Being a startup business, your sales team may be one of the most important teams that you develop. They are the ones who have the capability to turn your vision into reality. Hence, keeping your sales staff motivated is critical to the success of your company. They nurture the overall reputation and growth of the business and create the foundation of your organization by building long-term relationships with your customers. Uninspired and dull sales professionals gradually get abraded at that foundation and it becomes difficult for them to achieve their goals and enter new markets.
A fat salary is not enough to keep your sales reps on high energy levels. You must analyze and put in efforts to ensure that your sales team is equipped for success. There are many ways to motivate your sales staff and make them climb up the ladder. I have highlighted 4 of the most powerful ones below:
Set Goals that Encourage the Right Behaviours
Create a strong company culture and keep the goals challenging but attainable. This will help you in incentivizing positive behaviors among your sales team. Break your bigger goals into a set of realistic micro goals so that your sales staff has a sense of achievement and doesn’t feel demoralized.
You can also motivate them by conducting team-wide sales contests. This will enable sales reps to get motivated either by quota achievement, qualitative improvements or money. Break the contests into daily, weekly and monthly targets.
Daily- This would be a very short-term goal such as making 30 prospect calls or setting at least 3 appointments. The reward could be lightweight and fun. Maybe you can offer them a breakfast treat or their favorite pen.
Weekly- Your weekly goals should be more tangible with defined business impact. Set relevant metrics for improvement and measure the sales reps accordingly. The reward could be slightly better than the previous one- a movie ticket with a coupon for free popcorn and candy.
Monthly– These goals should include a higher-value reward and should be given to extraordinary performers. Based on sales conversions, you can offer bonus or cash prizes or some physical items such as speakers or mobile phones.
Stimulate Healthy Competition within your Sales Team
Nurture the competitive energy amongst your sales team and make work more fun for them. Install leaderboards and create smaller fun competitions for them- for example, the one who delivers the best performing email subject line in the week will win a small prize.
Gamification is gaining a lot of popularity these days as it makes work more fun and rewarding for sales reps. Running contests via gamification apps allow sales managers to enhance healthy competition among the team. Employees encourage each other and feel more united. When executed right, it leads to sustainable productivity improvements and increased sales.
Invest in Personal Growth of your Sales Reps
It is crucial for great sales professionals to continuously improve and become better. Give them consistently detailed feedbacks to help them upgrade. High-quality coaching at regular intervals is a powerful way of enhancing their sales qualities. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of every team member and work on them for higher levels of success. Share new industry insights and hold team talks around hot topics so as to enable them to grow both personally and professionally.
Let them Define their Role
Make them feel more valued by allowing them to define their own roles. This will give them a sense of belongingness and make a huge difference in their motivation levels. Rather than assigning a list of responsibilities, provide them with ownership over their role. Conduct regular meetings with each one of your sales team members and collectively work on improving their position in the team. If someone needs more responsibility or if one feels that he could be more successful if you make certain adjustments in their roles, do not hesitate to make those necessary changes. Involvement in defining their roles will not only boost their morale bust also enhance their performance to a great extent.
