Art
Siegel

Motivating Sales Rep Performance

In most professions, people are expected to complete the tasks they start. (Imagine a painter who completes only 10% of the houses he starts to paint!) But it is not the same in sales, where most prospects end up not buying. This high failure rate lies behind most sales-motivation issues. So understanding this is the first step in Motivating Sales Rep Performance. 

Imagine you are an airline pilot. You are carrying 100 or so passengers from Kansas City to Dallas. The schedule for this brief trip calls for you to arrive at the gate at DFW at 3:47 p.m. Because DFW is a major hub for your airline, you know that many of your passengers are counting on making a connection to another flight at Dallas. And many of those whose final destination is DFW have plans for the evening.

What do you suppose the reaction of your passengers would be if you arrived at the gate at DFW at 5:00 instead of 3:47? How about if you flew your plane halfway to Dallas, and then turned around and landed back at Kansas City? Unless you had a very good reason, how many times could you arrive late or not at all before the airline either fired you or suggested psychiatric care?

For an airline pilot, the standard is clear: Arrive on time, safely and at the right destination. And fly smoothly around as many storms as possible so not a drop of coffee is spilled on any passengers.

For most professions, whether airline pilot, auto assembly-line worker, carpet layer or magazine-article writer, the norm is to complete every task you start, and to do so within certain standards of quality. Even an attorney is expected to win at least half the time.

One major profession that has a very different standard from others is selling. Whereas almost every other professional is expected to successfully complete what they start, it is normal for salespeople to fail most of the time. Even if they are the best at what they do, just about all salespeople have many more prospects who don't close than those who do. Worse, because successful closes tend to come in waves, there are often long dry periods with few or no orders.

That's why in sales, more than any other profession, managers must pay so much attention to motivation -- sustaining positive energy throughout the sales force. In this article, we will review some of the methods you can use as a sales manager to boost morale in your salespeople and motivate each person to produce at their highest possible level.

Using Motivational Tapes, Videos And Seminars

Motivational speakers are very popular among many salespeople. These tapes generally fall into two types. Some tell you if you harness your inner strengths and apply them to the task at hand, you will surely win. Others offer a list of techniques that will help you work smarter and better.

While lots of people swear by these tapes and similar public speakers, I am not among them. In interviews with salespeople who use these tapes, I find they have a great deal of difficulty applying the ideas in the tapes to their jobs. Often the speaker is just unrealistically positive: "Do these eight things, and your whole life will change." The salesperson tries them, doesn't see the suggested huge improvement and then gives up. The other problem is that the speaker often gives examples from a particular industry, and the salesperson who sells something else cannot see how to apply these ideas.

Am I saying that motivational tapes and speakers don't have value? No, but their success depends upon how you apply them. To get the most from tapes or speakers, try this:

1. Pick a tape that makes at least one good point that you feel applies to your salespeople.
   
   
2. Ask everyone on the team to listen to it by a specific date.
   
   
3. Call a meeting and ask everyone to talk about what they learned from the tape.
   
   
4. Focus the discussion on how members of your team could use the speaker's ideas to address a situation that comes up in their everyday work.

By the way, some of the best motivational tapes are really created for something else altogether. The movie Apollo 13 is a great example. The flight and ground crews faced an impossible situation: The spacecraft was out of breathable air, had almost no battery charge left and was probably going to burn up on re-entering the Earth's atmosphere anyway. Facing all of those problems, the commander, played by Tom Hanks, and the flight chief on the ground, played by Ed Harris, never gave up.

When the movie is available on videotape, consider renting a copy to play for your staff. Then lead a discussion on how your team can respond to the adversities they face using the techniques shown in the movie. One of the best scenes for this was the problem of making a square carbon dioxide scrubber filter fit into a round hole before the crew died of carbon dioxide poisoning. Play the scene, and then ask your team to apply the same kind of ingenuity and can-do attitude to develop a solution to one of their most pressing problems in the next half hour.

Selling To Your Sales Reps As Individuals

Every salesperson worth his or her commission knows that you sell more by treating every prospect as an individual. You're going to present some of the same overall features and advantages to just about every customer, but you have to find out their individual needs before you offer your products as the ideal solution.

It's the same with sales motivation. You can use some techniques on everyone, but you also need to personalize the way you motivate each person based upon their personal needs.

Before your next review with each salesperson, write down answers to these questions for each of them:

• What does this rep like about his or her job? Why?
  
  
• What parts of the job does this rep like the least? Why?
  
  
• For each part of the job the rep doesn't like, what is the cause? Do the rep avoid it because he or she doesn't know how to do it well? Does he or she know how to do it, but just doesn't like doing it?
  
  
• What are this person's goals? What job does he or she want to be doing five years from now? How important is money as a motivator for this person? How important are prestige, helping customers, teaching others, the recognition of superiors or other factors?

To motivate each salesperson, you first need to paint this picture for yourself of all the things that motivate them. Then you are ready to explain to the salesperson how doing what you want them to do will help lead them closer to achievement of their personal goals.

Working With Bad Apples

Every sales office has at least one big mouth who is happy to harp on all the problems. This bad apple infects the entire sales team, lowering morale and degrading everyone's performance. When this person is a poor performer, the solution is often easy: They're gone. Very often, though, the person who is dragging everyone else down with a negative attitude is a strong individual performer.

Dealing with this type of person involves using this person's ego to get him or her on your side. Also, as we discussed in the preceding topic, it involves motivating the behavior you want by appealing to this person's future goals. Here's an example:

Manager: John, I asked you to meet with me today because I need your help with something.

 

Rep: Sure, what's up?

 

Manager: I noticed that the morale in the sales room is beginning to slip some, and that worries me because . . . .

 

Rep: Well, you can't blame them. Like I've been telling you, our prices are just too high, and we can't ask for the top price unless those jerks at the home office do something about the reliability problems we've been having.

 

Manager: Exactly. And I know they're working on the reliability thing and ways to reduce manufacturing costs, but we need to do something until that happens.

 

Rep: I don't see what. I mean, it's like trying to swim upstream.

 

Manager: I know. And that's why I need your help. You see, John, despite the high prices and all the problems, you've been hitting your sales targets. You're the only one who seems able to do it.

 

Rep: Well, what can I say? I told you I was the best.

 

Manager: You bet. And I don't know what the company would do without you. Here's how you can help me solve this problem. I think the guys need some good basic sales training on how to overcome the price and reliability objections. But I just don't have the time to do it. Would you be willing to help me out?

 

Rep: How?

 

Manager: I would like to begin a weekly series of sales meetings, say Friday mornings at 8:30, when we work on these problems. And I'd like you to run them for me. I thought that would be a good idea for two reasons. Besides the fact that you know this topic better than anyone, I know you also have your sights on the next sales management opening. Having you run these meetings gives me a way to help prepare you for management.

Once the manager has sold John on assuming this training role, he can begin to teach John how to move from whining about the problems to taking a more positive approach to encouraging others in the office to sell around the problems.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Art Siegel

About Art Siegel