How to motivate your sales team
Motivating your employees and your sales team doesn't seem easy as it seems, understand in this article how to encourage them.
Working in sales can be your true life mission, your sales teammates amazing, and the company you are a part of today has the best work environment you have ever experienced. No matter how good the situation is, staying 100% motivated is impossible, naturally, we have days and moments with no motivation at all, so implementing incentives for your sales team can bring that “up” on days with little or no inspiration.
Importance of Incentives
The Incentive Research Foundation presented a study that proves the increase in employee engagement by sales incentives by up to 44% when the incentives are correctly constructed. While in another survey, in the Deloitte study, 41% of respondents revealed that additional incentives would help increase their daily motivation.
A company that takes itself seriously understands how motivating people is important for any business, the incentives to generate motivation should be seen as a direct investment in its employees that will have an effect on the financial results of any enterprise. Adding to the group of benefits acquired by financial incentives, there is also an improvement in the involvement of employees and an increase in the levels of retention in the company, consequently reducing turnover.
SPIFs as a Tool to Grow
SPIFs, or Special Performance Incentive Funds, are a powerful tool to boost your sales team's results in seeking outperforms compared to the past, especially if they are done for slower periods of time throughout the year. Knowing how to use SPIFs in an intelligent way is to use them with a focus on identifying which sales incentives will direct employees to have the desired behaviors.
Make it clear to your sales team why SPIF exists, the objective may be to increase sales of a particular product, close more partnerships for your business, increase the time of subscription of consumers, and make the objective known.
Try to use SPIFs sparingly and at unexpected times, set deadlines for this tool, and keep in mind that your team needs enough time to reap the results. Keep SPIFs simple, making them too complex can get in the way rather than generating a benefit, making it confusing and difficult for your employees to prioritize effective actions.
Whenever a SPIF is completed, stop to analyze the results and compare the period when the resource was used with the period without any action taken, so you will find out if it had the desired effect, using the insights from this analysis to better plan the next round of financial incentive to be implemented.
Don't go around distributing incentives in any way, think first about which incentives can make a difference in your results, talk to your sales team, and ask them what financial incentives they would like to receive, cash is not always the best solution, other types also have positive effects, learn about some of them below:
Incentive Ideas
Cash money
The classic cash incentive is always a good offer to offer your sales team, many programs use this reward by delivering an amount of bonus money for the professional's efficient work. It is usually made through commissions or bonuses when a goal is reached in a certain period, such as, for example, reaching the goal of acquired customers during a quarter or semester.
It is an efficient incentive option, a great motivator of people and nations, it deserves special attention to the amount that will be offered, if the size of the reward is not attractive enough for the sales team to make an effort, it will not have an effect.
Travel vouchers
Many companies choose to use travel vouchers as a financial incentive, because when travel is the reward, each sales professional does not think that they will only earn “money in the form of a trip”, but rather, in an experience that they will have access to during your vacation. Personal experiences tend to have a high reinforcing value compared to simply having a larger amount of money at the end of the month, use this to your company's favor to motivate those who help the engine of growth!
Travel coupons: companies like Airbnb usually offer their employees travel coupons worth $2,000 a year, it's a pretty generous amount, let's face it, consider motivating your best salespeople with a coupon like this.
Hotel voucher: Not every hotel is in fact expensive and inaccessible, many offer daily rates at very competitive prices and end up being a cheaper incentive for companies due to their high motivational power, the great tip of this gift as an incentive, is for the company to look for different hotels that deliver unique experiences at cheaper prices. Amazing video hotels are playing on Instagram Reels all the time, if you check the hotel's page, you'll find that many of them charge prices so cheap that the prices seem unfair!
Cruises: Another great experience as a form of financial incentive is cruise trips, although the rooms are small, all the attractions and activities offered on this "huge boat" transform a weekend into a period of relaxation and wonderful gastronomic experiences. Understand how the profile of your sales team is configured, if the professionals are mostly heads of families with small children or teenagers, look for cruises that offer the idea of a “family trip” as a gift, if they are young singles, trips focused on having fun with lots of parties may be a better option.
Tickets for shows or events
Who doesn't like going to see their favorite artist's show or enjoying an event that only happens once a year? Offering this type of financial incentive, in addition to motivating your employees, also increases the chances of improving your sales team's coexistence, as they may discover that they like the same attractions or even be fans of the same team!
Sports event tickets
Tickets to a concert by trendy artists
Tickets for different events such as exhibitions on specific topics (technology, reading, gastronomy, etc…)
Product awards
Everyone loves to win a product that is hot or has high quality, distributing these physical products is one of the most fun ways to motivate your sales team to extract their full potential.
Tech gadgets such as smartphones and early adopter products are not yet popular. Home entertainment items like a coffee maker, a high-quality speaker, a 4K television, and even an air conditioner!
Here's the tip: try to find out what products your team wants the most, and don't put expensive products that don't make your team's eyes shine with emotion. One of the strengths of physical products is that they become a reminder, like a trophy, of your achievements, increasing your engagement and proximity to the organization.
Create an exchange system
For many salespeople, money or gifts like physical products and travel are not attractive enough. The greatest pleasure may simply be additional paid time off, allowing for more time to rest and enjoy time with family. Create an exchange system, where the best professionals or those who beat the goals can exchange their additional points for more time at home:
Extra vacation days: make all the effort of the best ones turn into one more rest week in the year and still get paid.
Relief of hours: Sometimes someone on your sales team simply wants to leave work earlier for an entire week, so that the opportunity for him to exchange efficient results in more time to cook and rest.