Sales teams are a key component in a company. Salespersons face significant stress on the job which leads to their motivation experiencing a diverse set of phases. For this reason, sales executives should constantly be on the lookout for new tools that motivate and drive them while performing their duties. In this post we will see how to motivate a sales team and which benefits help improve sales methods.
Motivation is the “cause for motion”; in other words, the reason why we move. Dictionaries define motivation as the “set of internal or external factors that partially determine a person’s actions.”
For a sales team and a salesperson to stay in line with company goals, most of the motivation should be internal. However, actions to boost motivation could, and should, be undertaken, and it is important for sales management to establish a method to develop and maintain that motivation in salespersons. In this regard, incorporating the best technology to make their work easier allows sales goals to be attained faster and more efficiently.
How to motivate a sales team in six steps
Regardless of a company’s size and structure, there are certain negative circumstances that are common among all sales teams: frustration, overwhelmedness, negativity or demotivation. There may be cases in which this situation escapes the company’s reach, but there are a series of resources dealing with motivating a sales team that help in maintaining motivation and cohesion in salespersons, always in relation to the commitment of accomplishing strategic goals .
The following are a few guidelines for how to motivate a sales team:
1. Set attainable and realistic goals
The objective of any company is obtaining higher profits, and in order to do that, it needs to sell more. But one should be realistic. It is common for sales teams to have goals that are usually exorbitant and unattainable.
This is demotivational, because, how can a person start a race with a positive outlook if he knows he will not reach the finish line? When setting the strategic goals for the next quarter, maintain that vision of growth and aspiration, but set realistic goals that your sales force can achieve.
2. Put in place a method to achieve them
Company sales models may improve sales team productivity, or they may conversely result in a waste of time and resources in menial matters. This frustrates your sales force, which feels misunderstood and neglected.
Your sales personnel are the ones who are in contact with the customer and know better than anyone how to deal with him. Ask them questions, listen to them, and address the main objections they receive during visits. Next, jointly define the strategy to follow with your team, as well as company goals established by the company. Lastly, recurrently review this business process to analyze whether it is optimal or it needs adjustment.
3. Provide your team with the right technological tools
Providing the sales team with the right technological tools is paramount to help them successfully undertake the sales process. In this regard, an app for salespersons that includes catalog sales and mobile CRM to automate processes and facilitate report making guarantees working with the right information at all times. As we will see below, if you are answering how to motivate a sales team, technology is the best ally.
Keep learning: How to speed up the sales cycle for complex products
4. Help and encourage personal development and training
Training is usually a major aspect that gets left behind. Salespersons need to learn more every day: new sales techniques, using new tools, being more independent, new ways to deal with customers… Learning should take place constantly, and training is a powerful driver of motivation for salespersons, since they see their personal knowledge increase and feel more useful. Furthermore, this will also affect their productivity and performance.
5. Align personal goals with those of the company
Salespersons should be aware of the value their work offers to the company, beyond the fact that a sale may imply a commission. It is important to make our sales team feel part of the company’s vision & mission, and see that corporate values are in line with their own. It is necessary to stress the value that each piece of data or sales report offers to the marketing department and management.
6. Stimulate, motivate and reward
These tips on motivating a sales team should always be present and applied to every action, because motivation should be built day after day and is an process of constant improvement.
The sales department faces a task that is difficult at times, and it needs to feel supported, understood and recognized. In order to accomplish that, a simple gesture such as a “thank you” may be decisive. It does not need to always involve huge compensations or economic incentives. Be creative, aim for individual balance and your team will be thankful.
Keep reading: Boost the commercial profitability with a sales report
Technology at the service of motivation and success
As we have already discussed, providing technological tools to our sales force is a great ally to make the team more efficient, turn its weaknesses into strengths and feel more capable and motivated to accomplish goals and excellence.
You want to know how to motivate a sales team with technology? Learn how a sales tool that include a Tablet CRM as inaCátalog can help your team be more efficient and independent, offering solutions such as:
- Deeper customer knowledge: as our sales department has a deeper knowledge of the customer and his tastes and needs, it will be able to perform a better pre-visit planning and increase its probabilities of landing a sale.
- Possibility of making onsite reports: inaCátalog offers the possibility of making onsite reports, which means the sales personnel will not have to wait to get home or the office to write visit reports. Thanks to this competitive advantage, they will save time and prevent the loss of important information along the way.
- Automation: thanks to sales process automation tools, salespersons will be able to dedicate more time to the sale and less to performing administrative work. In addition, inaCátalog works both online and offline, which means this information is automatically updated and always available to any user of the app.
- Interactivity: inaCátalog’s interactive catalogs can be tailored to any customer based on his needs, which means the visit will be more efficient, by offering each user products that fit their tastes. Furthermore, they allow sales representatives to have all stock information just a click away, providing greater independence from the central office.
- Geolocation: by using the Tablet CRM, a salesperson can be geolocated, routes can be better planned, and the location where a sale is being made can be known.
- Performance Indicators: it is important to have indicators that let us know the performance of sales processes and thereby identify areas to be improved.
If you want to know more: CRM online or offline CRM: streamline your sales force
Whether you feel your sales personnel is demotivated or you see everything works apparently well in your sales team, it is important not to know how to motivate a sales team.
To accomplish this, show them that they are important to you, establish a method and processes that are in line with their work, attainable goals, and provide them with technological tools that, like inaCátalog does, not only offers them an operational improvement, buy also more and better sales. Optimizing visits and increasing sales options are the best motivation to keep accomplishing goals.
