How Top Sales Managers Motivate Reps to Sell More

This guest post – How Top Sales Managers Get Their Salespeople to Sell More Stuff – by Ralph Burns, makes so much sense, it is refreshing.  All Sales Managers should read this – if you want to motivate your sales reps in a positive way.

Question:  When do you do your best work?  When you feel bad or when you feel good?

The obvious answer is when you feel good. No one feels like doing much of anything when they feel bad. When people don’t feel so good, they end up doing very little….not a good situation for you.

So it begs the question: does the salesperson brimming with confidence sell more than the salesperson who lacks confidence? The answer may seem obvious, but why do so few average sales managers spend the majority of their time building their people’s confidence up instead of ripping it down?

It could be that many sales managers are former salespeople themselves and “seagull sales management” (swoop in, dump on the rep, then fly away), is all they know. In this case, unfortunately, ignorance begets more ignorance…

Or it could be that many salespeople come from a background of athletics and sales like sports, is highly competitive and similar to athletics in lots of ways, where managing by tearing down is extremely common. I’m not sure, but I do know that this form of “management” is way too common and far too ineffective for creating superior results.

It is really just this simple: if you make your sales reps feel good = they sell more.

This may be the basics of sales 101, but the salesperson who feels good, sells more; it’s just that simple. People perform better under a feeling of appreciation and praise than they do under a feeling of criticism and negativity. And if you make them feel important and make them feel good about what they are doing day to day, then you’ll be on the path to superior results. Sometimes all it takes is just a few words to let them know that you appreciate what they do, but you have to do it correctly, with specific praise, otherwise it just doesn’t work.

The Motivation Breakthrough

You may believe that the only thing that all salespeople are interested in is money as their primary motivation. However, even the most materialistic of us knows that there are more important rewards than money alone. Most salespeople just want to feel worthwhile and feel good about what they are doing.

The two rewards that top the list are: self respect and the respect of others.

People love to look good, so your job as an excellent sales manager is to create an environment in which your people look good. Seek out opportunities to tell them that you appreciate what they are doing. In doing so, you will find that the work and results you receive in return comes back to you tenfold.

To find out more about motivating your sales team visit  http://www.topsalesmanagerblog.com

Guest post written by Ralph Burns, a consistently top-performing sales manager with over 20 years of sales and sales management experience.

What do you think?  Is this the right way to motivate sales people?  Share your knowledge and experience with our readers!

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