flexible and efficient management that will motivate your teams.

4. Coaching, Essential to Boost Business Motivation

Almost everyone agrees that effective coaching; mentoring or tutoring can significantly impact motivation. It is nevertheless more complicated to know how to coach and coach within your teams. Matthew Dixon, an American writer and sales techniques expert, has conducted research on corporate coaching.

According to him, a manager derives the most value from a coaching of “median” salespeople. Indeed, these are the ones on which your coaching will have the most impact. Do not concentrate on your commercial tops or on your “laggards” since the effectiveness of your coaching will be greatly reduced. Coaching the right elements means ensuring a high return on investment. Furthermore, Make sure you have regular feedback on these coaching sessions to adjust and improve this one incrementally. There are also innovative and efficient techniques to optimize the coaching of your sales forces.

5. Adjust your Compensation Plans

The compensation plan you are going to put in place is going to be determining factor acting on business motivation. If you think that “overpaying” your salespeople will increase their performance and motivation, you are mistaken. Modern methods of remuneration change and must adapt to your overall vision. Prefer a fixed remuneration with a variable that you define together. This option will inspire your salespeople to get involved and exceed their goals to access their personal desires.

Premiums on objectives, benefits in kind, endowments, external activities and other multiple tools are at your disposal to offer remuneration adapted to the desires of your teams. Offer them innovative gifts or progressive bonuses to actually make them want to outdo themselves.

6. Culture and Autonomy, a Perfect Marriage

What does any employee look for in any structure? Yes, you are right, feel good in his professional environment. An employee who feels good about your structure, who loves the work environment, the general atmosphere and management techniques will be far more productive than others who do not like the structure in which they operate. Corporate culture and autonomy are the two keys that will make your teams feel good. Developing traditions, having values ​​and creating a pleasant atmosphere within your company will bring a lot of well-being to your employees and that says well-being says more desire and more productivity!

Finally, the implementation of a certain responsible autonomy will bring a feeling of freedom and productivity to your teams. It is always more interesting to manage your goals independently, to apply your desires and methods rather than to respond to a firm and authoritarian management. Leave space to your teams, while managing them naturally and you will see that “self-responsibility” will develop little by little.

Finally, motivation is a facet of personality that is hard to master. The complementary use of a multitude of tools and values ​​will act naturally on the commercial motivation of your teams. Make them feel in harmony with the company’s values, important within the overall organization and challenge them in a positive atmosphere. Now that motivation has no secrets for you, you no longer have an excuse to manage your sales teams!