In today’s job market, a sales job is relatively easy to get as the turnover rates are extremely high. Ironically, while this plagues many sales managers, it is often their own management style that is the reason for the high turnover.
As opposed to making horrible hiring decisions, many sales managers are the masters of their own demise with their approach to motivating (or de-motivating) their subordinates. To combat this, it is important to think and grow rich with inspiration and motivation in your business and personal lives. With an endless number of books written on motivational sales techniques, it is important to remember the basics when it comes to inspiring salespeople. They include:
Product Knowledge Is Power
Educating your sales team on every important aspect of the product you offer inspires confidence and enables your team to create effective presentations. Additionally, many potential prospects will pose challenging questions and it is critical that each potential team member is prepared in advance of the presentation. Having extensive product knowledge and acting more as a sales mentor than a sales boss will help you gain the trust and confidence of your team and in turn, prospective customers.
Enthusiasm Is the Missing Piece to Your Ultimate Success
Finding success in the job market is like solving a puzzle and, in the experience of many sales mentors, the final piece is always enthusiasm. People feel more motivated when they are around highly enthusiastic people, and you can inspire people to work harder when you bring a positive attitude to the table. Having high levels of enthusiasm allows a sales professional to inspire the same feeling of excitement with a prospect they are trying to close on.
Rewarding Good Performance
Every salesperson wants to set their own personal goals and achieve them. When a goal is accomplished, they should be recognized and rewarded appropriately. Many sales organizations will have a wide variety of reward programs and contests. These could range from monetary incentives such as bonuses whenever certain sales deadlines are reached, to other incentives and perks including paid vacations. These types of rewards can motivate and inspire a sales team to work as hard as possible and achieve their sales goals.
Emphasizing Teamwork
Although individual and personal sales goals will always be important, creating a team-oriented environment is essential as well. Meeting regularly as a team to discuss how to move forward on a and sharing stories of how to be successful can be a unique way to set an organization apart from its competition. It is extremely important to have daily or weekly meetings and discuss your game plan together. Sharing ideas can be highly motivational for everyone involved.
Establishing Realistic Goals
A sales management team should always set realistic goals that they know their team can achieve. This allows the team member to have a strong sense of achievement along with striving to do even more. This approach is much better than showing your frustrations to your team and giving them impossible deadlines to reach to complete these goals.
Intimidation and anger should never be used as a method to motivate your team members. This can create a toxic work environment leading to a lack of trust and motivation.
Ultimately, it is necessary for you and your team to think and grow rich together to achieve motivation and inspiration. Without these two key factors, you and your company will falter. Completing your goals as an effective sales team is the only way to be successful!
