How to engineer changes in sales behaviours and practices that increase sales productivity, effectiveness, and growth - part 3.
Annual sales training is good for a boost in motivation and sales team morale yet in isolation, it has little impact on behaviours or sales growth.
There are three aspects of improvement in sales growth. They are methods, sales skills, and morale.
This is part 3 of the article, about improving sales team morale.
Sales Team Morale for Sales Growth
How people feel about their work has a huge impact on how well they do it.
So the third way to develop business momentum and sales growth is to put people first. If you asked your team members to give a score out of 10 for how much your organisation cares about its people, they would all have an instant opinion. Dozens of small actions communicate how people are valued in an organisation.
Here are a few things that can be done to boost morale:
1. Improve Your Appraisal Process
It's a mistake to rely entirely on sales performance scorecards and commission payments to motivate salespeople.
How often do you conduct a motivating one-to-one appraisal? The best practice is to do this four times a year using a consistent, non-judgemental process.
If you don't know how to make appraisals motivating, get some training. We can help with this. Learn more.
It's a continual challenge for managers to find the time to conduct performance appraisals properly, even once a year. Yet if done effectively, it is the most reliable way of demonstrating that an organisation cares about its people. Morale is closely tied to a sense of being valued.
2. Provide Professional Development Opportunities
If you have given some attention to the previous two sections, you will have picked up numerous practical, low-cost or no-cost ways to do this. In addition, if you have an effective, motivating appraisal process, professional and career development will be an integral part of it.
3. Foster a Positive Work Environment
Organise regular team-building activities that are fun and encourage bonding among team members. These can be work-related or purely social. As mentioned in the skills section, this has other benefits too.
Promote transparency in all things. Involving staff in decision-making is a powerful way to do this and it encourages the development of problem-solving skills.
4. Set Realistic Goals
Ensure that sales targets are challenging yet achievable. Setting unrealistic goals is the fastest way to demotivate a sales team. Use clear, transparent metrics to measure performance, and ensure everyone understands how they are evaluated.
5. Provide the Right Tools and Resources
This needn't be expensive. Good governance, competent management, and professional sales enablement are more effective levers than gadgets and technology. Try our free sales enablement assessment to see what you might be able to add.
6. Encourage Work-Life Balance
This is a complicated ask. What managers should do to encourage the mental well-being of salespeople will vary significantly from person to person. I remember well three advocations from my first sales management training course:
- Ask more of yourself than anyone else would.
- Ask more of your people than anyone else would.
- Take a personal interest.
You have to take a personal interest to know what is needed for each team member.
7. Solicit and Act on Feedback
Have regular one-on-one check-ins with team members to understand their challenges, needs, and suggestions for improvement. Demonstrate that you value their feedback by acknowledging what they say and taking it into account. You may not be able to act on all suggestions or requests yet you can show that they have been heard and that you have given the feedback or suggestions due consideration.
8. Lead by Example
The mood and behaviour of the leader can set the tone for the entire team. Hold yourself up to the highest standards. Demonstrate integrity and fairness in all your dealings, reinforcing a culture of trust and respect.
9. Celebrate Individual and Team Success
In sales, this is usually easy to do. A natural boost percolates a team when sales are made, targets are reached, and expectations are exceeded. It is much harder to create celebrations when sales are down, yet top managers find a way.
10. Personalise Motivation
Take the trouble to understand the individual intrinsic motivations of team members. While we all need money, most salespeople are not money-motivated. I say this based on having thousands of salespeople complete a simple self-assessment. In a meta-study, I identified eleven distinct intrinsic work motivators and used them to create a work motivators assessment. It is free to take here.
Boosting sales team morale should not be a one-time effort but a continuous process that requires attention and adaptation. By implementing these ideas, you can create a more motivated, engaged, and high-performing sales team.
The task of establishing a high-performance sales team, establishing business momentum, and igniting sales growth is complicated and challenging. In this article, I have set out a three-pronged approach. If you can leverage all three elements by optimising methods, facilitating continuous skills development, and maximising morale you can be certain that there will be few other teams as effective in your selling environment.
Article by Clive Miller
If you are looking for ways to maintain or improve sales team morale, we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. We will be pleased to learn about your needs or discuss some options. Alternatively, email custserv@salessense.co.uk or use the contact form here.
