How To Keep Your Sales Team Happy ?

Happy staff are hard working staff and so keeping your sales force happy is crucial to the success of your business.

Given that sales is often heavily targeted, controlled by strict KPI's and filled with a high amount of rejection it's not easy to always maintain a positive sales workforce. When you add in personal problems and office politics it becomes quite a challenge to keep a happy sales team.

So how do you keep you sales staff happy?

Having worked with many different sales teams over the years I've seen what helps keep sales staff happy against all of the negatives. I've seen what helps turn stress, struggle and frustration into hard work and more importantly, sales!

Here are my top 10 ways to keep your sales staff happy (which will help you sell more!):

1) Hire The Right Sales People

If you want happy sales staff you need to make sure you have the right people for the job. If you have people in your team that aren't right for the role, no matter how much you try they won't be happy. It's important to have a good recruitment process to make sure you find the right people for your sales team.

2) Provide Training

No matter how much experience people have, they will always need training. The industry, products and sales methods will always change and training really is invaluable. Happy sales staff need to be training and confident in 3 key areas: How to sell, Who they are selling too and What they are selling. Get those 3 areas right and you'll have a happy and successful sales force.

3) Create The Right Sales Environment

If you want to grow a certain plant, you need to make sure it's in the right soil, with the right amount of sun, the right temperature and right amount of water. The same applies for sales people, they need an environment that allows them to be successful. The sales office should have a positive and motivating vibe. That could include music, visual aids, motivating posters, plants, toys, games, bright colours etc.

4) Have A Good Pay/Bonus

If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys. If you want hard working sales people, you need to make sure they are being paid the right amount. At the same time, if you want them to sell you need to make sure they're not paid too much and so are motivated to work hard for bonus.

5) Offer Incentives

Yes you might offer a competitive salary and rewarding bonus structure, but incentives can help push your sales people to go the extra distance to achieve even more. Offer incentives for over achieving, for selling more than their target. Some businesses offer big prizes, cash, holidays, team rewards, technology etc.

6) Provide Coaching and Support

Sales people are going to make mistakes and they're going to miss and lose opportunities. If you respond to that in a negative, angry or controlling way, you won't have happy sales people. They need support, coaching and guidance. Be understanding, it happens to the best of us, what makes us successful is how we recover and move forward.

7) Provide The Right Tools For The Job

If you gave a painter some paint and a canvas, they would struggle to create art. Everyone needs the right tools to complete the job properly and effectively and sales is exactly the same. They need the ability to contact customers, the systems to record, track and monitor those conversations, the right marketing to use etc.

8) Acknowledge and Reward Success

Sales is an adrenaline fueled process and people want to feel like they've achieved something. Any and every success should be acknowledged and rewarded. Sales is all about advancement, and to keep your team motivated to push through each stage you need to encourage them.

9) Create Continuous and Consistent Motivation/Inspiration

Motivation and inspiration don't last, and like the famous quote from Zig Ziglar, "it's like a bath which is why we recommend it daily". Sales people need it on tap, every day and often several times during the day. Yes you want there to be a level of self motivation and drive, but you still need to be that fuel injection boost of motivation to keep them pushing hard.

What do you think?

What do you do to keep your sales team happy? What works well for you? Please write your thoughts and experiences in the comments section.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you enjoyed it please do click LIKE and click SHARE to share it with your network. Thank you!