Two weeks ago I wrote a post called What Is The Primary Role Of A Sales Manager?. In that post I basically asserted the primary role of a sales manager is to facillitate an enviroment where people can be productive, but in retrospect I missed one key point. In addition to facillitating the proper environment free of distraction you also need to properly motivate your staff. I’m not going to rehash the different ways sales people can be motivated because Skip Anderson did such a great job in his post “Dear Sales Manager: Please Motivate Me” (honestly it’s the post I had planned to write… I guess it pays to be earlier in the rotation!). What I will do instead is add to both my previous post and build off of Skips a bit for you.

So we are now moving towards a drama free environment that is free of distraction, and we now recognize the different types of motivation, but how do we use this knowledge to motivate our staff? It starts by getting to know them in their one on one meetings, asking good questions, and listening.

I try to do a one on one with every member of my staff every week and we cover 3 topics: A brief discussion of their funnel and conversions plus whatever else I feel is important that week, next we talk about what they want help with, and the final 10 minutes is to talk about whatever we want and can cover anything from family to football. These discussions are important, and no one part is more important than any other… it is the trust and relationship you build in this process that are going to make it easier to have the difficult discussions later on… Finally the information you learn about your staff through this process will be invaluable to you later on when you are trying to motivate your staff.

To close out this topic I’ll share with you some insight I gained from one of my own managers back when I was a new salesperson.

My wife and I were planning on having a baby, but it was very important to both of us for her to be a stay at home mom (meaning I needed to earn a lot more money). However, my primary motivation was recognition and ego. I was winning regional contests regularly and was far and ahead the leading person in my location so both of these needs were being fulfilled completely… However, my manager recognized that there was untapped potential in me and that I was easily capable of producing even more than I currently was. I just wasn’t… and she couldn’t figure out why. I was basically complacent in my current position because I was kicking everyone’s @$$ around me, making great money and having a good time. No amount of feeding the ego, or giving praise and recognition helped, but there was something we were both missing. While it was clear I did not place my own salary as a determining factor of my self worth there was a untapped source of motivation. I wanted my wife to be a stay at home mom and for that I needed to earn a bit more than I was for us to be comfortable. To cut to the chase, once my manager pointed this fact out to me I was off to the races… I set new records, increased my salary and got 2 promotions all in about 18 months.

I tell this story because it’s important to recognize that many sales people only know part of the story about what motivates them, and while money still wasn’t my motivation it was the only thing that could feed what was… My family.

If my manager had not had years of quality one on one time with me we would have never came to that conclusion and we would probably both still be where we were then happy and complacent. Remember motivation is not something we do only for the team… The biggest bang for your buck comes from individual interactions that can only be achieved by regular, honest, one one interaction.

Takeaways: Think about your team and reflect on what motivates each of them as individuals. Now think about your team as a whole what motivates the group? Are you having weekly one on ones? Why not? What are the potential benefits of spending this one on one time with each of them? Do you have people that could produce more but are not? What could you do differently for that individual that would help them move forward?

For some more great information on this topic check out these two podcast episodes:

Steve Farber: Greater Than Yourself and Will Fultz: Rewarding Top Producers

Have a great rest of the week and happy selling everyone!