Parallelism (Part 3): Sales Force Motivation & Day to Day Life !

“I need to think over it”

In sales, one generally don’t come across this line of thought a lot. After all Sales is a “doing” role and not a “thinking” role, and as far as I have learnt, Intellectual masturbation leads to nowhere in Sales.

It was post week-closing, time would be around 11:45 pm. I had just reported the numbers and don’t know why was expecting a “Good Job” message. After all devil lies in the details and my boss was completely unaware that the week was a tough one in my region; rains have still not come; mines have still not opened; trade was still carrying the stock we pumped at quarter end to boost our ego and numbers; and there was no miracle/magic happening. And even if he was aware, are not these part and parcel of sales life ?

At this point two thoughts invariably stuck me:

1. If me, just after 3 years of sales life was looking for praise to motivate myself; what about my 5 Area Sales Manager (ASM) with a combined sales work-ex of over 60 years, 10 Key Account Executive with a combined sales work-ex of 100 years, and never to mention 40 odd 3rd Party resources with a combined sales work-ex of 500 years plus ? How can i keep them excited week on week for the same mundane work ? How can i add a difference to their work experience and environment ?
2. Whenever people get confused, they run to temple, they run to their bosses; but whenever i get confused in sales, I start searching for answers in notes of Prof. P.Venugopalan (Pingu). I have a strong feel that it has the solution for everything in “Sales and Distribution”. After all i adored him as a professor in XLRI. His notes never disappoint me, so was the case this time, in bold a line was written:

“Praise once given cannot be taken back, use it carefully in Sales”

Now praise was definitely out of scope. So what’s the way forward, what’s the solution ?

This article is regarding the 3 small yet relevant steps one must take to ensure the team remain motivated and in turn momentum is maintained.

Pointer 1: Maintain Excitement

Working in Kitchen and Sales both are quite similar. What you cook today becomes stale tomorrow and hence useless & what you sell today will not help you meet targets tomorrow. Also, in kitchen every day you are cooking, literally every day 3 times and in sales every week you are running after targets.

So, taking cue from the way my mom works in kitchen, i was able to come up with a beautiful learning on how to maintain excitement while doing repetitive, mundane work.

In Kitchen she never cooks food, she is either cooking spicy vegetable, dessert, idli, dosa, roasted chicken etc or she is cooking to make me happy, to make dad’s mood, to welcome us home etc. and while doing all these she tries to achieve perfection, every time.

In short, she changes goal every time she is in the kitchen, both in terms of variety and in perfection levels. This ensures her excitement in kitchen always remains on the higher side.

Similarly in Sales, we need to keep changing the goal for the team; we need to target different things, week on week, one thing at a time. This will break the repetitive, mundane work of chasing just a number and people will have something new to achieve every week.

Pointer 2: Social Competition

Extravagant Marriage Ceremony, Candid photo shoot, Over priced drinks in pub: We all know they are wrong, they make no sense. You don’t even know 90% of people coming to marriage, 95% people liking your candid pics on Social media do not even think about you for 3 secs and i have never seen anyone getting benefited from purchasing over priced drinks in pub; but most of the sensible, literate person i have met, have done all three mistakes.

But this is quite a loosely knit example, people can say it is connected to culture. And being a supporter of culture myself, it is hard to defend this for me.

So, let us look at another example, health tech instruments like Fitbit, Apps likeNike+ Running App and corporate events like Stepathalon: In all these fitness tech products, fitness is promoted through social competition.

Similarly in Sales, we need to bring a sense of healthy competition within the team. A healthy competition gives the much required kick and motivation. It not only helps the      â€œStar performer” to “Go for Glory”  but also helps “Laggards” to pick up.

In this case, however to keep the “Star performer” motivated constantly, we need to change his position of not only a winner but also a mentor. So, by combining pointer 1 and pointer 2, we can comfortably target both the Stars and Laggards.

Pointer 3: Connect to a Greater Purpose

3 days before running my first marathon, I was wondering what if I fail ?

Negativity sets in quite fastly in such moments and i started thinking what benefit will running do, and i was confused.

As a reasonable person, i called up people, people whose advice i can trust. But the best one i got from a retired colonel and a morning jogging partner, he said in army we have a larger than life purpose for everything.

Then i started searching for ways and means to make a SMART & larger than life purpose for my run. After spending a pretty decent time surfing on internet, i found something close to my heart: “Child Education” .

I then decided, if i succeed in Marathon with a timing less than 6 hrs, i will donate tuition fee for one poor child for a year, which comes to around 2500/-. Now i had a reason to run, and to be honest, i kept on repeating “Think about the Kid” in last few kilometers.

Similarly in Sales, help each of your team member individually find that larger purpose, it could be career, it could be respect in society, it could be securing future for his kids, it could be anything.

Believe me, when you set upon a journey to find that purpose of each of your team members, you will be surprised and inspired at times. Now just connect the sales achievement to that larger purpose “genuinely”, and you could see a change in his behavior and attitude. If you are able to do it genuinely, it will lead to wonderful result for both, and people will respect and trust you more than ever (extra advantage).

Overall, there is nothing more powerful than a excited, motivated team pushing themselves and the fellow team members own to cross the limits. The journey of creation of such a team is a dream,  hopefully one day i will succeed.

P.S: The image used represents that we as leaders and managers, need to change the gear, and be more a mentor & motivator rather than getting into details of everything small.