Question: What motivates salespeople? Answer: It depends upon the salesperson.

Salespeople may tend to have certain traits in common, but there is wide diversity in the ranks of sales professionals. We are not the same. And so it is with motivating salespeople: what works for one individual won’t work for another.

motivation

If, as a sales manager, you want to motivate your direct reports, focus less on what you do to them, and more on what you do for them. Everybody is self-motivated to do something. You just need to find out what that motivation is, and then use it to everybody’s (your company’s, your salesperson’s, your customer’s) best advantage. Assuming your sales team has adequate or better selling skills, you need to find out what type of motivation works for each of your individual players.

The following lists what motivation looks like for different members of the sales profession. Once we know what motivation exists within each individual sales representative, we can create opportunities for that motivation and help them sell more:

1. Money. It’s commonly understood that “money motivation” is at the core of sales performance, especially in commission sales, but beware: it is not universal to sales success, nor is it a requirement of sales success. I’m thinking right now of all the monetary incentives put on the tables at sales meetings, and a month later, all the sales managers scratching their heads why the incentive didn’t achieve the results it was designed to provide. Having said that, money (and the stuff that it buys) is a very strong motivator for many in our profession.

2. Recognition. Some salespeople crave attention. Some may prefer attention from their manager, others from the owner of their company, and others from their spouse. Still others need public recognition in front of peers or others. To motivate these salespeople, managers need to provide copious opportunities for increased attention from the appropriate parties in a way that will resonate with that individual. When I was a sales manager, I would ask new hires, “How do you prefer to be recognized for a job well done?” Some would say, “Put a thank-you card on my computer” and others would say “put my picture in the company newsletter.” And I would do just that. And it worked.

3. Competition. Some may assume that money is behind the competitive nature in salespeople. But the two motivations are very different. Some people find competition extraordinarily motivating, whether money is involved or not. Try “the first person to turn in a contract with an XYZ option on it gets a dinner at Ben’s Steakhouse.” For this salesperson, it’s not the steak that matters; it’s winning the steak.

4. Pleasing someone. Pleasers scour their realm for opportunities to please. Some are motivated by pleasing their manager, others by pleasing their boyfriends, and others by pleasing their customers. Identify this motivation in your salespeople and you can provide ample opportunity for lots and lots of pleasing. You don’t have to provide money, or a contest, or anything else…except being pleased!

5. Belonging. Just as some Americans buy certain models of European luxury sedans so they can become members of the socio-economic group of Americans that own European luxury sedans, so do salespeople strive for a certain level of sales success so they can belong to a group. For some, belonging to a company or a department or a subgroup provides the motivation to keep selling and keep pushing ahead. Find out what these people want to belong to, then give them an opportunity to become a member (hint: it’s not about money; it might be getting the title of Senior Designer to belong to the group of other Senior Designers, or people that go out after work on Thursday afternoons).

6. Security. People who are security motivated will seek out paths to attain that security. Very different from competitive people, these people will keep performing at high levels if the security they long for is provided to them. Competitive people thrive in a world of no security, whereas security-motivated salespeople thrive in the opposite. Although traditionally these people are not thought to be a good fit for sales positions, I disagree. It’s the performance that matters, not how you get there.

7. Ego. Again often confused with competitiveness or money-motivation, ego-motivation is different. What motivates these individuals is having their ego fed to an acceptable level. This need could be met simply by complimenting a salesperson on their clothing, or it might require hanging their portrait in your showroom (complete with recessed lights shining not-so-subtly on the subject) when they receive the salesperson of the year award. If these individuals’ egos are full, the sales will keep coming; but when the ego is depleted, these people can quickly become low sales performers.

8. Perks. There is a broad array of possibilities here; different things matter to different people. I once managed one salesperson who would do anything if she didn’t have to run sales appointments in a particular neighborhood. As long as I kept her out of that neighborhood, she maintained high sales performance. Another salesperson I managed hated one-on-one coaching meetings so much that I let her skip them. As important as I thought these meetings were (and as hard as I tried to make them valuable to her), they weren’t important to her, and were in fact a demotivator. So we made a deal that got both of us what we wanted: she got to miss the one-on-ones and I got consistent top performance from her.

How can you do a better job of motivating each of your sales representatives?