Motivating Your Sales Team is All About the Basics.
Motivating a sales team isn't always is easy as it should be and when it isn't it could be a problem with mindset
“What’s the best way to motivate my sales team?” is one of the more common questions I am asked, and the answer may not be what you expect.
If you work in sales, then you need to meet your targets. The pressure to achieve is a part of the job, and clearly, sales teams must hit their numbers because it is likely to be the main metric for success.
For their managers, finding a way to motivate their sales team to achieve is an obvious approach. It’s a good way of helping them to hit and exceed their targets.
It’s no surprise that incentives or rewards are often the first tool managers reach for when it comes to motivating salespeople. I quite often get called in to help because that strategy is just not working. In some cases, it can even have the opposite effect and demotivate the team. Yet, in some teams, the same strategies mean sales are rolling through the door, and the incentives are producing exactly the motivated sales focused approach their managers wanted.
Clearly something is wrong somewhere, but what?
Usually, when teams are not responding to motivation strategies, it’s more about the wrong mindset than the wrong incentives.
Mindset first, motivation follows
As we all know, mindset matters. What we sometimes forget is that salespeople respond to factors like job satisfaction and the workplace culture as much as any other employee. They also perform a role that can require a very high level of engagement and motivation. In the pressure to generate revenue though, it’s easy to overlook the basics that make for a happy and engaged employee. If the basics aren’t there, motivation goes out of the window.
Picture a scenario where your salespeople are offered a great reward for hitting targets. If the mindset is wrong, they will see it as less valuable. Instead of being an incentive, it becomes just more stress. Another unreachable standard. The reward quickly becomes even more pressure to perform rather than an incentive. It quickly goes from positive motivation to just another opportunity to fail.
So, before you concentrate on promotions and incentives, it may well be worth looking at the basics.
Salary
It might sound obvious, but a competitive and reliable salary is very important to your team right now. Times are hard, and that means more stress about paying the bills and putting bread on the table. Unfortunately, the theory that offering more incentives helps by creating the opportunity to earn more isn’t always valid. The problem is that a good basic salary provides a safety net that big bonuses simply don’t.
When your salespeople are less stressed about financial security, they will want that security to continue by performing consistently well. If they find themselves living from incentive to incentive, it breeds resentment and financial worries. Eventually, they will probably leave for something more secure.
Keeping the balance between a good basic and enough incentives will really boost motivation.
T&Cs and work-life balance
If your terms and conditions are fair and balanced so that your salespeople can achieve within them, it will pay off as a positive mindset. Salespeople often voluntarily go above and beyond because wanting to achieve is part of who they are. People who work in sales love to succeed. However, if going above and beyond becomes the only way to succeed, you have a problem. The mindset of ‘I want to succeed by working hard’ will soon become a more negative one of ‘the only way I can succeed is by overworking’ if they consistently need to do more and more. As soon as that happens, an otherwise competent sales team will become demotivated, and even your high flyers will likely move on to a job where they feel more appreciated and less pressured.
Clear, achievable commissions really help
Salespeople expect commission structures, and they are a default setting for any salary offer. However, I have seen some commission structures that would baffle a maths genius. A complex commission structure just breeds confusion and dissatisfaction. Ensure your commission structures are transparent, easy to understand, and, above all else, realistic and achievable. If your team don’t understand the commission structure and/or the targets are not achievable, how can they motivate themselves with personal goals?
Great sales teams appear when their clear and achievable commissions increase the confidence that drives consistent good performance.
Company culture, management and respect
One of the most demotivating factors for a salesperson is the feeling that they are simply there as a revenue generator and have no other value. I have heard that complaint so many times over the years from demotivated teams. I have a lot of experience in motivating teams, and this attitude is one of the hardest to change once it becomes embedded.
Respect, transparency, and collaboration significantly influence employee mindset and performance. If you create a culture where salespeople feel valued, respected, and integral to the company's success, they will respond with loyalty and engagement with the business goals.
Engage with the team
Regularly check in with your team, ask for feedback, and most importantly, act on it when it is affecting their mindset. Demonstrating that you genuinely value their input will make your team feel heard, respected, and more motivated to succeed.
Putting aside the main theme of mindset for a moment, I find it strange that sometimes sales teams' voices are not listened to. From a purely commercial point of view, your sales team’s voices matter. They are out there dealing with your customers. They know more and see more than anyone else when it comes to the marketplace.
I believe it is vital that managers engage with their salespeople effectively. A belief that managers don’t understand their job is consistently cited as one of the main reasons why employees move on to new roles. Management teams should have genuine empathy for the pressures of the sales role and a clear understanding of the sales process.
Development, advancement and training
Investing in training and professional development shows that you value your sales team and are invested in their long-term career progression. Regular training helps your team stay sharp, confident, ready to face market changes, and capable of adapting to new sales challenges.
I suggest you also involve the team in the ‘whys and whats’ of their training. For example, if you have identified a problem with closing, discuss it with them and then perhaps arrange specialist training. If sales are falling, ask the team to help identify the problem. Is it down to something as simple as a lack of confidence in telesales, maybe?
When the team feels that they are helping to build their own training programme, they will not only start setting their own goals, but they will also engage with and respond better to the training they receive. The result is a positive, growth-focused mindset, which will result in better sales.
No shame, no blame and more engagement
Finally, I cannot stress enough the need to create an environment that avoids a blame culture. Bad months happen, targets get missed, mistakes are made, and they are all part of life. If the pressure to succeed creates a blame culture or, worse still, an environment where the pressure to excel is so high that ‘good’ ends up being seen as another word for average, it will soon turn toxic.
I am not saying that you should not be expecting excellence, or that you shouldn’t challenge bad performance, of course you should, but you cannot expect a positive mindset if people feel blamed and shamed. Engaged salespeople who feel supported rather than scrutinised will perform better in the long run. In fact, when a response to something like a bad sales month is focused correctly, it can even be turned into a positive developmental experience.
Yes, it needs to be clear that underperforming cannot continue, but nobody responds well to shaming or blaming.
Motivation to achieve is not just about incentives
Motivation is easier to get from a team that wants to succeed. By putting these basics in place, you will help your salespeople head towards a mindset of genuine engagement, satisfaction, and a shared vision of success. Those incentives that failed before will now likely motivate the team, not only because of the rewards they offer, but because they want to succeed anyway.
If you get the mindset right, the motivation will follow.
Call me or email me if you are having a problem with your sales team motivation, and let’s see how I can help.
