Top Sales Manager Blog

My wife told me to do it.

As many of you know, I have two young boys. Not unlike some of my sales reps, they are oftentimes lacking the motivation needed to do the necessary task that will help them to achieve success.

For my boys, its doing their math homework, getting excited about school, reading on their own, doing their chores, the list goes on…

If you have kids, I’m sure you have the very same issues.

So For the last three months, my wife’s been hounding me to watch a DVD she borrowed called “The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child” by educator Richard Lavoie.

On the cover, Lavoie claims to have “proven and effective strategies for encouraging any child to learn and achieve success”.

Although it took me three months of do so, I finally watched it two nights ago.

Despite my extreme skepticism, I was totally shocked…it was unbelievable.

His research and ideas on motivation really hit home with me.

He claims that if a parent or teacher can identify a child’s motivational style – then gear their interactions with them based on those motivations – then the child can achieve consistent success.

Lavoie’s research proves that in order to really motivate the child, you need to first uncover their primary motivations…(if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, does this sound a little bit familiar?)

To motivate you need to find out if the child is:

• motivated by power?
• prestige?
• praise?
• contact with other people?
• projects?
• prizes?

Lavoie explodes some common myths about motivation and demonstrates that rewards, punishment and competition are not the effective motivational tools most people tout.

Lavoie explores each motivational style in depth,  and presents proven techniques, strategies and scripts that can be used either in the classroom or at home to break through a child’s apathy and inspire him to achieve.

Although they are not children (even though they may act that way at times), motivating your sales reps is no different.

They too have their own motivations and drives that are unique to them – and in order to motivate them effectively you need to know what actually motivates them!

If you try to motivate one of your sales reps with prizes…but they’re actually motivated by prestige…you are barking up the wrong motivational tree (so to speak).

To learn more about sales management training, click here to get your choice of free sales management training courses.

What do you think? How are motivating kids and sales reps the same or different? We’d love to know! Post a comment below.

Filed under: Motivation by ralphburns