How to achieve the greatest possible motivation in your sales team

Hello Sales Reset Leader

What would it be like if every one of your team members was highly motivated at all times, constantly pushing themselves to achieve their full potential?! 😀

This week’s companion Weekly Sales Reset email for front-line salespeople is all about planning for personal success.

This topic is clearly the crucial foundation for personal motivation.

As a sales team leader, how much should you involve yourself with your team members and their personal plans for success?

Our strong recommendation is that this is a key responsibility for sales team leaders.

It’s your job to help every team member make the connections between achieving the sales results your team needs and what these results will do for them personally.

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s Weekly Sales Reset“:

• Title: Planning for success in your sales career and life

• Subtitle: What do you want to achieve with your selling, and what's your plan?

How to improve your team's results this week

• Team members’ career plans - what is your role?

• Do your team members trust you sufficiently?

• Evidence of career and life plans

• Recommended coaching session agenda on planning fo …

• Expected pushback about planning for success

• Leadership Reflective Practice

Team members’ career plans - what is your role?

What role should you seek to play in your team members’ career and life plans? How involved should you be in helping them to define and achieve their personal goals and aspirations?

One of the greatest challenges for sales team leaders is to maintain the highest levels of motivation in each team member.

What do salespeople find motivating? Most salespeople want freedom and, preferably, zero “micro-management”!

But you know all about the distractions your team members are fighting. You have plenty of experience with the speed and depth of demotivation that comes from selling disappointments. You know these setbacks are an inevitable part of every salesperson’s life.

Ideally, you need team members who are wholly self-motivated because their personal motivations are completely aligned with the results you need.

We believe it’s hugely desirable for sales team leaders to enable their team members to have a career plan. And for the evidence to show that membership in your team is the best place for them to achieve their career and life goals.

This means that you should seek conversations with team members to develop and review their career and life plans. You can then align their personal plans with the results you need from them.

Do your team members trust you sufficiently?

Sufficient trust is a precondition for conversations about career and life plans.

Will your team members trust you sufficiently to speak about their deepest hopes and fears?

How appropriate is it for you to speak candidly about the limitations team members will face in their current roles? When is it right to encourage your team members to leave your team because they’ve outgrown their role?

How can you establish and build this trust?

Levels of trust will be different with each team member. It’s likely you can have these conversations with some team members. With other team members, the discussion might never be available.

Evidence of career and life plans

In most of our email newsletters, we identify how you can gather evidence about team members by looking at CRM records, recordings and proposals.

However, evidence of career and life plans is likely to be found only when you speak with team members.

Of course, the best time to begin this conversation is during recruitment. One way to recruit outstanding candidates on packages below their market rate is to offer significant career development support.

If you have inherited a sales team, you’ll need to approach this topic with care. Some team members will warmly welcome a conversation about career and life planning. Some will reject the suggested conversation completely.

There’s so much that you can potentially discuss with team members about the connections between career and life planning and the need for these plans to be based on evidence:

• Past: What is the evidence of previous career and life planning?

• Present: What are current career and life plans, and how do these plans shape daily priorities?

• Future: What evidence will this team member use to evaluate progress toward planned outcomes? How might evidence indicate plans may need to change?

With those team members who are prepared to engage with you, these conversations can be utterly transformative. These discussions can lead to insights that become pivotal moments in team member’s lives.

Recommended coaching session agenda on planning for success

Before leading your coaching sessions, ask your team members to review the current edition of Weekly Sales Reset, which focuses on planning for success.

Give yourself time to reflect on WIIFM, “What’s in for me,” and empathise with your team members about how they might be sufficiently motivated to plan for their success.

Here’s this week’s recommended coaching session agenda:

1. Start with a brief review of their experience and results from their previous coaching session.

2. Ask this team member for their observations about planning for success and their response to the current edition of Weekly Sales Reset.

3. Ask them lots of coaching questions about their career plans. If you have sufficient trust, help them connect these discussions to their life plans and priorities.

4. Make explicit connections between their career and life plans and the evidence of current skills, behaviours, priorities and sales results.

5. Finish the coaching session with agreed and specific action conclusions.

Expected pushback about planning for success

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members on the theme of planning for personal success:

1. Insufficient Trust: As we reviewed earlier, asking your team members to speak candidly about career and life plans requires sufficient trust.

2. Low Self-Esteem: Your team members may have deep-rooted uncertainties about their potential capabilities for many reasons. Some of these uncertainties are likely to be entirely valid. You will likely also uncover limiting beliefs that might be challenged successfully.

3. Feeling Trapped: Team members may feel trapped by the constraints of their current circumstances. These constraints may be a consequence of their role, organisation, and market, and some might be personal. If you conclude it’s appropriate, your coaching might help them explore the available options to escape perceived boundaries.

Now that you’re aware of these areas of potential pushback, what are your best responses?

Leadership Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

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