- [Norman] Welcome back to SRG Insights where we answer your questions
about sales, sales management and sales training.
And today's question is...
- [Woman] Morgan Pierce, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Altify asks,
"How do you motivate your team to win?"
- You know that's a great question, and I think when I reflect on
the best managers that I've worked with, they're the ones that can motivate and
influence their team. But I think there's a misconception out there that to motivate
or influence your team, you've got to be this great, charismatic leader.
And while that certainly doesn't hurt, I think the more important
quality and certainly the much more scalable quality is managers that really
care about their teams and take the time to really understand what's important to
each member of their team. So, you know, there's two typical problems that we see.
One is the manager falsely assumes that whatever's going to motivate him or her
will also motivate their team, and sales teams are pretty diverse and there's a
number of different motivators that may be important to each individual.
And as part of that, I think the other problem that we see is that there's this
misconception about salespeople, that it's all about money.
While money is certainly important, there are certainly a number
of other considerations. What we typically find is that motivations fall in one
of the following six categories: money, opportunity, teamwork, independence,
visibility, and excellence. Also keep in mind that these motivations
may change over time. For example, if someone's getting married
or buying a new home, money may become more important
for a period of time, and also it's typically there's going to be one or
more motivators. So what I'd like to do is just take a little bit of time
talking about each of these and what you can do as a manager to support
the individual's motive or motivations. So let's start with money. Money,
or better said, what money can buy. So if you're trying to support someone
who's really motivated by money, you want to be able to relate sales results
to financial goals or may even consider adding incentives for higher performance.
For example, a higher commission rate for sales above quota.
Opportunity. Typically when someone talks about opportunity, they're thinking
about career growth or advancement. So what you want to do to really support
that type of motivation is really have some discussion about how success
can lead to advancement, you may want to sight how that's occurred for
others or you may want to delegate responsibilities to help someone prepare
for career advancement. For example, having them mentor a new salesperson.
Teamwork. A lot of people are motivated by being a part of a team. Particularly,
that's true with millennials and you see this whole concept of social networks.
So you may want to ask them to lead a team project or provide
some team recognition. For example, you may want to set up a team
incentive if the team achieves a certain sales call.
Independence. A lot of people choose sales because they want to operate independently
and, you know, often we call this the lone wolf where you have this
feeling of empowerment and freedom so I think there you support that motivation by
providing greater autonomy. But one caution I would add there is you really
need to make sure they're accountable. In other words, that autonomy is earned.
Visibility. Not surprising, a lot of salespeople are motivated by
recognition, so you want to make sure that they know and hear that they're
contributions or success are appreciated and valued. If appropriate, you may want
to share their accomplishments in a group setting or maybe send an email and copy
your own boss so they really understand that what they're doing is
important. And excellence. There's a lot of people today who simply want
to take pride in doing a great job, and I think you want to reinforce that
by really complimenting them on the high quality of their work
and what it means not only to you but more importantly to your customers.
So as we've discussed, there are a number of different motives that may be important
to salespeople. That could be money, that could be teamwork,
that could be opportunity, that could be visibility,
and so the question that it begs is, well, how do you know? And guess what?
It's really not that complicated. All you have to do is kind of observe them
on a day to day basis and see what they're doing,
and then start asking them, "You know what? Do you like most about your job?"
By taking the time to observe the behaviors and have really genuine
conversations, you're going to start to get an understanding of what's
important to each person, and then based on that, you can start to develop
customized plans where you really think about how you can reinforce and support
their motivations.
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