How To Motivate Your Rural Sales Team More Effectively Using 5 Scientifically Proven Tools

My mission is to champion life-long learning among rural sales and marketing professionals using education-based content so they and their companies can be more effective, productive and profitable and perform at a higher level.

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• "Are you sick and tired of motivating your sales team?"
• "Frustrated and over why they’re not performing at a higher level despite your best efforts?"
• "Failing to get your messages through? Feel like you're hitting your head against a wall?"

Don’t worry. The frustration and challenges you are facing are not new or exclusive to you.

Being a Sales Manager is one of the hardest jobs in any company because you are managing a team of emotional and often unpredictable humans who are responsible for paying the bills and generating the income for the rest of the company. Sales have to happen or no one gets paid.

If your sales team isn't performing, you’re not performing either and that’s when the pressure really kicks in. So it makes sense to look new ways and ideas in which you can motivate and connect with your team in order to get the best out of them.

There is a simple explanation why I see so many Sales Managers fail to connect with and motivate their sales teams and I believe it's relatively simple:

They haven’t taken the time to correctly identified what motivates each member of their teams as individuals AND they're using the wrong motivational tools.

Let's start with money:

Why Money Is The Wrong Motivator

There is a lot of research suggesting extrinsic motivators like money has an adverse effect on people’s intrinsic motivators. By incentivising sales employees with money we are unintentionally over-riding meaning.

It seems we use money to motivate than rather than meaning. But it doesn't work.

We already know emotional well-being increases with salary levels up to $US75,000 but then happiness and satisfaction plateau afterwards (Daniel Kahneman and Deaton 2007).

So if money was such a big motivator why would people over $US75,000 not be more satisfied and loyal to the companies they work for?

The fact is they aren’t.

I know plenty of sales professionals that leave for more money - and less. This Harvard Business Review study reinforces this fact:

”The authors reviewed 120 years of research to synthesise the findings from 92 quantitative studies. The combined dataset included over 15,000 individuals and 115 correlation coefficients. The results indicate that the association between salary and job satisfaction is very weak.”

The problem with money is when you offer more of it, after a while your sales team will come back and ask for more. They might ask for a raise in base or a change in the tiers of their commission structure.

It never goes away but why does this happen?

It's because their deeper, intrinsic motivators and needs aren't being met. Money becomes the substitute for meaning. It works like any good anaesthetic does before it wears off.

Using financial incentives is the easier, short-term fix. The extra cash is a band aid and it only buys companies a bit of time before their sales reps move onto the next company who repeats the same mistake: offering them more money.

And so the cycle - and upwards spiralling wage bill - goes.

Humans at a basic level want to be feel secure and safe. Abraham Maslow taught us that.

Pressurising your sales team with more monthly targets won’t get the result you need. Simon Sinek talks about the importance of leaders making their people feel safe and why leaders eat last in his 99U video.

All sales teams I know crave being valued and recognised. It’s the oxygen they breathe and status they need.

Status is a big thing. It's one of the highest human motivations along with survival and relationships, back from our cave man days. We want to know where we sit in the pack and how we rate compared to others (the billion dollar fitness and health industries will tell you this).

In order to motivate people, you need to understand what drives them at a deeper, psychological level as an individual. Only then can you tap into what truly motivates them.

Instead of money, how about more flexible work arrangements if they face a heavy commute? You could be more family friendly. I know one enlightened rural firm whose policy is “never miss a kids sports day”. Bloody brilliant. Give your team their job anniversary day off or at least their birthday so they can spend it rejuvenating with family and friends. Have pet days. The list goes on.

Because when you care, they care and you’ll see the rewards and paybacks in spades. 

When you use more creative, flexible and supportive non-monetary ideas to show how much you value your sales team you will experience higher levels of engagement and connection that will in turn convert into higher productivity and profits.

Gallup’s Global Engagement Survey Monitor has tracked employee engagement for decades across 32 continents using 15,000 respondents. In their latest 2017 poll they report the following:

• 26% of employees are ACTIVELY disengaged
• 50% of employees are NOT engaged
• ONLY 30% of the workforce are engaged
• 51% of employees are LOOKING for a job or watching for an opening

These are worrying facts for any employer who’s hoping to lift performance and sales results. It gets worse:

"Only 25% would strongly agree their performance is being managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work."

This statistic means 75% of your sales team are not currently motivated to do their best and highest work. This means you need to find a way to motivate them and motivate them fast.

So How Can You Motivate Your Sales Team To Perform Better?

Here are 5 proven steps, backed by social science and research studies, that you can take as a Sales Manager to better manage, engage and inspire your sales team:

Step 1: Identify The Right Emotional Levers

Your people are not resource units with big numbers floating above their heads. They are emotionally wired, complicated beings like all of us. They, like you, have bias, fears and anxieties which blind their judgement and world view. Your job is to show them you understand these things and demonstrate you "get" them as them.

They need to feel like they’re on your side and you've got their back. This is where professional sales training, courses and coaches kicks in. They need tools to help them perform at the next level. Asking them do this without them is like asking them to climb Everest without the right equipment.

We all know people don’t companies leave because of money. They leave because of managers. Managers must manage but they must also lead and inspire too.

How effectively you manage and motivate your sales team will dictate how successful you, they and your company are. Go deeper.

Step 2: Use The Right Questions To Understand Their Motivations

Every member of your sales team has different drivers. Each have unique needs that need to be met. Taking a one-size fits all approach won’t work. You need to make the time to sit down with each of them individually and work out what they actually want (simple question I know but you'd be surprised how few people ask it!).

Sometimes they won’t know what drives them themselves, so they'll need your help. Here are some questions I've used with sales team (thanks to a very clever book by Kevin Hogan).

These questions will help you to help them:

• what do you want?
• what will that do for you and your family?
• how will you know when you have it?
• what stops you from having this already? (this will help you and them identify drivers of disengagement, distractions and barriers)
• what resources do you have already that will help you obtain this? (increasing self awareness and confidence they already have valuable skills and competencies)
• what additional resources do you need to obtain this? (elicits their buy-in and commitment to make changes to up-skill and plug knowledge gaps)
• how are you going to get there? (puts the responsibility on them to outline the process to achieving what they want to which increases the likelihood they will commit to it - see Nudge)
• how we can we help you get there faster?

Asking these questions will allow you to have a different, more meaningful conversation with your sales team. Perhaps it’s a conversation you’ve never had with them before.

The questions act as a discussion guide that you can use in your 1:1 meetings to discover what their underlying drivers are.

You’ll be surprised with the truth, insights and answers you’ll uncover. 

Step 3: Stop Treating Symptoms And Start Treating Root Causes

Here’s an example you might be experiencing right now: your sales rep always dodges your weekly catch ups calls.

Why is this? What’s causing this behaviour? Why are they not engaging with me?

Rather than being critical, you need to be curious.

Ask questions like: “how come?”, “what else is there?”, “how can we help?”, “is there something else?”

You need to understand the real reasons why they’re not engaging.

To do this, you’ll need to dig deeper to get to the root cause. Often you’ll have to cut through the false reasons and objections - just like you do with customers.

Maybe they don't see the value in the catch up. Maybe they don't respect or like you so they are actively doing all they can to avoid you and minimise contact. Maybe they think there's a better way that they're afraid to suggest because they fear how you'll respond.

By the way - don’t do this remotely. You need to do it in person.

You’ll know once you’ve hit gold when you see them excited and aroused. Their body language will tell you but only if you pay close attention. Look for their breathing patterns, watch their pupils, skin tone, perspiration and posture. 

Step 4: To Increase Motivation You Need To Remove The Demotivators First

When your objective is to increase staff or customer engagement, you need to remove the drivers of disengagement first.

The same goes for sales.

You always reduce customer churn before you pour more water in the bucket. If you don't you end up with expensive exercise that doesn’t get you any further ahead.

• What’s the stuff you can clear for them that’s holding your sales team back?
• What distractions or interruptions are getting in the way of them being able to perform at their full potential?
• What are the things you can protect them from (eg. meetings/higher management/unnecessary administration/reporting)?

Maybe they’re spending too much time recording and reporting sales leads instead of actually selling (70% of the time sales team aren’t selling). Maybe it’s too many meetings cutting into the time they need to be out selling? Maybe it’s a lack of formal training or induction at the start? Maybe it’s a lack of mentors or on-going coaching to reinforce new learnings?

You need to identify what’s demotivating your sales team first, before you can motivate them more.

Step 5: Manage Sales Individuals, Not Sales Teams

Every sales rep is different which means a one-size fits all approach will never work.

Each member of your sales team will have different competencies and capabilities. They will have arrived to where they with you today on vastly different personal and professional journeys and experiences. They will have different learning styles too - some will be auditory, others visual or even kinesthetic. You need to identify which for who.

A blanket approach, tempting as it is because of the time and cost efficiencies, won't be as effective. You have to get inside their heads so you can tap into their true drivers and motivations.

All of us want to be treated and recognised as an individual human beings with unique qualities and attributes, not a number. We want to be recognised for our individual merits and strengths.

Don’t lose sight of what motivates them personally by blurring it into a convenient team based approach.

The 3 Intrinsically Proven Human Motivations

Daniel Pink in his Book Drive (The Surprising Truth About What Motivate Us) talks about three key intrinsic motivators:

Mastery

We all want to master something. Perhaps it’s a sport or an instrument. Our passion is what drives us. It’s also a reason why so many of us coach our children’s sports teams on Saturday mornings. There will always be a professional area of our lives we want to own and master too. Because it’s motivating to us we will dedicate more time to it.

As Andrew Carnegie said “I don’t listen to what men say, I watch what they do”. Where people spend their time will tell you what their priorities are.

Tap into what they naturally are trying to master. They might need a bit of help identifying the area they want to master. Watch them go when you do.

Autonomy

None of us likes to be micro-managed as it signals they’re not trusted to do their job. Some aren’t and for good reason. For the majority though, they want autonomy to do what they’re good at and be left alone.

Tell them what they need and let them work out how to get there. This allows them to create, own and control the process or strategy so their commitment will be far higher than if it was dictated to them.

Purpose

People, just like companies, need to have a higher purpose. They need to know what they do makes a difference. If it doesn’t it can be a massive demotivator and hurt productivity and profits.

A social study (Adam Grant, Wharton University) was conducted using a college scholarship fund contact centre. Grant divided the groups into three with the first group being exposed to the benefits of the job ("personal benefit"), the second were exposed to letters written by students who had received scholarships ("task benefit") and a third as the control being exposed to nothing at all. The result? The group that were exposed to the stories of the students who were the benefactors of the scholarships earned more than twice the number of pledges and twice the amount of donations from $1,288 to $3,130.

So What Happens If You Don't Use These 5 Motivational Steps?

If you don't use these steps, you’ll continue to waste precious time, money and energy motivating your sales team with tools and methods they don’t engage with or respond to.

They might even leave you or worse, you miss that promotion you wanted.

There’s the opportunity cost too. It pays to use the right tools and make a conscious decision to take a different approach so why don't you give it a try?

Give these 5 steps a go and let me know how you get on. If all 5 seem overwhelming for you, try one of them to start with and see what happens.

You will get a far better result trying something different as our friend Albert Einstein said:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results."

I hope these ideas useful ones you can apply straight away with your sales teams to help them and you generate better sales results and consistently higher performance.

My final advice?

?Motivation is all about moving (look up the latin definition), not money.

Good luck.

I look forward to hearing about your results on this persistent sales challenge that faces all Sales Managers and one that can be resolved when you use the right motivational tools.

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To help spread the word, please comment or share this article with your LinkedIn network. What motivations tools have we missed? What have your experiences and frustrations been when you've managed sales teams? What's worked? What didn't work?

If you want to find out more, please get in touch with us to see how we can help you motivate your sales team to higher performance using proven, tried and tested tools. We’ll guarantee our results following methodologies that are backed by decades of proven psychological and social science studies.

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