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Sales Training Consultancy Sales and Sensibility Coaching Limited |
Sales and Sensibility
The Tower, 2 Stable Cottages
Pangbourne
Reading
Berkshire
RG8 8HN
Tel: 0118 9767658
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The Tower, 2 Stable Cottages
Pangbourne
Reading
Berkshire
RG8 8HN
Tel: 0118 9767658
View map
|
10 Sure-fire ways to de-motivate your sales team!
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In the world of sports, teams have a coach to provide motivation, inspiration, enhance their skills and help them to achieve peak performance.
In the world of Sales, sales teams look to their leader or manager to provide motivation, inspiration, enhance their skills and help them to achieve peak performance. Successful sports teams and successful sales team actually have a lot of similarities. They both need focus, they have shared goals and vision and individuals within the team have their own personal goals which they take positive action towards achieving everyday. They take responsibility for their own success however they have the ability to work together as a team. They have a leader that provides inspiration and coaches them to recognise their strengths and identify their motivational drivers which they can utilise on a daily basis to sustain their motivation. It is all of these elements which enable both sports teams and sales teams to achieve peak performance. If I were to ask a sports coach and a sales leader, ‘what are the attributes which enable your team to achieve peak performance?’ In most cases, they will both provide the same answer… • A winning attitude • Belief in themselves • Motivated • Determined and focused • Confidence • They take positive action everyday to achieve their goal However, If I were to ask ‘How often do you provide motivation & inspiration to your team in order to help them achieve peak performance?’, it is highly likely that the sports coach will say daily however in many cases the sales manager/leader will say, “as and when it is needed” or “when we are not achieving the results we need”. And this is the key differentiator between a sales leaders and a coach. Lets look at some of today’s well known sporting icons; Andy Murray, Tiger Woods, do you think they train to enhance their skills on a daily basis? Do they have a regime to enhance their motivation, self-confidence and focus for an upcoming game, do they work with their coach on a daily basis to gain inspiration and visualise success? Now, I do not claim to be a sports coach however, my guess is that they do. I once heard a quote that says; “Motivation is like bathing; it is needed on a daily basis” If sales people are to be successful they also need a daily motivational workout to sustain motivation, increase confidence and their focus to achieve excellence and it is their leaders they look to get the inspiration and guidance on how to achieve this. Sales leaders do not intentionally try to de-motivate their teams as their objective is to get their teams to achieve results however in reality by not providing inspiration and motivation on a daily basis that is exactly what they are doing to their teams. Here are the top 10 ways that managers can unintentionally de-motivate their sales teams… • Don’t engage your team in setting the vision and goals for your team. Their job is to hit target and yours is create the strategy and roll out the targets. • Clearly outline what you expect of your team members on a quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily basis. • Remind your team on a regular basis of the areas they need to improve in. • Micro manage you people as this is the best way to ensure that they remained focused, are productive and take action. • Only give recognition to those who achieve 100% at the end of the quarter When providing performance feedback to those who did not achieve target, don't let them find their own solution when you can reinforce your position of authority by telling them what they "obviously should have done”. • Parade your top performers in front of your average performers and tell them that they should inspire to be like them • To increase motivation dangle cash incentives and rewards to drive performance • If team members are not performing use your positional power to intimidate people in order to get them to work harder • If you don’t believe a team member can succeed then tell them, it might make them try and prove you wrong and you may get more them. • To gain sales results, focus on creating a plan for them to hit their target however you don’t need to know about their own personal goals Now let’s look at the top 10 ways that sports people and sports coaches sustain individual and team motivation. • Get to know each individual in the team, help them to establish their own personal vision and goals. Remember you cannot set goals for other people; to truly own a goal individuals must set their own goals. • Increase individuals focus by reminding them on a daily basis of the personal benefits they will gain by achieving their goals and objectives. • Break goals down into small achievable chunks and empower your team members create their own action plan. By empowering your team members to come up with their own creative solutions you increase their commitment to taking action and you encourage them to take responsibility for their own success. • Build confidence and self-esteem by identifying your team’s strengths and recognising what they have already achieved. • Help your team to visualise that they are already successful and anchor those feelings of success so that they can draw on them on a daily basis • Align personal and team goals. Whether the personal goal is to earn more money, beat your own personal records and being recognised as a great athlete or getting into the trials of the Olympic Games, you need to help team members identify their goal. By identifying the personal goals you give them focus and direction. When you identify what they really want you then works backwards to where they are today, which will be with you and then you identify the milestones that they need to achieve to get them from where they are today to where they want to be. One of the milestones will be to achieve target or achieve corporate goals so you create a win-win for both you and your team members. They key thing to remember here is that if you want to lead people to achieve, you need to lead them in a direction that is motivating for them. • When communicating with your team, ensure that it in consistent and that they methods of communication are understood and motivating for all individuals within the team. • Understand that the root of motivation is different for all individuals within your team and that true motivation comes from within, it can not be imposed. To really sustain motivation, help team members to tap into their own motivational drivers, encourage them to frequently talk about previous times in their career/life when they were highly motivated and only use rewards and incentives that are directed towards your team motivational drivers to provide motivational top ups. . • Ensure that team members believe that they can be successful and that they believe in themselves. Limiting beliefs can hold even the most confident people back from achieving success. Limiting beliefs are like having weeds growing in your garden; if you do not pull them out, they will take over your garden. When they take over individuals they will, lower confidence and self-esteem, which will limit their potential so identify and remove limiting beliefs and replace with empowering beliefs that will maximise individuals potential. • Provide effective and evidence based feedback on a regular basis to increase individual’s self-confidence and motivation to taking the next steps to achieving success. The question that I would advise all sales leaders to ask themselves is; “If you were given the opportunity to manage your favourite sporting icon, would you manage them any differently to the way you currently manage your team?” If your answer is yes, then ask yourself how could you incorporate that style of management into your current team to truly motivate your team members and help them to achieve peak performance? To find out more about how to truly motivate a sales team, and how our motivational power hours can increase your teams performance please visit www.salesandsensibility.com or contact Fiona Challis on 01189 767658 |
