Four efficient strategies to motivate your sales team

As a sales manager, one of the many hats you need to wear is a motivator. The team’s success is dependent on what they can do and how often and passionately they are willing to do it.

This is why motivation plays a significant role in the sustainability of a team’s sales success. However, being able to motivate your sales team is not a walk in the park. Each requires different schemes and strategy to boost their morale.

These are the four efficient strategies to motivate your sales team:

1. Regular meetings

Facetime with your team should be routinary. These are some of the things that you can run through with your team during your meeting.

• Review of how your sales have looked like. Present a friendly and straightforward chart to show your team’s Key Performance Indicator.
• Show them where you currently stand, how close you are in reaching your sales quota and how many more contract for commissions needed to be closed.
• If necessary, inform them how you are doing as a group. Be transparent if the team is struggling or in a bad place. Conversely, acknowledge and highlight the group’s success especially if there is a significant rise in sales met.
• Address the need of those members who are far behind, ask them the kind of assistance they need. People who want to be part of something big wants to know where they stand in the group.

Updating them with news that is going on currently can help jump-start their day. It can also be an opportunity to build their trust on you. The sense of openness gives the impression that you are not holding back anything from your team. It will be perceived that you have their best interests at heart. No team works efficiently without trust.

2. Exciting incentives

After a couple of rejections from clients, you need to come up with something fun that should help keep the spirit of sales burning. Incentive plays a significant role in this industry. The job can be exhausting, so reward system helps in maintaining a fun and light environment. It doesn’t have to be in the form of money all the time.

The more creative it is, the better. That will give your employees a sense of involvement which is crucial in teamwork. Their job can be exhausting, so it is essential to have a playful diversion. For more sales strategies, check this out.

Different forms of motivation drive people so you might want to do these things in running an incentive program:

• Check with your team what incentives they prefer. Let them pick the type of prize they would want to win.
• Allow them to decide on the frequency. It can be on a daily basis, weekly, and or come up with a bigger reward for the end of month performance. That is something they can look forward to while enjoying the little perks they get.

3. Real-time recognition

As stated, people are motivated by different factors. Recognition is one of them no matter how little it is.

You praising your employees’ hard work and how it has helped can even drive them to work even harder with the team. It doesn’t have to go big all the time. In sales, you can take a few seconds of everyone’s time to recognize someone who has closed a sale real-time.

Anyone can appreciate the recognition given to them in front of their peers. This could also fire up someone else’s desire to be recognized and would strive to close one. This brief break can help break the ice and celebrate even in the slightest way.

4. One-on-one coaching

Every direct report is different, so as your approach and action plans. Having a one-on-one with them can significantly help you and the team get the result you needed. And, this will also create a stronger and trusting relationship. Forbes Coaches Council offers a strong community of support tailored to your industry.

If your salesperson has been an outlier, this is where you check what you can do to help him catch up. For performers, you can discuss what they wish to achieve and what you can do to make it possible.

Everyone has a different personality and definition of success. Some might not even know what motivates them. And the way to unravel that is to sit with them, individually. Listen to what they want to achieve in both personal and professional life.

Celebrate your team’s wins and achievements no matter how small it is. It doesn’t need to be grand; it can even be a dinner hosted by you. It is a matter of how genuine the gesture is. More often than not, people appreciate the reward more if it isn’t monetary. Who knows, a simple pat in the back can go along way.