Sales Force Training: The New Motivational Strategies

Keeping a team motivated and happy can be incredibly challenging for most current day managers. Tough economic times mean that teams are smaller, budgets for external rewards for employees are tighter, and employees can feel overworked or disinterested in the ultimate goal of their company. Managers, too, can be overworked and have less time to dedicate to individual staff members to keep them motivated. Yet, as AchieveGlobal notes, none of these obstacles are insurmountable, if we begin to view motivation in a different way. Research indicates that rather than aiming to motivate employees through external motivation (i.e. the reward or penalty system), they need to focus on what really makes employees tick: internal motivation.

Current-day internal motivation theory can be traced back to the findings of Abraham Maslow et al, who (in the 1960s), espoused that while external rewards could improve performance in the short-term, for long-term success, people reacted far more strongly to internal motivation. Currently, the leading authors in internal motivation are Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. These authors devised the Self-Determination Theory, which they define as “a theory of motivation… concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways.” Deci and Ryan argue that external rewards wrest an employee’s creativity and ability to solve complex problems and aim to reward a worker for something he/she already enjoys doing.

Internal motivation results when a person is performing a job they find inherently satisfying, or when they perform their job to satisfy another inherent need (there are three basic needs employees possess: the need to show their competence, the need to relate to others in a team and the need to exercise autonomy in their job).

Good leaders need to create the right environment in which employees can fulfil these needs for themselves. This can be done by communicating efficiently with employees, adopting their point of view, creating opportunities for them to make wise choices and providing sales force training to those selling the company’s products or services. In the case of sales staff, receiving cutting edge sales training is particularly important, since these employees need to remain highly motivated, even in the face of rejection.

Leaders should give feedback to employees in a non-judgemental manner, clarifying any procedures or roles the employee may not understand and relying on the employee to find a solution to a current problem or issue. Leaders also need to recognise talent in employees, matching workers’ interests needs to the company’s needs and creating a plan to help the employee shine in their chosen area. Finally, positive contributions made by staff should be acknowledged, by showing how their actions have had a positive impact on the team.

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