Keeping your Sales Team Motivated

U.S. companies drew in record profits in 2021 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that 2022 is in full swing, businesses want to ensure that they maintain the momentum from the previous year. Employee motivation has always been crucial to sales success, but strategies for improving morale might need to change with the increase in remote work. The right combination of education, resources, and practices can maximize the efforts of your sales strategy while minimizing burnout.  

Here are five suggestions to help you retain your talent and reduce your risk of turnover in this competitive job market. 

Run Meetings More Efficiently

Most sales kick off meetings for 2022 have already happened. You hit the new year running, and team motivation was high. But that engagement has to continue.

Sales meetings should not take a top-down approach. Instead, they should generate open communication, collaboration, and trust among managers and employees. Sales meetings are especially important for creating camaraderie in a remote work culture.

While your sales kick off meetings should address the forecast for the upcoming quarter, they must also tackle current successes and challenges. Coordinate sales efforts by sharing stories and discussing new insights. Ask employees to share their biggest achievements and obstacles. Leave time for meaningful brainstorming.

Don’t forget to make the entire team feel included by sending the agenda to participating individuals before each meeting. Continue to share the results of your brainstorming sessions throughout the quarter. Your sales team will stay motivated when they hear that their ideas were considered and implemented for stellar results.

Continue to hold meetings throughout each quarter. This helps managers stay abreast of what the sales team is doing. It can help to coordinate at least one in-person meeting each quarter. However, if that’s not possible, take advantage of videoconferencing.

Encourage Employees to Get on Board

With 70% of global employees working remotely at least once a week, it’s more important than ever to keep everyone on the same page. Setting clear expectations is vital. To do this, you have to keep your employees informed of your goals.

Most members of a sales team are managing their own set of goals. However, do they understand how their efforts relate to those of the company as a whole? You’ll foster a more collaborative environment by helping your sales employees feel like valuable players in your overarching objectives.

An effective approach to goal setting is to break down large goals into smaller ones. Make sure that your sales team understands how each of their objectives play into the company goals. Some employees are more productive and engaged when they understand how their purpose relates to the company’s mission. Therefore, it’s essential to expand sales goals beyond quotas.

Some ways to help employees feel valued and valuable include:

• Sharing the bigger picture with them
• Allowing them to try new things
• Encouraging them to share their projects, challenges and successes
• Streamlining your digital network so that remote collaboration is easy
• Investing in their education and training

Implement the Right Tools to Enhance Remote Work Motivation

You can’t operate in a new environment with old models. Take advantage of technology advancements that boost efficiency and allow teams to stay connected.

Face-to-face strategies are becoming less important for low-value sales or early interactions. However, they must be replaced with effective tools for maintaining relationships. Everyone needs email, video conferencing, and the ability to share files.

But remote work motivation can suffer if you introduce too many tools without offering proper training. Doing this takes the focus away from selling and complicates workflows. Streamlining your digital resources improves productivity and reduces stress, allowing employees to work smarter instead of harder.

Embrace Competition

Competition enhances team motivation, fosters innovation and improves performance. It drives down complacency and brings out the leaders.

But creating a culture of healthy competition is tricky. You don’t want to establish an aggressive environment that puts pressure on employees to consistently overachieve. Doing this could cause burnout and ultimately have the reverse effect by reducing team motivation.

You need to inspire pride rather than a cutthroat attitude. Make sure that employees are recognized for a job well done.

Sales incentives can help your team reach their goals. However, managers should encourage collaboration. Competition should be generated both on a team basis and an individual basis.

Some techniques for creating a balanced culture that thrives on healthy competition include:

• Offering team-based sales incentives and rewards
• Pair people with different skills, experience and abilities
• Focus on nurturing your employees’ talents instead of simply offering rewards when a company goal is met
• Sharing a scoreboard of successes to spark employees’ inherent competitive streaks

Use Motivational Best Practices

Salespeople are more likely to deal with burnout than other employees because they constantly deal with rejection. Spotting burnout in a remote workforce is challenging because you may not see your employees in person regularly. 

Don’t assume that the members of your sales team will have more time to accomplish additional tasks now that they’re working remotely. Strive to help them find balance so that they don’t experience the burnout that is so common in this position.

Managers should establish consistent mentoring and support programs to maintain team motivation. Employees need regular feedback – even your top sales reps. They must also have an outlet to vent their frustrations, seek advice, and ask for help.  By keeping your team motivated and engaged you’ll have a better pulse on your employees and will reduce the risk of turnover.