How To Motivate Your Sales Force

How To Motivate Your Sales Force

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Selling can be a very satisfying, but difficult career that someone can have. The job can be hard, tiring and very often thankless. Salespeople therefore very often feel insecure, rejection and negative about life as a whole. There are main problems that many salespeople suffer from are:

1. Poor attitude 2. Fear of customer rejection 3. Laziness or boredom due to lack of interest

In order for you, the sales manager, to successfully motivate your staff, you should first of all recognize the symptoms of those problems and then apply a cure.

Poor attitude

If the salesperson's attitude to the job is wrong, then effort will be lacking. Salespeople can understand that doctors need to practice, that barristers have to do preparation for a case and that a teacher has to do a lot of preparation their classes at schools - but somehow they see their job as different and not worth the professional effort and standards that they would insist upon in others working for them in the community.

Sales roles need self-belief. Most salespeople are aware of this. Often they have strong personal ego. Unfortunately, if they have not been properly directed, this ego may be their downfall.

Fear of customer rejection

Everyone has a need to be accepted by others but even the most successful salesperson faces daily rejection, which is hard to take day in, day out - year in, year out. To avoid psychological hurt, many salespeople find it easier to quit selling or to consciously or subconsciously develop bad habits that distance them from the pain.

These manifest themselves in a number of ways:

- An inability to close the order.

- Not looking for new business.

- Over-sympathizing with the buyer, often against the interest of the company represented.

It is a sad psychological fact that rejection causes us to think negatively about ourselves rather than positively.

Laziness/Boredom

A common sales problem is the tendency for experienced salespeople to shortcut their planning and presentations, very often without realizing that they are doing so. The reason may well be that they are bored with the presentation that they are doing or they may feel that they are in some kind of a rut. All point to a need for training.

Frequently there is an outright rejection of the need for sales training. Some see training as potentially highlighting that they are not as good as they think and can potentially damage their ego. This problem may be compounded by bad training and by managers who have used training to boost their own ego.

A proper attitude to sales training can be developed over a period of time and there is considerable job satisfaction to be gained from working within a company where this is the case. The correct attitude towards training is that one is good at one's job and therefore worth developing , not one is bad at selling and therefore requires remedial training, training helps success - one learns to better what one already does well.

Tips for motivating the sales force:

1. The most effective first step to solving an attitude problem might be to hold a counsel interview.

2. You can help to motivate your salespeople out of depression by boosting their confidence. One of the most important things to a salesperson is his/her self-esteem. Help to rebuild this by giving suitable praise for a job well done, and tackling problems diplomatically rather than reacting aggressively.

3. If a member of your staff does not wish to receive sales training, point out that the company would not be willing to invest more money in them if they were not already good at their job.

About the Author:
Richard Stone (richard.stone@spearhead-training.co.uk) is a Director for Spearhead Training Limited that offers management and sales training programmes to improve business performance. You can see more ways to motivate a sales force at =>
http://www.spearhead-training.co.uk/FreeTrainingMaterials/articles-section.php



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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