What Really Motivates Sales People?

Being in a leadership position on your sales team can be one of the biggest challenges you will face in your professional career. You will not only need to know how to find sales success and manage a team, but you will need to be able to find a way to motivate your members as well. Proper motivation is essential when it comes to finding success in the sales industry. By discovering what motivates sales professionals to do their best and reach their goals, you will be able to help your company generate more income, bring in new clients and establish a better reputation within your market. However, many beg the question; what really motivates sales people? The answer may be more simple than you assume.

Figuring out the motivational approaches you need to use with your team members is a completely unique challenge in and of itself. You may find that you have hired what appears to be an outstanding sales professionals on paper, only to discover that they crumble under pressure. This likely means that you are using the wrong motivational approach to inspire them towards success. You may have to try different approaches in order to motivate your team towards the success you are looking for, but first you will need to focus on ‘what’ of what will motivate your team instead of the ‘how’ and in sales that ‘what’ is usually money.

It should come as no surprise that the primary motivating factor for most sales professionals is money and earning as much money as possible. This is because earning money will usually be the motivating factor of the sales team as a whole. In fact in most sales-oriented markets everyone will be working for money and to bring more money in to the company, and to earn more money for themselves. You will want to keep this key motivating factor in mind as you look to inspire your team. While you may need different approaches to motivate different people, remember that money is almost always at the root of their motivation.

There are actually a handful of things that you can do to improve the money situation within your team. While you may not always in charge of the dollars and cents when it comes to compensating your employees and you may not always be able to offer them more money in exchange for their work; you should always try to work with your finance department to make money a factor in motivating your employees, whether its through bonuses, commission cuts or any other similar reward. Always keep in mind the way in which you can incorporate earnings into your motivational factors and try to use this to your advantage as you attempt to lead your team to success.