motivation salesmanship
MOTIVATION OF SALESMAN
Selling is a tough job—tough on the ego, tough on the energy level—which explains why sales reps are often some of a company’s highest-paid employees. But even a fat salary is usually not enough to combat steep competition, finicky customers and grumpy prospects.
“If compensation were a sufficient motivator, your people would already be performing,” says sales consultant and executive coach Mark Palmer. Instead, it is critical to identify what excites your people—maybe it’s cash, certain gifts, prestige, peer recognition or job satisfaction. But there is one unifying quality of all leading sales reps: “They want to be on top, and they want to be unique,” Palmer says. “They want to win.”
However, it’s critical to find ways to ignite an entire department, not just identify your leading sellers, says management consultant Doug Johnson. “Otherwise, the top three or four people work like crazy to win, and the rest of the people who are just regular good salespeople—not superstars—figure they can’t compete so they just give up,” Johnson says. “You have to create a program that allows everyone to win at some level.”
Consider these strategies to fire up your sales force:
⇒ Make commission a driving force. To get the results you want, shake up your commission structure. If you want to push a new product, offer a higher cut for that model. Make sure staff members are encouraged to land the big fish with proportionally big payoffs. Johnson once worked for an insurance company where the receding commission structure discouraged sales reps from going after the big, tougher-to-sell policies. The midsized policies were the reps’ sweet spot, and cost the company lots of lost, big, profitable policies.
⇒ Build winning teams. Creating sales teams—in which there is an incentive for each member to support, mentor and encourage the other members—has proven valuable in many ways.
⇒ Build in peer pressure. Publicly posting sales, margins and conversion
Selling is a tough job—tough on the ego, tough on the energy level—which explains why sales reps are often some of a company’s highest-paid employees. But even a fat salary is usually not enough to combat steep competition, finicky customers and grumpy prospects.
“If compensation were a sufficient motivator, your people would already be performing,” says sales consultant and executive coach Mark Palmer. Instead, it is critical to identify what excites your people—maybe it’s cash, certain gifts, prestige, peer recognition or job satisfaction. But there is one unifying quality of all leading sales reps: “They want to be on top, and they want to be unique,” Palmer says. “They want to win.”
However, it’s critical to find ways to ignite an entire department, not just identify your leading sellers, says management consultant Doug Johnson. “Otherwise, the top three or four people work like crazy to win, and the rest of the people who are just regular good salespeople—not superstars—figure they can’t compete so they just give up,” Johnson says. “You have to create a program that allows everyone to win at some level.”
Consider these strategies to fire up your sales force:
⇒ Make commission a driving force. To get the results you want, shake up your commission structure. If you want to push a new product, offer a higher cut for that model. Make sure staff members are encouraged to land the big fish with proportionally big payoffs. Johnson once worked for an insurance company where the receding commission structure discouraged sales reps from going after the big, tougher-to-sell policies. The midsized policies were the reps’ sweet spot, and cost the company lots of lost, big, profitable policies.
⇒ Build winning teams. Creating sales teams—in which there is an incentive for each member to support, mentor and encourage the other members—has proven valuable in many ways.
⇒ Build in peer pressure. Publicly posting sales, margins and conversion