Sean Huckstep Sales teams are the lifeblood of a company, but keeping them motivated can be challenging. When sales reps fail to meet their targets, they can feel demotivated and frustrated, which can lead to decreased productivity and affect the overall success of the team.
As a manager or team leader, it’s crucial to implement effective strategies that can boost your sales team’s motivation and performance. Keeping a pulse on how things are going, what’s working—and what’s not—can be the difference between high motivation and low morale.
By investing in your sales team’s well-being and providing any resources they need, you can help ensure their success and the overall success of your company.
Here are 5 practical and actionable strategies to inspire and motivate your sales team:
How to Motivate a Sales Team
- Make sales fun and engaging with gamification
- Create a trustworthy and supportive environment
- Combine individual goals with a company mission
- Personalize sales rep recognition and be consistent
- Take a holistic approach to boost team behavior
#1 Make Sales Fun & Engaging with Gamification
Offering rewards is a powerful way to motivate professionals in any industry, including sales. Gamification is a technique that can be used to transform regular work tasks into games, which can engage and excite sales reps, leading to improved performance.
By implementing precise gamification strategies, employees can gain insight into their strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to focus their energies and efforts where it matters most. Additionally, gamification taps into the competitive nature that most successful salespeople have anyways, further fueling motivation.
To effectively track sales reps’ performance, it’s recommended to use a real-time leaderboard and social element as tools.
#2 Create a Trustworthy & Supportive Environment
Establishing trust is crucial in any relationship, whether it’s personal or professional. In the context of sales, building trust with your team is key to motivating them to perform their best.
When sales reps believe that you have their best interests at heart, they are more likely to bring their A-game to work every day. To foster a sense of trust, it’s important to engage with your team in an honest and genuine way, without any hint of deceit or evasion.
Sales professionals are typically perceptive and can easily sense if something is amiss with their company or leads, so it’s vital to maintain open communication and transparency to keep trust.
#3 Combine Individual Goals with a Company Mission
To motivate your sales team, it’s not enough to simply expect them to sell; they need a reason for the sales. To do this, start by defining and reinforcing your company’s mission and culture, and focus on why the company was started in the first place. Once you’ve established that foundation, encourage your sales reps to identify their own purpose for coming to work every day:
- Do they share your passion for your products or services?
- Are they looking for ways to advance their career?
- Perhaps they are eager to learn and grow in their role.
Whatever their individual purpose may be, work with them to find ways to integrate it with the company mission, so that everyone is aligned and working toward the same goals. This can be a powerful way to improve and maintain productivity.
#4 Personalize Sales Rep Recognition & Be Consistent
To keep your team motivated, it’s important to recognize and reward their efforts. Commission might seem like enough, but acknowledging your team’s achievements shows that you’re paying attention and can be a powerful motivator.
Take advantage of every opportunity to give recognition, whether it’s for going the extra mile, reaching a milestone, or fulfilling a personal or company goal. Consider treating the team to a nice dinner or personally recognizing individuals who performed exceptionally well in front of everyone. They might feel embarrassed at first, but they’ll be grateful for the acknowledgment.
Additionally, you can create a culture of recognition by encouraging your team members to recognize each other’s achievements and contributions, which can help to boost morale and motivation across the board.
#5 Take a Holistic Approach to Boost Team Behavior
“An article published in Industrial Marketing Management found that sales reps with differing skill levels gain more motivation and improve performance when working together versus reps of the same skill level working together.”
To improve sales rep behavior, it’s important to consider everything already mentioned, but also ensure that your team is taking care of their basic human needs. This means encouraging your reps to get enough sleep, exercise, and fresh air, and to basically just take care of themselves. What they do off the clock can have an impact on their performance, and that shouldn’t be discounted.
Forcing communication and behavior isn’t possible or recommended, but regularly talking to reps about life outside of sales and work can be a great way to foster a healthy and motivating sales team without expending too much effort. It can also have a positive impact on company culture, as your sales team will be more connected.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to motivation. Different people are motivated by different things, so it is beneficial to have a handful of activities and processes that can help grow motivation individually and across the team as a natural trait in many ways.
Ready to Motivate Your Sales Team?
Excited to put these tips to the test? Go the extra mile and learn how to incorporate modern-day sales tech and tools into your motivation efforts by scheduling a demo with SalesRabbit.
