August 2013
What gets you fired up each day? Maybe it’s the enjoyment of your job, the
people that you will interact with, the chance to participate in your favourite hobby,
or even the randomness of your day?
Though how
frequently do we share what motivates us with family, friends,
colleagues or associates? I imagine not that often. Besides why would they want
or need to know? An interesting thought,
yet how regularly have you heard others say “they don’t motivate me” or “my
manager doesn’t know what motivates me”- challenging when the insight into what
does motivate the individual might be less than obvious.
So surely motivating sales people should be easy and
straight forward as they are all driven by the same things – money, company car,
gadgets, sales competitions, more money –right?
Well there is some truth in this and money can be seen as a strong motivator, yet I believe that this list paints quite a superficial picture. Of course many of us need or want a source of income to pay our bills and to fund our lifestyle, albeit the company car and gadgets are often tools that enable us to do our jobs or perform them better. I believe there are other factors at play that provide motivation for our sales people, particularly when the individual is established within the company. This is supported by a TED talk by Dan Ariely that looks at this in more detail and draws on 7 studies that reported on what makes colleagues more productive and happier at work. Ariely summarises that it’s more than money, and that people are motivated by meaningful work, by other’s acknowledgement and by the effort they’ve put in. I can see his point, that if you value the work you do and the way you do it, hopefully others will do so too – whether it’s your customers, colleagues or boss.
Well there is some truth in this and money can be seen as a strong motivator, yet I believe that this list paints quite a superficial picture. Of course many of us need or want a source of income to pay our bills and to fund our lifestyle, albeit the company car and gadgets are often tools that enable us to do our jobs or perform them better. I believe there are other factors at play that provide motivation for our sales people, particularly when the individual is established within the company. This is supported by a TED talk by Dan Ariely that looks at this in more detail and draws on 7 studies that reported on what makes colleagues more productive and happier at work. Ariely summarises that it’s more than money, and that people are motivated by meaningful work, by other’s acknowledgement and by the effort they’ve put in. I can see his point, that if you value the work you do and the way you do it, hopefully others will do so too – whether it’s your customers, colleagues or boss.
Yet this still seems quite broad, like the earlier list, and
we may have to give more effort to discover what really motivates our sales teams and
colleagues. I was faced with such a
situation a few years ago. Whilst I was gaining an understanding of what
motivated my sales people, this was less evident across our sales division and
comments like “my manager doesn’t know what motivates me” were starting to
emerge. It also made me consider whether
my colleagues were aware what fired me up each day and what maintained my
motivation through the ‘highs’ and ‘not so highs’ of sales leadership.
The exercise I used was quite simple and required minimal
preparation, and became the icebreaker to a sales coaching day I was
facilitating for about fifty colleagues.
Each participant was asked to bring an A4 sheet with a drawing or image
that represented what motivated them to work in sales and/or work for our
organisation. The sheets were collected
and placed on the walls by one colleague and then we circulated and wrote on
each sheet who we thought was the owner of the image.
This certainly played to our competitive streak and the
results were very interesting, both in what we perceived motivated colleagues
and the reality of what actually did.
Some were quite obvious to guess (apparently mine was) and yes there
were numerous money images, yet others revealed drivers that some of their co-workers
had been less than aware of. There was a
mixture of images of holiday destinations, photos of families, yet also images
of our customers, teams and our organisation. Even some owners of the money
images explained a deeper purpose that included spending time with family and lifestyle choices.
So before you get around to purchasing that
bottle of champagne, gift voucher or luxury weekend break to thank or
motivate your sales people, think about or better still find out what they
would truly value. It could be that your timely acknowledgement of a task done
well and reinforcement that what they do has purpose and meaning has greater
impact than the bottle bag left on their desk months later.
Or maybe it's always just about the money...what motivates you and
your team?
John is a Director of Vector Resources Limited and helps
businesses increase sales and improve sales performance. Find out more at www.vector-resources.co.uk
