Top Sales Manager Blog

“Unconventional” Sales Management Motivation

There are so many sales management gurus who have written tomes and dissertations on exactly how to motivate salespeople, all in search of the “one thing” that does it all with minimal effort.

The real truth is that there is no ONE way to motivate your sales staff.

As a sales manager, motivating your sales force to trigger explosive sales growth is the sum of hundreds, if not thousands of decisions that you make on a daily basis.

Here’s the tricky thing: since motivating salespeople effectively does not amount to any ONE thing, you need to know how to coalesce all these actions into a cohesive, well-oiled sales management machine…and when all these parts are working precisely right, it will result in a motivated sales force who is willing to “go through walls” for both themselves and for you.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

Don’t  follow “the Golden Rule”!

“The Golden Rule” says that you should “treat others as you would like to be treated”.

It says that “being fair” and treating everyone the same is what being a great sales manager all is about. Makes total sense, right?

For example, when you were a salesperson, you were primarily motivated by money. So conventional thinking would dictate that this means that ALL your salespeople are all driven by money too, right?

This is precisely the kind of flawed thinking that the average sales manager falls into. But you are striving to be far from average…Instead, the extraordinary sales manager knows that each person is truly different, and if you treat them all the same, then peak performance is impossible to achieve.

Do you “motivate” your sales team around the very same objectives that YOU felt were important when you were a salesperson? THAT is conventional sales management…and “conventional thinking” is what you as an aspiring top sales manager are trying to avoid.

Remember:

Conventional thinking = Conventional (quota-hitting) results

Unconventional thinking = Unconventional (quota SMASHING) results

Here’s the thing…people are different (this hopefully is not a newsflash for you)…so why “motivate” your salespeople all the same?

Get To Know Your Salespeople’s Sales Motivation

What you really need to do is get to know them and realize how different each one is, then celebrate these differences! Just because you are motivated in a certain way, (and we have to assume that you did it pretty well, because you are the boss now after all), it doesn’t mean that your salespeople are motivated in the exact same ways that you are.

Each salesperson has their own individual triggers for success, things that make them uniquely different. And those motivations are far different for each sales rep.

So as a top sales manager, how do you harness each individual sales rep’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance?

There is not only one way…but I do know that it’s a different motivator or trigger for each one, and you have to find out how to get it from them. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to get.

Also, you really need to be mindful of WHO you are motivating, because that’s as, if not more, important than HOW you are motivating…you see, this “motivating” thing isn’t that easy. It’s actually the hardest thing to do as a sales manager…and it’s even harder to do REALLY well.

Here’s a big clue though…EVERYTHING you do as a sales manager, every email, every phone call, every text message, every memo must align your message with a undercurrent of motivation. In every sales management thing you do, you must be motivating and communicating for a specific reason…and that reason is to unleash superior sales results from your salespeople.

That is your ONLY (and most important) goal.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

How to Motivate Your Sales Team by “Peeling back the Onion”

“Conventional” sales management gospel says that “being fair” is what being a great sales manager all is about….

But does this really make any sense? When you were a salesperson, let’s say you were primarily motivated by money. So according to “conventional” sales management philosophy, then your salespeople are all driven by money, right?

This is precisely what the average sales manager does…and that is the reason why he is AVERAGE! But you didn’t come here today because you wanted to be average…

OK, we can admit that this “conventional” sales management thinking is deeply flawed – whereas the extraordinary sales manager knows that each salesperson is truly different – because if your treat them all the same, then peak sales performance is impossible to achieve.

This has gotta make sense to you.

If you think about it, just because you like something and hold it dear, does that mean others do the same? For your spouse’s birthday, did you present her with a 42” plasma TV because that’s what you wanted? Or did you present him with a set of 2 karat diamond earrings because that is what you wanted?

Of course not.

Just like in our ridiculous analogy above, each salesperson has their own individual desires, wants, motivations and triggers for sales success…triggers and motivations that make them uniquely different…like the differences between you and your spouse’s vision of an ideal gift…

Motivating Your Sales Force is Easy…

So how do you harness each individual’s different motivations in order to achieve peak performance? Well, the first thing you need to do is find out what actually motivates them.

How do you do it? Do you hypnotize them? Do you ask roundabout questions on what they were like when they were children? Do you ask them questions about their personal lives (are they getting married soon, are they looking to buy a house, do they want to just stay single)? Do you perform psychoanalysis on them and ask them about their deepest darkest secrets, their father and their mother, uncovering Oedipus complexes and “mommy never loved me” scenarios? Do you call their past bosses and interview them?

No, no no…you don’t need to do any of that.

What you need to do is incredibly simple…you just simply ask your salespeople what motivates them.

I am truly amazed at how many of my sales management co-workers have no idea what motivates their salespeople. In fact, just the other day a colleague of mine was telling me about a problem sales rep of hers and how he “doesn’t do this, he doesn’t do that…”

So I asked her, “What motivates him?”

She stammered and stuttered and clearly made up something on the spot like “money, uh, I think”.

I thought, how can she possibly expect to get this rep to do anything if she has absolutely NO IDEA what makes him tick?

How many of us do this though?

We all do it. We all get so “caught up’ in all the emails and conference calls and signing off on expense reports and monitoring the administrative tasks – all the things that get in the way of actually doing the single most important thing that we need to know about our sales representatives.

The point is this: as a sales manager you need to know “what gets them out of bed in the morning”, what makes them tick, what drives them if you want to have ANY SHOT at the top sales management rankings.

Yes, you can motivate your sales reps in 3 days!

Get your copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team to Peak Performance” video and MP3 by clicking below:

Claim Your Copy of “How to Motivate Your Sales Team” by clicking here

You Just Need to Know What Questions to Ask!

If you really want to get the best from your salespeople and push them to achieve sales excellence, then you need to know what drives them – so you can then “push those buttons” at will to get them there.

It doesn’t matter how you get your information – you just have to get it. Then as soon as you get their true sales motivations, keep it in their file and refer to it at every chance you can get. Remind yourself constantly of what makes that salesperson tick.

Use that information as a daily guide to steer your conversations and interactions with them. The goal is to give them what they want, not what you think that they should want.

Let your sales people tell you what their motivational triggers are. Then simply gear your interactions to perfectly match those triggers.

The good news is that there are only ten simple questions you need to ask. And we reveal them to you in this video.

So don’t wait…get our free video and audio which reveals to you the exact questions you need to ask your sales force to uncover their sales motivations . Simply click here to get your audio, video and special report on how to uncover the true sales motivations of your salespeople  so that motivating your sales team will be an absolute piece of cake.

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Filed under: Motivation by ralphburns