Author: Katie Coalson

Sales teams often thrive or crash because of their leaders. Leaders provide direction to sales objectives, as well as a frame of reference for employee behavior. Meanwhile, demotivated teams can result in low employee retention. According to a survey by The Bridge Group, in their pool of respondents from SaaS companies, the reported average turnover rate of sales representatives is 34 percent.

A sales team will be as motivated as they are inspired by their leaders. Good teams can weather periods of low sales, and a team is only motivated when they have leaders who understand how and why people choose to do what they do.

Good Leaders Have Concrete Goals

Successful leaders of sales teams are good salespeople themselves. They are able to convince their subordinates of the team’s goal for the year. They are also able to motivate through stories, providing concrete examples of why reaching specific milestones will lead to success.

To successfully lead a sales team, you must also stick to the vision you set for the sales period. Harvard’s Employee Engagement Study notes that more than half of their respondents said that individuals’ understanding of business goals significantly contribute to employee engagement. Employees that can state what is expected of them also demonstrate better performance.

Differentiated Motivation for Employees

Understanding your subordinates means knowing what works for each of them. In any team, there are high performing members, core members, and ones that fall a little behind. You must use different ways of motivating these three groups.

High performers are easy to prompt to action. These are individuals who are intrinsically motivated and need very little convincing to meet a sales goal. If you want to further motivate rainmakers, you can incentivize top performance with a recognition bonus, no ceilings on commissions, more time off, or a mentorship with a manager.

The bottom 20% are also relatively easy to motivate. This does not mean that they are weak or ineffectual salespersons, it just means that they’re not motivated by the status quo. They may be spurred to action by a financial incentive like a quarterly bonus, as this study from Harvard Business School shows.

Core members, the largest population, may be the most difficult to track. One way to keep yourself aware of what this group needs is by keeping communication lines open. Demonstrate that you can be easily reached by your employees, by having one-on-one meetings, weekly check-ins, or monthly catch-ups with middle managers.

You can also create a tiered incentive program. For example, for automobile retailers, a tier-one goal might be selling two units every month. Those who meet this can be given an equivalent dollar amount on top of their commission. A tier two-goal means doubling the number of units to sell, and doubling the reward, and so on. This allows people to achieve at a level that is comfortable for them while driving up sales in your company as a whole. 

Conclusion

When making improvements to your employee motivation strategies, it’s important to consider their track record, personalities, and profile. Knowing who you lead will help you bring them to higher levels of performance at work.

One way to get the entire team on track is to have a sales training workshop that is useful for all types of experience levels. You want to make sure that your reps, from the most inexperienced to the most tenured, not only connect with the content, but adopt the skills necessary to meet your future revenue goals. The key is to partner with a sales training firm that understands recent discoveries in behavioral psychology and leverages techniques proven to help prospects see maximum value. They’ll also employ personality tests to determine the best way to communicate and motivate the team.

If you are on the lookout for more ways to create value within your team or company, get in touch with us today. We can help you through sales training, sales conversion playbooks, masterclasses and more, so let’s talk!

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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.

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.

In an increasingly digital world where businesses put a premium on virtual experiences, face-to-face interactions are still vital. From conferences and events, to 1-day seminars and user group meetings, going to events is a powerful tactic for raising awareness and driving engagement for your brand or business. 

But measuring return on investment can be pretty hard to gauge when you attend an event. It’s tricky to put metrics in place, as there’s no quantifiable output involved. It’s up to you to maximize the value of your attendance and find ways to make it grow your sales. 

Why attend conferences and events in the first place?

People buy from people. Different businesses go to events for different reasons. Some attend primarily due to learning new information and getting up-to-date with industry trends, while others use events as an opportunity to network and grow their business. Ultimately, the whole point of going to an event is to forge a personal connection with your ideal customer or client. Even meeting just a handful can already be advantageous for your business, thus making your attendance worth it. 

Costs involved in attending events

Of course, attending events requires spending money on the necessary materials and manpower. Typical expenses include the following:

• Reservation fee for your stand or booth
• Exhibition graphics
• Printed collateral like tarpaulin, flyers, brochures, and posters
• Wages for the staff manning your stand
• Miscellaneous costs like food and transportation

Ideally, you need to assemble a team to set up and operate your stand, as well as assign a couple of team members to roam around and network with other attendees. Adding up all these costs may seem daunting, but it’s worth it if you know how to maximize your stay.

How to maximize your ROI in events

Make sure you nail your message. In the brief interactions you’ll have with attendees, you only have a few minutes to deliver a message that conveys high value for your product or service. It needs to be clear, unique and memorable. Everyone on the team should be able to communicate this message effectively.

You can leverage your message with social selling and digital marketing instead of just relying on traditional sales methods. While you can still do things like hand out business cards and flyers, you can infuse modern sales tactics like search engine optimization (SEO), Facebook targeting, artificial intelligence, and other methods popular in the tech space today. You can also opt to employ location-based marketing to reach out to everyone in the vicinity and introduce your business and your offerings. 

Networking

It’s extremely important to use a CRM tool to track everyone you’ve met or engaged with so you can follow up after the event. One way to collect business cards or contact information from potential prospects and partners is to have a contest. You can have people put their cards in a jar and draw one for a reward at the end of the event. We’ve given away a collection of our favorite sales books during one of our contests. 

Networking is one of the most important aspects of these events, so it’s important to make a plan ahead of time on how to collect as many contacts as possible. 

Wrapping up

Here’s a list of the top sales conferences you should consider attending this year. 

1. AA-ISP Digital Sales World 2019
2. *Outbound 2020
3. SaaStr
4. Rainmaker
5. Sandler Sales & Leadership Summit
6. TOPO Sales Summit
7. Pulse
8. SiriusDecisions Sales Leadership Exchange
9. Unleash 2019
10. INBOUND
11. HYPERGROWTH
12. LeadsCon
13. Accelerate
14. Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference
15. The Sales Development Conference

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.

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If you need help developing a clear message that communicates value to your prospects, let’s talk.