MOTIVATION
duce more. The improvement expert recalls a time working with a small, 100-person software services company with only four sales reps. With a team that tiny, it’s even more critical for each salesperson to pull his or her weight; however, while the top rep on this team was making 20 deals in the first six months of the year, the bottom rep had done only one – a difference of about $1.9 million in revenue.
ACTIVITIES AND ATTITUDES One of the improvement expert’s priorities was to get the rep produc- ing, and he knew that performance issues are a result of either activities or attitude.
How to Motivate the Weaker 25 Percent of Any Sales Force
SELLING POWER EDITORS
Motivating your bottom performers can be a tricky proposition – whether you have a sales team of 1,000 people, 100 people, or a handful. Either you end up spending too much time deal- ing with the poor producers while neglecting your top tier or you ignore the bottom perform- ers completely because you figure you can get bigger returns elsewhere.
Neither scenario is optimal. And, let’s face it: No matter how great your sales team is, or how well they produce as a whole, there are always going to be stars, also-rans, and middle muddlers. According to one sales improve-
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ment expert, there is a way to raise the bar across the sales team, regard- less of performance. What motivates your “C” performers, however, may be completely different from what gets your “A” listers excited to pro-
“I look at two elements: process and people,” he says. So, when he was focused on this lower-functioning salesperson, he wanted to make sure the salesperson was doing the right things, and that he had the right mindset. He ruled out the former fairly quickly. “He was pretty much doing the right thing,” he recalls. “It wasn’t a sales process issue. He just wasn’t doing that extra 10 percent. He was not as pumped up [as the other reps]. He wasn’t going the extra mile,” says the improvement expert. “And some- times, in sales, it’s the call you make at 6:15 that gets you the deal.” Once he determined that the issue was one of motivation rather than skills, the improvement expert was then able to devise an appropriate strategy to address the rep’s lack of mojo. “It turned into a situation of carrot or stick and, in this company, the only carrot that was offered was basically money,” he says. He also recognized, however, that this rep had been offered the same compensation plan as the top rep – so money alone wasn’t enough to get him hustling. To offer that extra “something,” the improvement expert determined this rep needed a little bit of support to get motivated. “He was a new hire and he needed to know that he was going to get it, that we were there to wait for the results,” he explains.
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