My kids take Latin at school, I know, it’s a lost art, but a fascinating one. It connects you with the root origin of many of the words we use in the English language and each one is kind of a story in itself. Motivate, for example, is derived from the Latin word Motivus, which means, a moving cause. Now that’s cause to move…with purpose! A number of things generate a “moving cause,” and when it comes to motivating your sales team, there are a number of levers to pull. We’ll break down some of the best ones so you can give them the tools and support they need to succeed.
According to Gallup, sales teams that are highly motivated and engaged at work are 18% more productive and 23% more profitable than those that aren’t. Unfortunately, most teams lack the motivation they need—the same study indicates that only 23% of worldwide employees are sufficiently engaged.
So how do you close that gap and motivate your sales reps to perform their best?
Here at Performio, we’ve worked with hundreds of sales organizations and thousands of reps over the years, and we’ve gained a clear understanding of what motivates salespeople. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few of the most important things you can do to motivate your sales reps.
Provide the training and tools your reps need
When your sales reps aren’t well equipped to do their jobs, they won’t be motivated to do those jobs well. Providing them with the training and tools they need accomplishes two things: it ensures that they have the technical skills to do their job effectively, and it demonstrates that you’re invested in their personal success.
These investments come in many forms. Your sales kickoff meetings will be among the bigger and potentially more lavish expenditures you devote to training and motivating your sales reps, giving them a regular morale boost they can anticipate while imparting new skills and a shared vision for the coming sales period. But you should also invest in ongoing training and personal development opportunities to ensure your sales reps can continue growing into their specific areas of interest.
And of course they’ll need access to the right tools and equipment. This includes everything from comfortable, ergonomic furniture to the software they use to manage their sales and track their progress. The last thing you want is to have your reps distracted and wasting time on repetitive tasks that could be automated for them, or trying to track and calculate things themselves that they should simply have access to in the first place.
[Callout: A quality Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) platform like Performio is one tool you won’t want your reps to be without. They’ll get a real-time window into their progress toward quotas and goals, along with what they can expect to earn, allowing them to stay focused on their sales.]
Treat your sales reps like humans, not robots
Far too many companies seem to think of their salespeople as coin-operated robots. They put in a little basic training, tell reps to follow certain regimented steps, and then leave them to sell their product. If the reps aren’t performing well, they must be defective robots, so they’re out. But this simply isn’t how humans work. It’s a demoralizing perspective that actually hinders people from being able to perform their best.
Look at the totality of a given rep’s circumstances, and don’t over-index on the process and tracking metrics. A lot of sales managers get way too in the weeds with having their reps fill out fields and check off boxes that don’t ultimately lead to improved performance. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have your reps follow a sales playbook or that you shouldn’t be tracking relevant KPIs—you should! But you have to keep things in perspective and remember that these elements aren’t what motivates people.
And the way you treat your reps will bleed over into how they treat your customers. You want to focus more on winning the deal than closing the deal. That is, your sales reps should be winning over customers to the value of your product or service, not simply getting them to sign on the dotted line. The latter may secure some individual sales, but the former will earn loyal customers who keep coming back because they believe in what you’re selling. It’s an effective way to sell, and it’s a far more motivating way for your sales reps to operate.
Invest in one-to-one coaching
One of the most concrete ways to treat your sales reps like humans rather than robots is with one-to-one sales coaching. This is a huge and often overlooked opportunity, because it does require some hard work, but it really is one of the most effective ways to motivate salespeople.
Most sales organizations emphasize broader one-to-many training sessions. (And to be sure, you do need those too.) But it’s at the level of one-to-one coaching where real growth and progress can occur.
Testing by Harvard has shown that most people retain only 25% of what they hear in a lecture as little as two months later. It isn’t enough for your sales reps to hear something once. They need time to process what they’ve heard, to truly comprehend it, and to put it into action so that they understand it on a practical level. And sales coaching is the best way to accomplish this.
Sales coaches work with each sales rep as an individual, in ways that would never be possible in a group-learning environment. They learn a rep’s strengths and weaknesses, identify which core competencies they need to work on, practice with them via role-play scenarios, check in on their progress, and provide ongoing feedback and accountability that is tailored to their specific needs.
Provide fair and compelling incentive compensation
At the most basic level, employees come to work in order to receive a paycheck. Whatever other motivating factors may be present, they almost certainly wouldn’t be there if they weren’t being compensated for their time. So it’s well worth ensuring that their compensation is fair and compelling.
Nearly all sales organizations use incentive compensation, meaning that sales reps earn more when they sell more, thus motivating their performance. But not all incentive comp plans are created equal, and some are more motivating than others.
One of the most important elements that some organizations overlook is ensuring that the metrics by which a sales rep is compensated are within their control. If outside circumstances are dictating a rep’s paycheck, it will feel random to them, and they won’t be motivated to perform.
For example, you wouldn’t want to pay a sales rep based on whether a customer goes live within three months from the sale. That’s up to professional services, not the sales rep. The rep earned their commission when they closed the sale, and should be compensated for that, not for whatever happens outside of their influence.
Additionally, you want to ensure that you’re incentivizing the right kinds of behaviors. Your sales comp plan should be aligned with your organizational objectives, motivating the behaviors that drive revenue and pursue whatever specific business goals are currently in play. But in doing so, you have to look at the big picture and be careful not to over-incentivize individual actions that could be taken too far.
For example, if you want to incentivize top-line revenue growth and aren’t careful about how you do it, you could end up having your sales team sell your product to anyone and everyone at a heavy discount, just to get them in the door. Your profit margins will suffer, and many of those customers won’t end up being a good fit anyway, canceling soon after signing up. To avoid this, you need to be sure you have a healthy balance of quantity and quality performance measures in place.
Motivate reps and drive performance even in a down economy
It’s one thing to motivate sales reps during times of strong economic growth. It’s something else entirely when the economy is struggling. The same principles may apply, but how you implement them will differ based on external circumstances.
To learn more, check out our free ebook, How to Maximize Sales Performance During an Economic Downturn. You’ll learn how to motivate your sales reps and lead with confidence during even the most trying of times.