Your team’s motivation is volatile, unlike skill sets that improve with training and experience. If you manage a sales team, you’ll notice two factors that affect their performance: their current skills and motivation levels.

Improving your team’s skill set is a relatively more manageable task. You can use specific metrics to identify problem areas. Then, conduct a simple refresher seminar or new training course to improve a specific skill set. But it’s a different story for motivation levels. 

There are external factors that affect an employee’s motivation, and each person requires a different approach to increase their drive. In this article, we’ll discuss some actionable tactics you can do to improve your team’s motivation.

1) Establish Trust

When a team member doesn’t think that you want the best for them, their distrust will negatively affect their performance and inspiration. In this scenario, the best course of action is to have an unfiltered conversation about their work problems and career goals. It is through a nurturing process that managers can establish trust with their team members. 

One key factor that managers should practice is consistency and transparency. During a heart to heart conversation, a leader should offer a safe space for members to share their honest thoughts. You can initiate this conversation by directly asking your members how they think they can build trust between you two.

2) Ask Them How They Want To Be Led

Everybody has a different character, and that means leaders need to adapt to various leadership roles dependent on the person they manage. With a plethora of leadership styles, good managers know which method to use according to the needs of the situation. If you’re having a hard time figuring out what is the best way to manage one specific member, you can directly ask them. When members see you make an effort to increase their productivity, they’re more likely to engage with you.

3) Understand their Individual and Career Goals.

Different people require different methods to refuel their motivation. When you know that a person’s goals are what drives them, you can use their goals to reignite a sense of purpose. When that happens, motivation increases in the process.

Pro Tip: Always ask if your team members are motivated. If they don’t know, give them time to self-reflect and report back to you when they’ve figured it out. When they perform an in-depth self-evaluation, they come up with profound answers that lead to motivating them.

4) Let Your Team Members Pick Their Rewards.

Salespeople know what they want since they have undergone training to get into the persona of their prospects. The training enables them to look beyond their needs and look at their inner desires. In the time you ask them for their coveted reward, they already have an answer in mind.

You can set a tangible goal in a given timeframe, then challenge them to beat it. Of course, the goal needs to be something that’s within the usual quota. Otherwise, your team members won’t feel motivated at all. The combination of a mind-stimulating challenge and a coveted reward is the perfect recipe for motivation.

Are you having trouble motivating your sales team? Get in touch with us today to teach you how to understand each member better and know actions you can do to get them back on track.

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We understand it can be difficult to know where to start when building a framework for sales conversations, so we’ve developed a Sales Conversation “Cheat Sheet” you can download HERE.