Sales managers are always looking for novel ways to inspire their reps to surpass their potential and achieve more for themselves and the organization. While big bonuses and huge commissions do work, these incentives alone cannot keep a field salesperson motivated for long, simply because those who go out into the field to sell your products come across unique challenges that affect their performance.
From an irate customer to poor incentives to lack of sound leadership, anything can come in the way of closing and dampen the enthusiasm of a sales rep. If you’re looking to enhance the success rate of your sales team, consistent and meaningful motivation is a good place to start. To get started, use the following tips to create an inspiring work environment for your outdoor salespeople.
1. If you’re looking to inculcate certain traits in your team, start right by displaying those qualities in your own behavior. While leading by example may sound like an overused cliché, it still works, because subordinates subconsciously imbibe their leader’s behavior and mindset. So if you want to create star sellers, be a star manager that people respect and admire.
2. Invest in soft skills refresher training to enable your reps to act more human when dealing with prospects and existing customers. Sound technical know-how and strong people skills are a winning combination to create star sales reps.
3. Don’t be wary of confrontation. Use it as a tool to have tough discussions and encourage a renewed point of view. Remember that confrontation does not need to be aggressive, blaming or discouraging—it can be a calm discussion about an issue that the other person hasn’t been able to acknowledge or address on their own.
4. Create a digital content library where your reps can find quality training materials, product updates, news releases, new announcements, eBooks, videos, product manuals, sales guides and everything else they need to improve their know-how and upgrade their skills.
5. Brady Anderson from Sales Rabbit says that when reps don’t have the proper tools to keep track of leads, then those leads are likely to get lost. Invest in a good digital solution to streamline your sales process, manage leads, assign territories, map prospects and communicate with your team all through a single field sales app.
6. Provide ongoing support and training to enable reps to learn, understand and embrace new technology so that they won’t feel overwhelmed and would be encouraged to adapt to the new tools at their disposal.
7. Revisit your incentives strategy and adapt to the changing needs of sales representatives so that they feel valued, appreciated and well recognized for their work. Introduce an incentive scheme that pulls up rather than pushes down low performers. Set up perks linked to factors other than sales figures.
8. Hold regular meetings to inform your customer-facing reps of new developments in the content department so that they know what new sales and marketing materials are available to them and where they can be found.
9. Acknowledge that money is a big motivating factor for people to achieve targets. Ensure that reps are paid on time and performance bonuses are transparent and fair. If you sense that a salesperson is upset about their payouts, talk to them rather than let the issue simmer and turn into resentment toward the organization.
10. Set up a weekly meeting schedule to stay on top of what’s going on in the field. Not all managers do this, but the good ones know the importance of a focused team meetings. Weekly meetings enable a sales team to set short-term targets, discuss challenges, and share success stories—and they give managers a chance to inspire, energize and investigate.
11. Be more invested in employee engagement. Generally, employee engagement is left to the HR division, but as a leader who wants their salespeople to achieve their full potential, take steps to drive engagement for your team and for the entire sales department. Organize events and experiences to enliven the workplace, drive out boredom and eliminate inertia.
12. Hire and train pre-sales experts. This is an effective way to drive your core sales team to a higher closing rate. The job of a pre-sales rep is to assess and filter leads based on parameters such as motivation to buy, problems faced, buying power, and so forth. A sound pre-sales process enables outdoor sales reps to target strong leads and thereby it helps improve closing rates.
