We drive to the office in a 2017 sedan, whip out an iPhone 7, and settle into work like our grandfathers. While tools and technologies have come a long way since the 20th century, the mindset to maximize them has not. For the most part, companies are going about business as usual. The biggest contrast you’ll find is often the color palette on the break room 4K TV.
These additions are useful, but without a greater transformation for context, they remain just that—useful. Pair them with cutting-edge management, however, and your employees thrive. Most unproductivity can be traced back to a lack of motivation, which in turn traces back to mismanagement. That’s a good thing: the path to record sales starts with you.
We’re here to help you kick-start that transformation. Your eBook is broken into five parts:
Part I: Motivating to Maximize
Part II: Motivating to Retain
Part III: Motivating… How?
Part IV: Motivating in Practice (Case Study)
Part V: Ready to Motivate
While this concise guide is designed to launch your sales force’s journey to indispensable, know that many of the same principles, strategies, and tactics can be applied to other departments. Treat it as an introduction to the mindset your people need to succeed. What follows is up to you. Let’s get started.
If you find yourself pondering, “Where’s my next sales star?” you’re asking the wrong question. Everyone wants the best, but few realize stars are made not born. Good recruitment secures a pool of talent that still needs to be tailored to the demands of your organization. While HR weeds out the lackluster, star creation cannot depend on them alone. They’ve provided you the material. Now use what you have.
Maximizing your reps’ potential requires new age thinking. Old incentives like commissions and all-inclusive trips to Cancun don’t cut it anymore. In fact, science shows they backfire. Carrot-and-stick motivators suit straightforward, A-to-B objectives. They can prove effective for blue-collar and even some white-collar jobs that haven’t evolved beyond the 20th century.
But those professions are dwindling. Where time was once highly correlated with production (how many bolts can you weld in an hour), the same rules do not apply to the abstract demands of most modern professions. Financial bonuses narrow focus and impede critical thinking required for complex problems.
The second reason carrots aren’t doing the job is the new generation upending the traditional social order. Did we really think that millennials would refrain from challenging office culture, too? They expect to make a difference. Offer a monetary incentive or a chance to “change the world,” and chances are they’ll pause.
These digital natives have been saturated with constant feedback since childhood to achieve their lofty ambitions, and they crave the same when they walk through your doors. These affirmations in and of themselves drive performance. If you want to engage an employee and customer pool of 1.8 billion millennials, it’s back to the drawing board.
Before you lament this disruptive mindset, consider that it has the power to motivate more than just your youngest sales reps. Which leads us to the elephant in the boardroom: How does a company adapt to take advantage of this revolution?
Continue reading and launch your sales force transformation with your free eBook:
