Last message of the week!

One of the biggest myths surrounding frontline sales professionals is what motivates them and drives them to succeed.

Ask a non-sales person, and I promise you that they will say it is all about financial reward – wrong! Totally, totally erroneous.

The reality is that most salespeople want to grow and show what they can do. They want to be able to say at the end of the work experience not that they vegetated, but that they are more than they were (know more, can do more and, therefore, are more). The only way to measure this is by what they have done in that experience.

They are therefore asking the following questions:

• Do I achieve? Am I contributing?

• Am I given increased responsibility?

• Am I advancing and growing?

• Is what I do meaningful and significant? Is its interesting?

• Is my ability recognized?

These are ‘The Motivators’. They are the variables that managers can use to motivate people, because people should want to do things – that’s motivation.

So if we want to talk about motivated performance, we have got to talk about:

• Achievement

• Recognition for achievement

• Meaningful and interesting work

• Increased responsibility

• Growth and development

In other words, the quality of the human experience at work.

But I can be even more specific than that. I can share with you the eight key motivating – de-motivating – factors that we measure when profiling salespeople, they are ….

• Relationship with manager
• Responsibility
• Promotion
• Acceptance by peer group
• Job content
• Financial motives
• Recognition and praise
• Achievement

And in 80% of cases, achievement comes out on top – not financial motives

Understanding what motivates each member of a sales team is absolutely vital for any sales manager wishing to maintain that team at optimum performance levels, because within my formula:

Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success, attitude is fundamental to any achievement, because individuals with the right attitude are far more likely to embrace the essential skills, recognize the control that process brings and have the desire to continually expand their knowledge.

Where does Sales 2.0 fit into all of this? Arguably, as well as making us more efficient, via increased use of more sophisticated process tools, we are all, or should be, becoming more customer focused – and I will elaborate on this further next week.

Being more efficient should naturally work wonders for our motivation levels, because we achieve more and achievement is what it is all about!

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