Do You Know What Really Motivates Your Inside Sales Team?
Over the years I’ve benefited from wearing many hats in the inside sales game. While I’ve been humbled on many occasions, it certainly has allowed me the perspective of seeing the job from a variety of angles. I wish I could say that I have it all figured out at this point, but I have got a long ways to go. I know its cliché and I’ve said it before, but any good employee or boss knows that it’s never time to stop learning. Any time I was naïve enough to think I had it all figured out, it inevitably bit me in the arse.
When I first moved into client operations role here at AG, it was important for me to understand what motivated the people I was responsible for. Most of my experience prior to AG was with bosses who seemed to make a half hearted effort into understanding what made their team tick. To me it seemed blatantly obvious that they were just going through the motions, yet they felt they were pulling it off. As a result the culture generally tended to suffer. Let’s be realistic, outside of our immediate family we spend much of our time with our co-workers. Inevitably we get to know one another fairly well and over time, and no matter how smooth you THINK you are, people are going to eventually see your true colors. To me the only simple solution is to be a straight shooter….but I digress.
Once I was able to pull out the things that matter most to my folks, it made my job that much easier. It may seem like an oversimplification, but I made it a priority to focus in on what motivated them to walk in the door every day. For some it was their passion for sales, others were motivated by the possibility of advancement into management while others emphasized that money was the primary motivator. All seemed to fall in line with what I had expected, but the one common theme that jumped out at me during our discussions was the importance of culture. Whether it was said directly or indirectly, every business development rep understood how important it was, especially in a cold calling environment.
Fortunately for me, AG’s cofounders understood the importance of culture as well. In our infancy, they always took the time to sit down with the handful us (crammed into small office above a bakery) to understand what our goals were for the week/month/quarter/year. At the time I had just assumed that it was their way of aligning goals and clearly communicating to us what their expectations were. In hindsight I’ve realized how important those meetings were in helping to define our culture and how much they helped to motivate me. Evidently so much so that I stole their ideas when I started running my own team.
Obviously we all have ulterior motives in sales… we want to make money! It seems to me, without fail, an unhealthy work environment does nothing but negatively affect the motivation of any sales team. Many companies I’ve worked for attempted to turn the culture around by running contest after sales contest along with a summer, fall, winter and spring company outing. Guess what, people were still miserable.
A positive culture means more than just a “fun” place to come to work at every day. It starts with genuinely taking an interest in what motivates your team. That in my mind is where your culture starts. Again, it may seem overly simple but if you start there you’ll be surprised by how successful your team will be as a result.