In my time I have trained and directly managed over 300 sales people in the US, UK and Continental Europe. I am not talking about being a sales manager for hundreds of people who only ever see you at the company’s monthly seminar, I am talking hands on direct management.
I will be putting together a series of posts on the sales management topic and have created a category so if you are reading this some time after its published date there will be a few more in the category section.
Today I am going to share one thing with you that is crucial to the management of sales people, if you do not understand this you are missing out on a huge motivational tool.
Move Towards and Move Away From
In all sections of life we manifest move toward and move away from behaviour. The vast majority of us move away from pain and towards pleasure. Most people would choose to move away from hard work if they were able and towards easier work. These are natural processes, hard wired into our being and pretty easy to understand.
However, when it comes to motivation, most managers are blind to the motivations of their sales people and it can have a huge effect on performance. What I mean here is the motivations that an individual has to complete a task or perform a function.
How many times have you heard this from a manager or a colleague trying to motivate a sales person or team:
“If you sell X numbers of widgets this month you will make enough money to go on holiday/buy a car/buy a house… etc”
This is the default setting for most managers I have ever met, they assume that all sales people are motivated by moving towards a goal. This is not the case. Some people, and most likely 20%-30% of your sales force are ‘move away from’ people. They are motivated by ‘moving away’ from something. What I have found is that these type of people are most motivated when they stand to lose something they already have.
This may sound a bizarre and irresponsible method of managing sales people, but trust me, it works. Some of the biggest performers I have ever managed have been move away from people.
Let me give you an example to illustrate:
Johnny is a sales guy who has been performing OK for you, nothing great but just OK. He has never really responded to incentives and company freebies for performance. He has pictures of cars all over his work station and, if asked what he would do with $5000 extra a month in his pay packet (adjust this for whatever commission levels you pay) he will say ‘lease a Porsche’ – ‘buy a house’ etc.
This person is typical of a move away from person. He is talented but hard to motivate and performs below your expectations of his talent.
In this situation I would sit with the guy and tell him to go out and lease that Porsche, go ahead and buy that house, and do it now. I would make it clear that if he does not perform on a consistent basis, above what he is doing now, he will LOSE the house/car.
I would sit and work out what he needed to do on a monthly basis to keep whatever he has bought and ask him to consider whether he can do it or not overnight and ask him to see me in my office in the morning with an answer.
You will be amazed at the results. If you are a move towards person you will be horrified at this technique, that is because you cannot comprehend it. If you are reading this as a move away from person it will make perfect sense.
I would put in one caveat here. Don’t let your sales person buy something that he cannot realistically achieve from working in your firm. If the best sales person is making $1000 bonus then tailor the want/desire to what is achievable.
The key to making this work and enhancing the performance and therefor rewards of your salespeople is to individually talk with them, find out their true passions, wants or desires and help them create a plan for achieving them. It maybe that they are move toward or move away from people, you can only find this out by talking to your team.
There are, of course, many other factors that go into motivating sales people and I will be posting further topics and collecting them in the ‘Motivational Techniques’ category, but go into the office and try this tommorrow, believe me it works.
Regards
David
@TheMarketMaker
I will be putting together a series of posts on the sales management topic and have created a category so if you are reading this some time after its published date there will be a few more in the category section.
Today I am going to share one thing with you that is crucial to the management of sales people, if you do not understand this you are missing out on a huge motivational tool.
Move Towards and Move Away From
In all sections of life we manifest move toward and move away from behaviour. The vast majority of us move away from pain and towards pleasure. Most people would choose to move away from hard work if they were able and towards easier work. These are natural processes, hard wired into our being and pretty easy to understand.
However, when it comes to motivation, most managers are blind to the motivations of their sales people and it can have a huge effect on performance. What I mean here is the motivations that an individual has to complete a task or perform a function.
How many times have you heard this from a manager or a colleague trying to motivate a sales person or team:
“If you sell X numbers of widgets this month you will make enough money to go on holiday/buy a car/buy a house… etc”
This is the default setting for most managers I have ever met, they assume that all sales people are motivated by moving towards a goal. This is not the case. Some people, and most likely 20%-30% of your sales force are ‘move away from’ people. They are motivated by ‘moving away’ from something. What I have found is that these type of people are most motivated when they stand to lose something they already have.
This may sound a bizarre and irresponsible method of managing sales people, but trust me, it works. Some of the biggest performers I have ever managed have been move away from people.
Let me give you an example to illustrate:
Johnny is a sales guy who has been performing OK for you, nothing great but just OK. He has never really responded to incentives and company freebies for performance. He has pictures of cars all over his work station and, if asked what he would do with $5000 extra a month in his pay packet (adjust this for whatever commission levels you pay) he will say ‘lease a Porsche’ – ‘buy a house’ etc.
This person is typical of a move away from person. He is talented but hard to motivate and performs below your expectations of his talent.
In this situation I would sit with the guy and tell him to go out and lease that Porsche, go ahead and buy that house, and do it now. I would make it clear that if he does not perform on a consistent basis, above what he is doing now, he will LOSE the house/car.
I would sit and work out what he needed to do on a monthly basis to keep whatever he has bought and ask him to consider whether he can do it or not overnight and ask him to see me in my office in the morning with an answer.
You will be amazed at the results. If you are a move towards person you will be horrified at this technique, that is because you cannot comprehend it. If you are reading this as a move away from person it will make perfect sense.
I would put in one caveat here. Don’t let your sales person buy something that he cannot realistically achieve from working in your firm. If the best sales person is making $1000 bonus then tailor the want/desire to what is achievable.
The key to making this work and enhancing the performance and therefor rewards of your salespeople is to individually talk with them, find out their true passions, wants or desires and help them create a plan for achieving them. It maybe that they are move toward or move away from people, you can only find this out by talking to your team.
There are, of course, many other factors that go into motivating sales people and I will be posting further topics and collecting them in the ‘Motivational Techniques’ category, but go into the office and try this tommorrow, believe me it works.
Regards
David
@TheMarketMaker
TheMarketMaker
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