Sales Managers Quick Tip: Motivating your Sales Staff
Motivating and managing key employees can prove to be one of the most difficult tasks required of business owners and managers, and the ultimate success of a company can rely on the ability to understand the most common mistake that sales staff make. It is important to realize that most people consider a job in sales to be very tough and a competent manager or business owner must be prepared to handle the perceptions of their staff. The most common mistake that sales staff make is generating too much of their time to non-revenue generating activities. While the sales force may believe that they are working incredibly hard, the fact of the matter is that most of the “hard work” does not actually accomplish any progress towards quotas or goals.
At a recent sales meeting I sat in on whilst providing consulting, employees began to complain that numbers were down and commissions were at an all time low. Salespeople not making their quotas quickly spouted off all of the hard work that they had completed the week before. The sales meeting was excused and agents were instructed to finish the rest of the week without making any significant changes to their schedule. The salespeople were further instructed to keep a daily log of all of their activities.
When the salespeople congregated at the end of the week and shared their activity logs, it didn’t take long for the sales manager to realize several key points that had to immediately be addressed. Too little time often is devoted to seeking new clients. Although email may be an important tool for communication, there is absolutely no need to check messages during prime business hours. Voice mail and phone calls are another major distraction and should be curtailed at certain points. Service is incredibly important in any organization, but the sales force needs to spend more time generating results. The sales manager realized that prospecting activities were a very small component in each daily schedule. The general summary was that the sales staff were spending the majority of their time doing anything but selling.
Procrastinating can be very easy when there is paperwork or other non-revenue generating activities to use as an excuse. As a result, it is often necessary for a manager or business owner to closely monitor and modify the daily duties of their sales staff. An exceptionally easy way to manage such activities is to develop a point system with a required number of points accumulated by the end of the week, enforcing the importance of points in the early stages of sales training when training up new sales agents. Responding to email requests, returning existing client calls, and checking voice mails are all mandatory but should be given a low point value. Prospecting activities should have higher point values as should potential client appointments. Any successful sales should be awarded a significant number of points. Although it may seem like a lot of trouble to begin with, the tracking device can be used to coach the sales staff and can effectively decrease the amount of time devoted to non-revenue generating activities.
Sales staff can become incredibly burned out and frustrated when they feel like they are working too hard with no commissions to show for it. It is often said that it is better to work smarter than work harder, and efficiency should be a goal of any sales organization. By understanding that most salespeople need some guidance when it comes to planning their daily, weekly and monthly actions, a manager or business owner can turn their sales.
Tony Morris is the director of Positive Approach- a UK-based sales training company specialising in field sales training and management training courses. Tony believes anyone can sell successfully with the correct training, guidance and confidence.
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