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Salespeople are fascinating, at least to me.
I mean, managing them can feel like herding cats sometimes and they're all different,
right?
But what do you think really motivates salespeople?
I'm guessing money is the first thing that comes to mind?
When you look at many sales management structures, sales compensation is a number one lever that
they tend to place the most emphasis on.
Commission levels and accelerators and incentive trips, things like that.
But is money really the top motivator?
Let's investigate this a little bit more.
If you haven't read it yet, pick up a copy of “Drive” by Daniel Pink.
It's a great book and in it, he uses a lot of social behavior research to pretty much
prove that compensation is not the number one motivator for anyone - including salespeople.
Remember, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs basically says that the lower needs have to be met first.
For most salespeople in America today, an income of between 50 and 100,000 dollars is
sufficient to meet their basic needs and above that every incremental dollar is weighed against
the effort necessary to be able to gain it.
This is what economists call the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns.
Now, keep in mind that your reps won't tell you this.
In fact, many of them probably aren't even aware of what their true motivations are,
so how can you discover them?
You may want to ask them and for a lot of reps what you might hear is they like contests
and incentives, particularly if the result is affirmation and praise for them.
Sellers, like most people, want to feel that they are part of a team and that their contributions
matter and so contests and other types of incentives in which they receive affirmation
and praise tend to go a long ways.
In fact, sellers will often leave a high-paying job where they're not valued in order to work
for a company that may pay less, but they actually feel like their contributions matter.
Why don't you read “Drive” by Daniel Pink and send me an email, let me know what you
think.
For more Sandler sales tips and insights, sign up for my newsletter, email me, go to
my YouTube channel or - better yet - if you're in downtown Portland, visit my training center
is my guest.
Good selling.