The ability to motivate a team is one of the biggest resources every manager has in his business, because a motivated team achieves great results, has a focused vision and an internal drive that makes the impossible possible. That is why managers from all over the world try their best to motivate their team better.
Most sales-people are full of drive and personality. If you can fuel their energy right, you’ll have a huge pay-off in business revenues. Here are some ideas for motivating your sales team:
1. Be one of the team
As a manager, you can serve as an example and as a catalyst for more success: be one of the team, giving a helping hand on their objectives. You don’t have to do that for 8 hours per day, but you have to reserve some time for spending with your team in prospecting and selling. Also, by observing their social dynamics, it will give you more knowledge on their personalities, and you will become a better influencer.
2. Organize sales meetings weekly
A great way to keep your team motivated is to organize weekly meetings with the sales team, where you share the team successes, challenges and objectives for the week to come. It will keep a competitive environment, full of energy of personal growth. Everybody can learn from everybody, by keeping an atmosphere where personal feedback and openness is encouraged.
3. Simplify their work as much as possible
It’s important to have a workflow that keeps people on track, simplifies their work and gives them the opportunity to do what they do best: selling. For teams that use a CRM like Salesforce, you can count on a new tool that optimizes their work: the tool is called Automagic Sync and helps sales people sync their contacts and data from their Salesforce CRM to Google Apps and from Google Apps to Salesforce. You can easily integrate Salesforce email and make their work more ordered and their reporting up-to-date. Using sales intelligence tools like Salesforce and Automagic Sync, your team will be motivated to work more.
4. Give them performance bonuses
Financial pay-off is one of the main reasons to be working in sales: people who thrive in sales want to earn more as a result of their work. Establish sales targets and give bonuses every time employees exceed your expectations. When employees are rewarded, they feel happy, thus motivated, selling more and more every month. Financial incentives create a competitive, yet fair work environment: everybody can earn more if they are willing to work more.
5. Stop micromanaging
Top performers usually have their own way in doing sales. Their particular path is their success signature, so make sure you leave some place for personal freedom, creativity and even error making. Let people learn from their mistakes and help them find themselves through their own work. That means that you have to let go of your tendencies to micro-manage sometimes. People will feel that you trust them and that is an open environment for development if you find the perfect balance between managing and freedom.
Finally, it is important to truly care about your team, to understand their goals and motivations and try honestly to make them happier and more fulfilled and that will finally lead to a super-strong sales team.
