HOW TO MOTIVATE YOUR SALES TEAM TO MAKE THEM CONTRIBUTE THEIR BEST TO THE ORGANISATION

Motivating the sales team by offering monetary and non-monetary incentives has been an established practice in salesforce management. Non-monetary incentives can include the following ways to push team members up to the next level of performance and job fulfillment, and in the process, make them contribute their best to the organization’s growth journey.

Here are some ways to motivate your sales team:

1. Continuing education and training

In today’s ever-evolving market place it is essential that an employee is well-versed with the best practices being followed in the domain of sales management. Even the most experienced salespersons can face difficulties in meeting the changing benchmarks of performance without adding up to their knowledge and skills. This is where continuing education can help bridge the gap. There are several ways to encourage the sales team members to pursue continuing education to enhance their skill set.

1. Online programs and courses from leading educational institutes or online Edu-portals
2. Offline training programs by a well-known coach or a corporate trainer
3. Sending them for on-campus part-time executive programs in sales management at leading universities
4. Giving them a sabbatical to pursue full-time, continuing education

An organization should ideally sponsor the above initiatives in order to motivate the employees and provide them an incentive for taking up these initiatives. Organizations which encourage such human resource policies are more likely to stay competitive in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) marketplace.

In most cases, salespersons are armed with knowledge about the basic essentials of the sales function. But organizations should conduct training programs that build a layer onto the foundation of the fundamental learnings of sales management.

2. Who fits where?

All sales reps are not equal. As a sales manager, you should be able to identify their strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, and preferences, and accordingly, assign them their roles and responsibilities. This will help in achieving optimum results.

For instance, one may like to build rapport with small and medium client accounts and another one with larger customer accounts. Are they a part of a set of seasoned executives or are they still learning the basics? Some may have in-depth knowledge of a focused market or industry vertical. Some may be well networked within the peer community. Some may be well versed with sales automation tools and using the latest software technology.

Assigning roles and responsibilities based on their specialties can fuel sales growth and make a happier and satisfied sales team due to the following reasons:

1. A person is more successful when they focus on what they are good at.
2. Specializing in one or two roles spares one from time-consuming activities, which may require multitasking
3. It helps the salesperson to consolidate resources toward achieving the sales goals

At times creating silos for certain roles and functions may help in streamlining processes that can be further integrated with other roles to maintain a collaborative and sustainable growth environment within the organization.

3. Coaching at an individual level

Personalized and regular coaching to the team members helps in assessing their performance and bottlenecks faced while achieving their KRAs and KPIs. Focusing on individual sales team members presents them with a transparent window to share the challenges they face in contributing their best. At the same time, you can identify team-wide challenges as well as individual issues.

This approach makes it simpler to set achievable goals and implement effective strategies to meet team and individual goals. At times, the services of a professional coach can be engaged to conduct a gap analysis for each employee to identify the gaps that need to be filled up for that employee. These gaps can be Knowledge, Skill, and Attitude (KSA) related gaps. This will help you crystalize the exact coaching and training needs of that employee.

4. Offer out-of-the-box incentives

Out-of-the-box incentives can keep your team motivated and highly charged. Some of them are as follows:-

• Plan a surprise movie screening for the team and their family during the weekend.
• Appreciate top performers at regular team meetings rather than waiting for the annual appraisal
• Offer to switch roles with them for a day.
• Highlight their success stories in the company’s newsletter.
• Reward them with a “late-punch in and early punch-out” for a whole week when they achieve smaller targets.
• Ask customers to share their testimonies about the sales team members regarding the management of their respective accounts successfully and publish these on the company’s website.

Make sure to think of more fun and enjoyable moments that could be used along with incentive programs.

In Sales Management Essentials You Always Wanted To Know, the complex world of Sales Management is defined and elaborated in a fun and easy-to-understand way. Buy Sales Management Essentials and start learning about this field today!