Hi Friend,
I hope you’re staying warm wherever you are this month. It's been a little cold and snowy this year and we still have a couple of months to go before spring.
In the meantime, let's continue our series on motivating your sales team by emulating best practices to quickly move things along.
Emulate Best Practices
When looking for ways to motivate your sales team, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There are several best practices that have been proven to motivate sales team members – seek them out and emulate them! Look to industry leaders, and even across industries, for examples of motivated and successful sales teams. Figure out what these organizations are doing right, and then find ways to bring those practices to your own organization.
Look to Industry Leaders
If you want to be the best, look to what the best are already doing. Emulating the best practices in your industry is one powerful way to motivate your sales team. Look to see what industry leaders are doing in terms of recruiting, hiring, retaining, training, and motivating their sales forces. Adopt the practices that you can and adapt those that need some tweaking. Look to the organizations that have not only the highest earning, but the happiest and most energetic sales teams, and you’ll find the organizations to emulate.
Spend time reading industry literature, following blogs, and otherwise investigating what these organizations are doing right. Draw on your own professional network and ask colleagues in other organizations how they fire up the sales force. Find ways to apply their practices and principles to your organization.
Solicit Team Member Suggestions
If you want to motivate your people, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is ask! Solicit suggestions from your sales team, both as a group and one on one, as to what would motivate them or excite them about their work. Explore with them what may have worked for them in previous jobs, or what they learn from their colleagues in other organizations.
Your people know themselves best, after all. Find out what makes them tick, what gets them excited, and – just as importantly – what they find demotivating. Work to find ways to implement their suggestions. Keep this an ongoing process, because what motivates people may change over time, and you will want to get suggestions from new team members as they come on board as well.
"Your number one customers are your people. Look after employees first and then customers last." - Ian Hutchinson
Take a Field Trip!
Part of seeking to emulate best practices is to determine what those practices are. And one of the best ways to do this is to go to where these practices are implemented. Take your team on a field trip! This might be a visit to an industry leader’s site, where your team can watch and learn from their sales team. (Always arrange this well ahead of time, of course.) Other field trips that might provide ideas for motivating your sales team could include: - A visit to an organization known for a robust sales force, even if it’s outside your industry
- An industry conference where industry leaders are presenting
- A sales conference where leaders in many different industries are presenting
- Trade shows
Leverage Outside Expertise
Don’t hesitate to leverage outside expertise as you seek to emulate best practices. Draw on industry literature; particularly, sales literature, and business publications, for information on what great practices are being implemented. An outside consultant or expert in people management might also be a worthwhile investment, as these people can see your organization and your team with a fresh eye.
Seek advice from your own professional network and mentors about what they do in their organizations to keep their sales teams motivated and excited about their work. Be willing to think creatively. While industry leaders are an important source of best practices, sometimes the best ideas come from outside our comfort zone. Look outside your industry – even far outside – to see what people are doing that is creative, innovative, and motivational.
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