3 Effective Strategies to Motivate your Sales Team for the Back-to-Business Season

Similar to a reboot period, the back-to-business season comes with its share of challenges. Your sales team returns from vacation, certainly rested, but also less focused. For some, motivation will be hard to regain: indeed, the new objectives and processes implemented during the summer do not always gain the sales team’s buy-in.

However, the back-to-business season remains the ideal time to boost your team members’ engagement: here are 3 essential best practices to achieve it.

1. Assess Your Sales Team’s Motivation (and Ways to Improve It)

Your team members’ motivation depends on variable factors; thus, the ways to improve it can change from one salesperson to another.

For this back-to-business season to be marked by engagement, you must strive to understand the sources of motivation for each of your team members. And the best way to do that is still to… ask! Ask your salespeople directly: what motivates them? What drives them to achieve and even exceed their goals?

This question should be asked individually, for example, during an interview. However, allow your team members to reflect on their answer by having them prepare for your individual interview beforehand.

2. Adjust Your Management Style According to Your Sales Force

Once you have determined the sources of motivation for your team members, you can opt for a management style that suits them. However, you can encourage them to reflect on the terms of this management by asking them:

• If the frequency of meetings and the quality of feedback suits them;
• If the sales challenges, training, and coaching sessions match their expectations and/or needs;
• If the set objectives seem relevant to their activity;
• How you could improve your management style.

Again, these questions must be asked individually so that the answers obtained are not influenced by the rest of the team. In this way, you will also show your salespeople that you are working in their interest while restoring the dreaded individual interview to its true function: helping each of your team members progress.

3. Define Progressive Sales Objectives

Overly ambitious sales objectives can discourage your team from the first days of the back-to-business season. On the contrary, if you adopt short-term objectives (daily, weekly), you will allow your team members to gradually get back into the swing of things and get involved, without feeling overwhelmed by the race for performance.

To get your sales team up to full speed from the back-to-business season, plan its objectives over long periods, from 6 to 12 months. This overview will then allow you to break down these objectives into several stages, which you will present to your team members from the back-to-business season. Do not hesitate to transform these stages into sales challenges, both fun and motivating for your team.

All the best practices presented above aim for one single objective: to create a true bond of trust with, but also within, your sales team. It is above all this relationship of trust, founded on transparency and empathy, that will allow you to engage your team members and maintain their motivation from the back-to-business season!

To learn more, download your white paper: Sales Challenge – The Keys to Success

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