The culture of a sales force has changed over time. The old-fashioned way that sales managers incentivized their sales team was by providing additional commissions or bonuses. These work in some cases, but not necessarily across the board. Monetary incentives don’t motivate all sales people the same way. The real question is, how do I motivate my team to strive for more? Below are a few examples of how to motivate and incentivize your sales force and some situations in which they won’t work.
Money: This may be a shock to some sales managers, but not everyone is motivated by money. There has been a shift over the years towards people becoming more intrinsically-motivated. If you have offered additional compensation to achieve a certain result and the behavior didn’t change, it’s pretty easy to tell that your sales people are not motivated by a bigger paycheck.
Recognition: This is one of the main reasons why good people leave an organization. If your people don’t feel appreciated – especially strong performers, the cash cows of the company – they’re unlikely to stay. Even with the upward trend of intrinsically-motivated sales reps, if they don’t see an upward path of mastery or milestones in compensation (because money may not be the motivator, but it’s still important) you could quickly lose them.
Tracking boards: Personality plays a huge role here. Many companies are disappointed after they implement a tracking board at their office and behavior doesn’t change. Some sales reps are not driven by having their name at the top of the board, instead they view this as egotistical. Because of that, behavior does not change. With an extremely outwardly competitive group, though, this method works well.
Contests: The challenge with contests over the years has been the reward associated with it. I’ve witnessed companies trying to give away TVs as an incentive when 95% of their salesforce has 70 inch TVs at home already. I’ve seen companies that try to motivate selling with trips to Las Vegas, when a majority of their group doesn’t appreciate that environment. If you want to use contests, make sure they’re suited to your organization.
And really, that applies to all four of these options – make sure any incentive system you implement fits your sales force and your culture. The bottom line is, incentives should help shape behavior. Do you really know what motivates your people? If not, you may find yourself frustrated at the end of the year.
