Your sales team’s success depends largely on your motivational techniques and how you keep them going. You need to nurture and reinforce the positives in their lives, both professionally and personally. All successes – personal and professional – are intertwined. Someone who’s having personal problems won’t be motivated to push for sales, or worse yet, will come off as desperate.So it’s in your best interest to keep your sales team happy and motivated.
Let’s look to some techniques. The most common techniques are built around effective communications. Even the simple things like reinforcing a list of accomplishments done at the end of the day can build up morale and keep people motivated. More morale builders are built on repetition – remind them of the things you believe in your teammates, focus on the positive goals.
Observation is an important part of this process. You should be aware of your team members accomplishments and successes – you should know about them without being told, and if you want to win the “boss of the year” award, make sure that you bring them up early, regularly and often. People will work harder for a pat on the back and an earned “good job” than they will to avoid a chewing out. Likewise – sales is a job about taking calculated risks. Make sure that you reward the risk takers when they succeed, and remind the risk takers who fail that all they’ve really done is learned something. In the words of Warren Buffett, after seeing a manager inadvertently lose two billion dollars in assets over a quarter, “I just paid two billion for him to learn a lesson. After the after-action report, it was apparent that he had learned something, and that I might as well be the one who benefits from it – I paid for the experience, after all
Your sales agents start with an inborn personality that helps them with this – while it can be trained up, it can’t be instilled in people who don’t have it. Even so, it’s in your best interest to nurture your sales team with training and educational offerings. Make them feel part of the team, and make sure they know you’re investing in their personal growth and professional growth.
David Steel is one of the nation’s leading experts on the topic of Sales Motivation. He’s a popular and widely recognized author and motivational speaker who works with businesses and individuals as a sales management consultant, offering insights into hiring, compensation, goals and strategies, and teaching the use of sales management skills to build and maintain highly aggressive sales teams.
While my core focus is emerging companies in new industries, this book was a great read on two fronts.
Delivery: 10
In my opinion Jill Konrath’s Selling to Big Companies is one of the easiest reads in the history of sales guides. Jill’s style is easy and free flowing, and only once or twice, compared to dozens of times in most instructional books, did I have to stop for the sake of verbosity. The main reason I put this book down, was to digest the great insight and new twist on selling ideas that she brought to the table.
Her format of small focused chapters that end with a key point section to “cliff” note each set of ideas is great. It keeps you on track as you end each chapter. It will also prove beneficial to all of those out there that use this manual as a reference point, which I recommend for those trying to break into the large corporations.
Concept: 10
While “Selling to Big Companies” is not full of unique and original ideas, it takes a refreshing look at what the modern masters have been preaching for the last decade. What I like most about this book is that Jill Konrath takes all of the great messages out there and pulls them together into one cohesive tome. She also forces you to look at newer technologies, and admittedly struggled with this herself. It is true that without e-mail tools and Web 2.0 thinking, it will become harder and harder to crack into the fast moving corporate world.
She also throws her own thoughts out there and challenges some of the “expert” thinking. While I agree with many, I struggle with a couple. One is that she says you should never tell someone you are grateful or honored to talk with them. She makes such a compelling case, I am going to try and change this habit, just to see if she is write. The true sign of a great salesperson, Jill has me testing the benefit of her proposal.
Message: 10
I am going to have to review a really bad sales book to make up for my first perfect score, but Jill deserves it. This was a light read at 230 pages, but so packed with content I would find myself rethinking my own strategies as I finished each chapter. That is the sign of a brilliant educator is to effortlessly force the student to apply what they learned by changing their perception.
The clarity of her simple message is fantastic. What is even more compelling is that she admits her flaws, thus making you appreciate her as a fellow salesperson. It humanizes her experience and validates the insight. She feels like a colleague not a writer preaching the “way”.
Overall score: 10
Like I said before, the first perfect score. The only issue I see is that Jill will be hard pressed to write a follow up book. If she out does this one, I will be forced to steal from “Spinal Tap” and buy a new dial with an “11″. I do not have any idea what that will sound like, but I am rooting for the chance to find out.
Really it’s mainly Brad, but this is the coolest thing I do of late and I am going to share. Before I dive into my Web 2.0 used for Sales 2.0 style, let me define some things for those less aware:
Sandy: An automated virtual assistant that will do anything related to your schedule including set calendar events, todos, and e-mail others on your behalf. All you have to do is e-mail her in a style she understands….FOR FREE
Twitter: A service that lets you broadcast small text like messages to people following you. They can come to your client, your e-mail, or your text tool…FOR FREE
Twhirl and Twitterific: Desktop tools for using Twitter….FREE
Jott: A tool that allows you to leave a message and have it converted to text for e-mail or text message. You can send you yourself or others…FOR FREE
How to Maximize your Sandy usage:
How I use Sandy today, and I guarantee there is more to come:
As more people use Sandy, I will probably start sending her messages to forward, it has only been 45 days and already she has become part of my team. She may get a raise in only 90 days.
How many prospective customer companies do you think a field salesperson should be able to proactively manage at any given time?
How about an inside (phone-based) salesperson?
Thanks in advance,
Mac McIntosh of http://sales-leads-experts.com
Well Mac, I am honored you would come to me for an answer to this question. It is not a question that has a simple single answer. Also, there is no magic answer, for there are many factors related to how you would pass leads to a field or inside rep. Let’s look at some of those barometers:
That said there is an easy way to estimate the effectiveness of a lead cultivation and passing program. Apart from what you are doing today, run the current scenario independently. Take two reps, one being of a high caliber and one being in the middle of your stack rank. Give them each 50 qualified leads that are truly sales ready. Track their effectiveness while adding five leads a week until you notice they are running out of activity or their effectiveness starts to decline. If it is the former, add 2-3 more leads a week until you see the opposite. If it is the latter, deduct 2-3 a week until you find a balance. If the number drops below 50, or rises about 100, do not fret. The goal here is maximizing the effectiveness of a sales representative and getting every cultivated lead through the pipeline properly.
Mac, I hope I have satisfied your curiosity and I look forward to a comment or two.