7 New Ways to Motivate Salespeople Through 20 Old Hurdles

Sales Challenges

Trust me when I say that this is a great article, but before we get to it, I have a few post-vacation links for you.

This is important! We want you to be part of our next White Paper on Sales Force Effectiveness. Would you kindly take no more than 5 minutes to answer some questions about the sales force at your company? We won't even ask your name or email address!

Hubspot's Sales Blog published this post with some professional follow-up email templates. It's worth a look and it has one of mine...

The September issue of Top Sales World was published last week and my article about the Top Mistakes Salespeople Make on the Phone was named Top Blog Post for August.

Gerhard Gschwandtner interviewed me for SellingPower TV. You can see the 5-minute interview here.

I'll be speaking at Inbound14, September 17, and I'll be talking about How to Hire Great Inbound Sales/Marketing people. You can register here.

Finally, my article about How to Hire Salespeople That Will be Great Instead of Great Salespeople that Will Fail was posted in EcSell Institute's Coaching Library. You can hear me speak on this topic there next month.

Now for the article.

The ability to motivate salespeople is just as important as it has always been. However, there are differences today that make it more complicated than it used to be.

In the old days (pre-2008), if salespeople were motivated, then they were probably motivated by money. According to data from Objective Management Group (OMG), 54% of salespeople were money-motivated during the 1990's and first half of the 2000's. Today, the data shows that no more than 27% of salespeople are what we now call extrinsically-motivated. Even the name has changed!

But what about those who are intrinsically-motivated - those who are motivated by satisfaction, fulfillment, praise and recognition. They want to change the world. They love what they do and want to achieve mastery. That motivates them. OMG is able to differentiate between intrinsically-motivated and extrinsically-motivated salespeople, but how do you manage those who are intrinsically-motivated? How do you get them to perform when they are interested in things that go beyond a commission check?

Perhaps this will help:

In the next release of OMG's suite of Sales Candidate Assessments, Salesperson Evaluations, and Sales Force Evaluations, we will be able to show you exactly what YOU can do to motivate your existing and new salespeople. For instance, wouldn't you love to know if a salesperson:

Loves to win - or hates to lose? It's a subtle difference, but you would take a completely different approach to motivate each of these two types of salespeople.
Spends money to force performance - or performs and spends the money as a reward? Just like the first example, the difference is subtle, but your motivational approach would be different.
Responds better to being pushed by the sales manager - or prefers to push himself? If you are familiar with the scene in "Facing the Giants", you'll have a good idea of what it means to be pushed to be the best.
Performs better when closely managed - or when left alone? Some salespeople cannot function well when left to their own devices. They don't self-start or self-direct and need to be directed and/or be part of a team.
Performs better when competing against others - or when competing against her own expectations? What if the mediocre salesperson would rise to the next level if the competition and the rewards were compelling enough?
Responds better to recognition - or satisfaction after meeting and exceeding goals? For some, it doesn't get any better than hearing their name called out, receiving an award or plaque, reading about themselves on a website or being listed as the winner. Others could care less about all of that because the self-satisfaction one gets from knowing they're the best is all they need.
Is motivated by proving someone else wrong - or proving himself right? There are some salespeople who can be motivated to achieve greatness just because someone told them that they would fail at sales, that they weren't ready for this role, that they couldn't sell that big account, that they wouldn't beat out that particular competitor, or that they could never earn that much money.