Sales Leadership and Motivation Best Practices
I was reminded the other day of a dilemma occurring more and more on the sales floor when it comes to motivating a salesperson to do the tasks that their role demands of them, especially with budgets not being met as speedily and sustainably as one would want. A sales manager at his wits end was no longer confident in his ability to motivate a couple of team members and asked for my thoughts. It’s a conversation that comes up constantly, because sales leadership and motivation is one of the hardest things to get right consistently.
Now when I talk about motivation, I don’t mean the rah-rah, pump your fist in the air and shout out affirmations type of motivation, rather what creates a motive for action for and within any person.
I mean, it’s an age old question – Aristotle talked about it, Frederick Herzberg addressed it in the 50’s and 60’s and Dan Pink talks about it in his current day book, ‘Drive’.
Just because it is an age old question though, doesn’t mean the age old answer of ‘the carrot and the stick’ is the only answer.
There’s a different conversation occurring in many environments and it is being taken up by those that ‘get it’. The successful strategy of up-skilling sellers over and above product and sales methodologies, and more in line with philosophies and psychology is paying huge dividends, echoing what Gallup’s workplace research has found about engagement and performance. Take the ‘soft skill’ of ‘communication’, as an example – According to the Mitchell Communications Group, a lack of this skill alone cost business $37billion in the US and UK each year! Who would think interpreting someone’s words, actions and meanings would cost $36K per employee! And communication is SO much more than ing.
And then take the introduction of social media, there is a whole new set of skills and motivation required today – connection, engagement, collaboration and the debatable writing skills salespeople need to either have, or not have. With social media budgets having doubled over the past few years, then that brings with it a whole new set of ‘social skills’ that also includes a base line of motivation – a motive for action.
Here are a few ideas to chew over as a result of my conversation with this sales manager:
Motivating a sales team is not woo-woo! It is needed for survival.
If you do not have a sales team who are motivated, that is, have a motive for the action you want them to take, then you will continue to get little action and when there is not enough action or activity of the right kind, then there are no results of the right kind.It’s a no-brainer.
Sales Leadership and Motivation Go Hand in Hand
Sales leaders are as much responsible for their sales as their salespeople.
They are responsible for the motivation and best practices of their people, the action or non action of their team as well as the results or non results of their scorecard. Get sales leadership and motivation right, and the scorecard tends to take care of itself.If you want a partner to help your leaders get this right, Bernadette McClelland’s keynote presentations and coaching are built around exactly this.
I’m Bernadette – founder of the Decision-Led Revenue™ Operating System and The Revenue Leader of Influence™, where I work with CEOs and sales leaders to build a sales team they can rely on to think, make the call, tell the truth about pipeline and own the result.
If any of this resonated – or if you’re staring at a revenue problem that feels like it should have been solved by now – I’d love a conversation.
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And if you’d rather join the discussion, you can also join me on Substack. That’s where the Revenue Leader of Influence community is starting to have these conversations in real time.
