Tips on How to Motivate Your Sales Team!

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Tips on How to Motivate Your Sales Team!

Written by Ralph Burns

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9 Habits of the Super Succesful

Follow you passion in life and become an expert in that field. Find out what you love to do and do it well! Read books, listen to audio programs, attend seminars, get a coach, and model other experts. Do whatever it takes to expand your knowledge. The Super Successful are all experts in their field.

{mosimage}Over the past few years, as I sought success as a Sales Professional and Sales Leader, I’ve been obsessed with reading every book I could find on sales, leadership, success, and spirituality. I believed that I was placed on earth to be successful and that I deserved to achieve my goals and dreams. After reading, listening to audio programs, and observing the action of the top salespeople and leaders in my company, I found that Super Successful people, from every walk of life, share 9 habits that have contributed most to their extraordinary achievements!

1. Set Clearly Defined Goals: This is obvious and it's in every self-help book ever written. But it's amazing how many people don't have clearly defined goals that are in writing, with specific dates for completion. If you don't have goals for yourself, what are you striving for? Goals give you a sense of direction and purpose. Once you start setting goals and putting them in writing, you will have a new enthusiasm to get up and go each morning! The Super Successful always have written goals.

2. Become An Expert: Follow you passion in life and become an expert in that field. Find out what you love to do and do it well! Read books, listen to audio programs, attend seminars, get a coach, and model other experts. Do whatever it takes to expand your knowledge. The Super Successful are all experts in their field.

3. Focus On What You Want: This is the fundamental Law of Attraction. Earl Nightingale said it best, "you become what you think about.” By focusing on only what you want, you will take the action necessary for achieving your goals. But remember, the Law of Attraction is a double edged sword because we will draw into our lives our most dominant thoughts, whether they are positive or negative. The Super Successful are always talking about, thinking about, and planning for what they want.

4. Take Action: To get what you want in life you must be prepared to take action! Life rewards nothing less. Writing down goals, and thinking about what you want is pointless unless you take the actions necessary to get what you want. The Super Successful don't wait for things to happen - they make things happen.

5. Serve Others: Earl Nightingale said, in his audio program, The Strangest Secret, "the success you have in life both professionally and personally is in direct proportion to the quality of service you provide." Your quality of service to prospects and customers will result in more sales. The more sales you have, the better service you provide to your boss and organization, which will result in higher compensation. The quality of your relationships with friends and family is in direct proportion to the quality of service you provide them as a friend or loved one. Think about it, are you the type of friend, that a friend would like to have or employee a company would like to have? Both personally and professionally the Super Successful always serve others first.

{sidebar id=11}6. Fill Buckets: Tom Rath and Donald Clifton illustrated this concept perfectly in their bestselling book, How Full Is Your Bucket. By complimenting and encouraging others sincerely you will not only make a positive impact on their lives, but you will feel better too! The Super Successful are always encouraging those around them.

7. Use Positive Words: There are millions of words in spoken language. Choose your words wisely! Words create meaning, so use your words to create positive meanings for yourself, others, and situations. Fantastic, excellent, awesome, can do… The Super Successful have an optimistic vocabulary.

8. Invest In Your Body: A healthy body begets a healthy mind. When you exercise, eat healthy, and get plenty of rest you will feel better, have more confidence, think more clearly, and enthusiastically attack the day’s work. The Super Successful treat their bodies as temples.

9. Be Consistent: It's not good enough to do things right every once in a while; it has to be every day. For example, if you want to get into better shape you must exercise every day. It doesn't do you any good to kill yourself once a month! The Super Successful are consistent and practice winning habits every day.

I have seen tremendous results both personally and professionally by working these habits into my daily routine, and I confident that if you practice the 9 Habits of the Super Successful, you will see results as well!

My Picture Learn more about Joshua by viewing his profile in the SalesGravy Community

1. Do your sales managers struggle with motivating their sales teams?

It’s easier to do than you might think. Sometimes motivating a sales rep is even easier than motivating a five-year old. I copped a sneaky little tip from a behavioral modification book I was reading to learn how to discipline my two kids a bit better. So of course, after I used it on them – I tried it on my sales reps…and even though I shouldn’t have been surprised…it worked like a charm. This sales training tip is called: “Give ‘em a LOFTY reputation to live up to…(even if they’ve done nothing to deserve it)”. Terrible title…but effective technique.

Here’s how it works: A sales rep is trying desperately to figure out a relatively complex issue. So the extremely helpful sales manager really wants to help him figure it out. The manager may know the answer and see the rep struggling…wanting desperately to tell them exactly what to do. The real “pro” sales managers don’t do it though. Instead of actually doing the work for them and telling them what to do, the excellent sales manager says this instead: “You know, (name) you’re the expert here, I KNOW you can figure this out on your own”…she then walks away. Yes, walks away.

Let the rep figure it out. That’ right, let them figure it out. Your sales managers will be shocked at what will happen without them being there. Now, of course, they’ll need to follow up with the salesperson the next day or within a period of time that they feel is appropriate to make sure it was done. The point is this: the sales manager is training reps to use their own brain…not THE SALES MANAGER’S brain. Here’s why this is a highly effective motivational technique: when people are empowered to control their own destiny, they are far more motivated to control that destiny. A sales manager cannot be around his reps every second of every day, micro managing their salespeople…or worse yet, baby-sitting them. The sales rep has got to learn to do it on their own!

When a sales manager does this, it empowers the salesperson…and motivates them BIG TIME. The great thing is that by using this technique the sales managers both motivates…AND lets themselves off the hook…less work for the sales manager!

2. How To Use “Confrontation” To Turn Around Sales Under-performers

Rule #1: Avoiding conflict is the key to good sales management. Or is it?
The top-performing sales manager spends the majority of his time encouraging his reps…unlike most sales managers who constantly break their reps down through criticism, criticism and more criticism. This paints a nice, rosy picture…doesn’t it? When it comes to an underperforming sales rep though – forget encouragement. The time for that has passed. The sales manager now must become the confrontationalist. Sales performance stinks – and the sales manager needs to take action now!

Rule #2: Confrontation is Good.
Pressure is good. It's what “turns coal into diamond” right? But confrontation is what most people hate. For the pro-level sales manager confrontation is their best friend. Most people hate confrontations and will do almost anything to avoid it. But this is a huge mistake. Sure, confrontations could get tense and uncomfortable from time to time, that’s a given, but it’s also one of the most effective ways of drawing out the true potential of your company’s sales people.

Think of “confrontation” as simply an opportunity to set things straight with a sales person. If you put it that way, it isn’t so bad, right?

By looking into their eyes, you could get to the source of their fears and motivation. This knowledge is the trump card in helping them change their average, or below average, ways. By confronting sales people and being honest with them, this achieves two things:

It increases the chances of getting them to perform above standards.

It makes it crystal clear to them what is expected from them in the future. Most sales people prefer sales managers who are honest and direct than someone who likes to beat around the bush.

A warning, though: Never confuse confrontation with negative criticism. They’re the exact opposite of each other! Confrontation is all about being honest and facing facts, whereas negative criticism is just mindless railing against their inadequacies. The difference is that confrontation is and always should be framed in a positive light.

3. The #1 Myth To Sales Coaching Is…

Top sales managers agree that solid sales coaching makes a huge difference between a good and a bad sales quarter. Spending time coaching your sales people is worthwhile, it’s time well-spent, and if your sales managers are spending more time poring over spreadsheets and not coaching their reps, then you need to change your priorities.

What the real top sales managers don’t agree about, however, is how to best go about doing it. It seems everyone has their own opinion of sales coaching. This difference in opinion and coaching styles has led to a number of useless tips floating around the industry – what top sales managers like to call “sales coaching myths”. Over the next couple of articles we’ll be discussing the different sales coaching myths – so your sales managers can avoid sales coaching mistakes that have the reverse and sometimes debilitating effects. So without further ado, let’s get on with the show…

#1 Myth – Sales coaching is telling people what to do to improve their performance.
There’s some truth in this statement. The long-term goal behind sales coaching is to improve the performance of the sales people. The above statement says to “tell” your sales people what to do. For average sales managers, there’s nothing that could go wrong with that logic. But for top sales managers, they are aware that effective and efficient coaching is not so much about teaching sales people as it is about helping them to learn.

There is a big difference. The average sales manager sees it from this perspective: “I’m the manager. It’s up to me to figure out what’s wrong and then I’m gonna tell you what to do to improve your performance. Your job is to get better. My job is to tell you what you’re doing wrong.” Why is this flawed? Because this way of doing things isn’t coaching – its just dictating flaws.

Top sales managers see it differently, they rather think: “It is my job to know your strengths and weaknesses and help you find alternative ways to accomplish your – or our – goals by leveraging strengths and minimizing weaknesses.” This real sales coaching model succeeds because both the coach (the sales manager) and coach-ee (the sales person) work together to help the salesperson achieve their goals. Top sales managers don’t just tell their reps what to do, they get involved, they get engaged, they know the reps strengths and weaknesses and work within the confines of those talents to harness the best from them. Whatever they do…they don’t just dictate and tell them where they stink.

4. Sales Motivation By Observation

The best, high-performing sales managers observe their salespeople. They notice that there are certain core talents each individual has. They make mental notes of their salespeople’s strengths as well as their weaknesses. They know that they can leverage their talents as a launching point to coax even greater performance out of their salespeople. For example, lets compare two top performing salespeople, both having achieved the highest sales awards in their companies with great track records of success.

“Jane” has an incredible talent for building rapport, easily weaving pleasant conversation with the true sales pitch. Jane’s manner is easygoing and laid-back, but hides a profound inner drive. She is completely in control of the situation at all times and asks many layered questions of the prospect to uncover their needs. Instead of being “all business”, she talks about jewelry, kids and other non-business activities; easily mixing in rapport building with selling through out the process. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, taking time for some self-deprecating asides, but constantly driving towards the sale. She uses no real reference pieces, instead relies on her easy, trustworthy manner to build credibility. When it comes to the end, she doesn’t really “close” per se as much as she just assumes they will be moving on to the next step.

In contrast, “Tom” is incredibly persistent, he is a little bit awkward in his approach, but people respect him due to his aggressiveness and “never taking no” mentality. When he is in a sales call, he’s all business, no rapport building whatsoever, but asks few precisely worded questions to uncover his client’s needs. Just like his initial approach, when he hears objections, he aggressively asks the reasons behind the objections, then pulls out reference materials to overcome the objections and validate his claims. At the end of the sale, he asks “alternate close questions”, awaits responses before proceeding and aggressively pushes for the next step, and is very successful in doing so.

Would you as the sales manager for both Jane and Tom look at the above scenarios and think to yourself: “If I could just get Jane to use more reference materials and ask more hard close questions, she would really be even better!” Or, would you think: “Tom’s just too rough, I need to get him to soften up his hard edge and build more rapport. He also needs to ask more questions to uncover needs.”

In both cases, you would be falling into the most common, yet well-meaning trap that average sales managers make. You would be trying to perfect them, and I have news for you…your efforts will be futile.

The path to true sales motivation is not perfecting…rather its accepting. Accept Jane for who she is and accept Tom for who he is and don’t try to change either one…rather harness and bring out more of each one and harness that talent.

In the process you’ll motivate them both…and you’ll succeed fabulously as well.

Ralph Burns
		About the author:
		Ralph Burns is a consistently top-performing sales manager with over 20 years of sales and sales management experience. He runs The Sales Management Mastery Academy - an online step-by-step sales management training program designed to teach sales managers exactly how to extract top sales performance from their salespeople. Ralph also writes for a variety of sales and sales management blogs, including his own.