How to Motivate Your Sales Team: 8 Proven Strategies

A sales team represents one of the most important pieces of a business organization. Accordingly, motivating a sales team can be quite difficult. There are many external factors that affect motivation. One such factor can be the repetitive “NO” that they receive from prospects.

Every person, salespeople included, requires different incentives and motivational tactics. Use the below tactics to boost the motivation of your salespeople:

1. Set Clear Goals

Creating clear goals that are challenging yet attainable will help your team know what they’re working for and what constitutes success. Once goals are in place all activities should naturally align. Goals should not be vague, but directive and short term. Example: Bring 10 new clients within two months. Working with individual salespersons will help you find out what goals will work best for them. Set monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals separately so that they will be on the same path. I highly suggest you stick to a limited number of goals, otherwise things can be pretty overwhelming.

2. Create a Comfortable and Productive Work Environment

The office atmosphere affects your team’s performance. Creating a good work environment involves the whole organization, not just your team. Start with your interviews. Ask questions that assess how well people work with others. Encourage and reward teamwork and keep getting feedback from your sales team to know their attitudes and feelings towards the workplace, so that you can improve the work environment with their feedback.

3. Competitions

Many salespeople are naturally competitive so tapping into that can be great for motivation. Word of warning though – competitions can be alienating if you feel there is no chance to win. Make sure to level the playing field, pitting employees against their equals or against relevant benchmarks. Also, competitions should be short and targeted to stay relevant.

4. Give and Request Feedback

An open culture of feedback helps team members know they are appreciated and have someplace to turn for coaching and support. Don’t wait till your one to one meeting to tell team members what you think or ask them how they want to be managed. Maintain an open channel of feedback so that your feedback remains relevant and actionable.

5. Play Games

Gamification is great for motivating sales teams. Gamification systems help you set up competitions, provide context for feedback and help you celebrate success. These tools let you control your team’s activities without having them feel micromanaged. Adding game mechanics to the work environment improves teamwork and brings a productive work environment.

6. Build Trust with the People on Your Team

Trust is the foundation of motivation.  If your team doesn’t trust you, it’ll be difficult for them to feel inspired and driven by their work. You should have an open and honest conversation about their challenges and goals to motivate a salesperson. This simply won’t happen if the sales person is not trusting you.

Transparency will help you to build your salespeople’s trust. Help your team member instead of scolding them. Try to help solve their problems.

7. Keep Your Team Moving Forward with their Careers

Work has to lead somewhere. Salespeople perform well when they have a path or direction to look forward to. A clear and attainable career development plan is a way to establish this. This not only helps in employee recruitment and retention but is also a reliable motivator.

Develop a challenging and rewarding path for your team members – this will help them to keep moving forward with their careers and also helps in achieving sales goals.

8. Reward and Recognize the Sales Team Publicly

Public display of appreciation and rewarding can be more motivating than salary. Celebrate sales people successes in a way that the whole company can recognize them.