What motivates Sales Reps?
Posted by Richard Elmes on May 4, 2008
Sales Managers spend countless hours trying to figure out what motivates their Sales Staff.
Recently I answered the following question on LindedIn:
What motivates sales professionals?
If you boil what motivates anyone to take action (not just sales professionals) you get one of two answers.
Avoiding Pain or Gaining Pleasure.
So the key for managers is to identify what is painful or pleasurable for each individual.
This will depend on a number of factors such as their personality style, age (or position in life), cultural background and personal goals.
This is a lot of figure out, but luckily there is a short cut.
The short cut is having a conversation with your employee and simply asking them a couple questions.
“What does success look like for you?” and “Describe for me what your perfect day would look like?”
Their answers to these questions will tell you a lot about what motivates them personally.
Armed with this knowledge, a leader can adjust how they work with their employee in order to achieve successful outcomes.
