Little-Known Ways to Increase Sales Team Motivation

Staying motivated can be difficult on the best of days. We’ve all been there! Distractions, dips in focus and productivity burnout can all hit at different times. If you’re unlucky they might all hit at once.

If you’ve noticed your sales team is drifting off course, you don’t need to resort to a lecture to get them to focus. You have a bunch of options, which we’ll outline for you in this post. Get started today and try experimenting with these little-known ways to increase sales team motivation. As you try them out, you’ll find that your sales team can better balance the distractions of real life with the responsibilities of work. Marvelous.

Let Your Sales Team Chase Personal Goals

Each member of your sales team should be working to do more than meet a business goal. Each sales rep on your team has personal and professional goals they’re looking to meet while working for you. With this in mind, the project to which you assign them should help them move towards those goals.

After all, a person will be more motivated to work on a project that they’re personally interested in than one that they’ve been arbitrarily assigned to.

Consider having a chat about goals with each member on your team, where you identify what motivates them and how you can help them reach their goals. Some questions you might like to ask include:

What motivates you as an employee?

What kind of drivers motivate you in the long-term?

What do you do to keep yourself motivated over the course of a project?

What are some signs that you’re growing disinterested in a project?

How would you like me to help you redirect you if you’re losing interest in a project?

What are your goals, with regard to working on this team?

Asking these questions will require time and commitment on your part. But pair the right employee with the right project and you’ll reap the rewards of long-term sales team motivation and commitment.

Create a Trusting Environment

Before you can expect your team to be devoted to a project, there needs to be a level of trust.

Your sales team needs to feel comfortable if they’re going to stay motivated from start to finish. To create a trusting environment, allow your team to approach you at leisure. You want to establish two-way communication, where your sales team can speak to you when something goes wrong and under other circumstances. Likewise, you should be able to reach out to your sales team with ease too.

In short, do what you can to nurture your sales team. Of course there isn’t any need to ‘hold their hand’ over the course of a project, but make an effort to be a supervisor they can reach out to when they need advice, support or just a second opinion. With a culture of open communication, you’ll find your sales team’s motivation is greater for completing projects in a timely and comprehensive manner.

Have Reminders of Success Around the Office

Whether it’s evidence of previous success or motivational quotes, make your physical sales environment one where your sales reps can thrive.

In this post on ‘42 Motivational Quotes for Sales Teams – Stop the Slump and Start Selling’, we introduce you to 42 inspiration quotes for you and your team, plus a few ideas of what you can do with them, for example, starting a ‘Quote of the Day’ whiteboard in the office – or share in a Slack group if you work remotely.

Introduce Team One-On-Ones

Even if you make a point to hire team members who get along with one another, you’ll be working with people who have distinct personalities. It’s bound to happen! Likewise, each of your employees will have a different work and learning style. If you’re noticing a lapse in your sales team motivation, you might not be allowing for those differences in your office.

Consider having an honest conversation with your sales reps. You might want to ask some variation of the following questions:

At what pace do you prefer to work?

What kind of supervision suits you best while you’re working on a project?

What kind of feedback suits you best?

Do you want to receive praise in private or in public?

If something goes wrong in your group, would you prefer to discuss it in person, over email, or through another medium?

If we disagree on a topic, how would you prefer to discuss our differences?

These conversations require vulnerability and flexibility on your part. But make an effort to give your sales team agency and you’ll find that they work together more effectively. Likewise, matching up team members who have similar work styles will increase their motivation over the course of a project.

Set Up a Personalized Reward System

Make sure your sales team knows what goals they’re working towards. Once that end goal has been established, check-in and see what kind of reward will make a sales team’s work feel gratifying. This method will work best when you let your sales team choose their rewards – so long as they’re reasonable. Again, sit down with your team and suss out what kind of result they’re looking for.

Establish Frequent Goal Posts

You and your sales team should establish frequent goal posts that the sales team needs to meet. These can be daily, weekly, and monthly goals – or whatever suits you – depending on the kind of external motivation your team needs to hit those targets and make their projects a success.

How you generate motivation with these goals will depend on your team. If after talking to your sales team you find that they’re motivated by rewards, you can operate a system where success will result in a reward. But not everyone is the same – some teams will thrive on the thrill that comes with clearing off a to-do list. If this is the case, the goal posts themselves will serve as a driver. Talk with your sales team to determine how to best use these goal posts.

Get Motivated, Stay Motivated

Maintaining sales team motivation doesn’t have to be a chore. Sit down with your sales team and get to know them. Once you understand what makes them tick, you’ll be able to better maintain their motivation.

How do you motivate your sales team? Let us know in the comments below.