Sales Mistake No 9: It’s not just about the money!

The popularly held misconception about the motivation of sales professionals is that it’s all about the money. Bonuses, commissions, prizes are all supposed to be the common currency of incentivising sales staff.

Which leads us on to our Sales Mistake Number 9 is – It’s not just about the money!

What really motivates sellers? Without slipping into an HR discourse on motivation theory, our list goes like this:

• Recognition for a job well done. Frequent and appropriate feedback from line management

• Smart targets against which to measure success, providing short term goals, and a focus for activity
• The opportunity for learning and personal advancement, more specifically learning new skill sets and capabilities
• Leadership – It’s hard to imagine any function of business that doesn’t benefit from leadership and the sales department is no exception.
• The tools for the job – not just product training, but actual delivery of the seller’s sales promise. Not to mention management support when problems need to be solved
• Competition. There’s nothing like the threat of an attentive competitor to make sure that things get done on time

Oh yes, and occasionally prizes, one off prizes that afford recognition of achievement within a peer group.

Once you have benchmarked your remuneration levels to check that you are in line with the marketplace, our advice in this area is to attend to all of these areas first. Reaching for the company cheque book may at best be just expensive, and at worst, may be expensive, unproductive, and inflationary.

As consultants, we frequently encounter confusion about how to structure reward packages for sales professionals, and of course, we are happy to apply some theory to straighten out the confusion. Feel free to bring your questions to us, we’ll be happy to help.

In out experience, if you are scoring well on the areas we’ve highlighted, you’ll have no difficulty in motivating your sales staff.