Building a successful sales force has always been a prime objective of owners, leaders, managers and others. Whole libraries could be filled on the subject of sales and how to make them. My experience as been that almost every idea works. Some just work better than others. My purpose, in this brief article, is to focus on one important aspect of sales, motivation. What motivates someone to sell and do so in a superior way? How do you build and keep a highly motivated sales team?
Building and keeping a motivated sales force has long been a goal of businesses, everywhere. Yet, there is probably no department within any organization that experiences higher turnover of employees than the Sales Department. The reason for high turnover is, in my opinion, that many, including owners, CEOs, managers and supervisors believe sales to be an easy and simple task. They believe that anybody can become a salesperson. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sales and selling is a very complex task involving many different talents, skills, and events. As a result there are few tasks, more important to a business owner or CEO, than hiring and keeping a motivated sales force.
What is motivation anyway? Some say it is an emotion like happiness, sadness, fear or anger. I am not so sure. To be considered an emotion, there is one fundamental requirement; it cannot be generated without an external stimulus. An emotion is a chemical reaction within the body generated by external factors, like the death of a loved one or a surprise sighting of a rattlesnake at your feet. Take for instance the fear that would come from standing two feet away from a six foot, thousand pound brown bear, standing on its hind legs, mouth open, saliva dripping from incisors and roaring loudly. What you likely feel is fear and that is an emotion, in fact, one of the most common and one the body is “hardwired” to react to, with increased heart rate, blood pressure, the enlarging and constricting of blood vessels to increase the blood flow to the arms and legs to allow us to run faster or fight harder or both.
The emotion of fear that we experience, as our friend the bear drips saliva and makes a swath at us, with sharp claws exposed and missing us only a few inches, might motivate us to turn and run as fast as we can or grab a near by rock and throw it. Fear is the reason we are motivated to do something other than, just stand there. There is a difference here, isn't there?
Another example is the emotion of happiness that often motivates us to laugh or jump up and down excitedly. In other words, motivation is somehow the connection between the emotion and the act, not the emotion or the act itself. People are often motivated to act by emotions alone or they act out of a need to satisfy their core values, like security, comfort, hunger or a need for recognition. In any event, motivation is a highly sought after state and deserves some thought.
How does motivation play out in the making of a sale? If you believe that motivation is the stimulus to act and use the knowledge and skills we have, it would seem to play a very important role in the success or failure of any salesperson, for certain. It does seem that some people come to work motivated to do the best they can, most all the time, while other come to work with without any motivation, at all. The Gallup organization might call these workers engaged or disengaged, respectively. From their research, they estimate that nearly 70 percent of all employees are disengaged to one degree or another. The question is; Are those without motivation or those disengaged receptive to and capable of being motivated? The answer; some are and some are not.
It is my belief, built by more than just casual observation that motivation comes from only two sources: internal and external. It is possible to externally motivate someone temporarily, but lasting motivation comes only from within. External motivation, most often, comes from sources like family, work environment, rewards and promotions, etc. Internal motivation is most frequently self generated. The key to hiring and sustaining highly motivated sales people is largely dependent upon our ability to build an environment where the highly motivated people can be the best they can and being able to identify those that are highly motivated, hopefully before you hire them. Here are some tips that will deliver external motivation and aid in the identification of those that are internally motivated.
1. Build an organization culture that encourages superior performance and removes as many obstacles to top performance as possible. Many organizations give no thought to culture, at all. An organization's culture can be uplifting or oppressive. Most, unfortunately, are oppressive and discourage superior performance by imposing too many rules and most importantly rewarding those that do not perform at a high level... If it is true, and I believe it is, that external motivation is only temporary and internal motivation can be grown or suppressed and destroyed, what can an organization do to encourage those already motivated, make certain they don't de-motivate any who are and possibly motivate some who are not? Answer: Build a culture that encourages superior performance, confirm with managers that they are responsible for growing their people and give them the coaching skills to do it. Insist that they use them.
2. Benchmark sales positions in the organization so the organization has clarity about what the job needs in terms of skills, behavior, and values. Understand that internal motivation comes from values an individual needs to satisfy and on way to get clarity about the values satisfied by the job is to look to the successful sales people in that role to determine the needs they have that are being met by this job.
3. Use some type of psychometric assessment to see beyond the resume and confirm job fit and the likelihood of internal motivation. Assessments measuring specifics such as what the individual values, how they behave and their emotional intelligence are great tools to help you make better hiring decisions.
4. Make hiring managers expert at the critical part of their job, hiring superior people, putting them in the right job and coaching them to success. Many hiring managers have inadequate interviewing and coaching skills. Give them regular and intense training in the skill and art of interviewing, selection and coaching.
I do not want to imply that hiring a highly motivated sales team and keeping them motivated is an easy task. It is not. However, attention to these four tips will improve your sales results and your bottom line. Remember a superior performing salesperson will outperform a mediocre one 700 percent. That makes a little extra effort worthwhile and it just may make the difference between a highly successful organization and a mediocre one.
