When your business goes through a crisis, productivity of your salesforce is the first thing that gets impacted. According to Marketing Wisdom, 92% of salespeople give up after four rejections. With recent developments, businesses are hesitant to make new purchases and are in cost-cutting mode. With multiple rejections, sales motivation takes a dent and your salespeople feel dejected when they are not able to meet targets.
While these factors are not under your control, you can still demonstrate some quality leadership at this time. You can motivate your sales team to help them tide over a difficult period and up their sales game. Here are some sales motivation techniques to help you achieve that.
Sales Motivation Techniques
1. Lead by example
The first thing you should focus on improving sales motivation during any crisis is yourself.
Are you thinking about how to motivate your sales team during team meetings? Are your current actions going to positively impact your teammates? It is very important that you become a leading example for everyone and show them how to adapt to this new reality.
You can achieve this in many different ways.
- Talk about the team’s achievements in meetings and highlight good work
- Set up one-on-one meetings with all your salespeople and identify challenges
- Invite ideas from the team on what can be done, as they know the prospects and the situation better
- Reassure your sales team that the current condition will improve and not wait for others to act first
It is up to you to determine which actions will have a chain reaction on the productivity of your team.
Your sales team will feel motivated to keep working as long as they see that you are trying hard along with everybody else.
2. Focus on your common goals
As a sales leader, you should steer the team in the right direction and provide them with adaptable goals at all times, even during a crisis.
You can easily talk about your sales goals through your team meetings or during one-on-one conversations. Being able to adjust to new situations might also come with the need to make adjustments to your current goals.
Sales goals play a major role in motivating your sales team. Goals can and should be changed in order for everyone to be able to continue their work undisturbed and without panic.
- Ensure the team goals are attainable
- Be empathetic while setting goals in a crisis
- If you push your team too much, they might fall through the cracks
- In a crisis, the situation may change every few days, so tracking goals every day is a good way to adapt.
Focus on dealing with everyone’s questions and making sure everyone understands how you need to make adjustments in order for a company’s survival.
3. Adjust your sales messaging to the new situation
Something that might help your sales team work better and be more effective during a crisis is adjusting the message your team communicates to prospects.
Your sales reps will have to work on reassuring your customers and make sure that everyone understands that this is a temporary situation.
For example, during the COVID-19 situation, it is important that your promotional emails are tailored to the needs of your customer base and show empathy. If more people are online, then your teams should factor in social selling, and not just focus on cold-calling.
This will help your team also feel a lot better about the whole ordeal and have another reason to reach out to prospects.
4. Continue with your meetings as usual
No matter the situation your team has found itself in there is never an excuse to stop holding your team meetings as usual. Your daily huddles and catch ups can impact sales motivation and help you point the needle in the right direction for your team. The best way to do this is by holding regular Skype or Zoom team meetings.
You can make an adjustment and schedule them for a time where everyone will be available, especially for your remote workers. Make it a priority to discuss your achievements and see how far the team has come.
Meetings offer your team a chance to discuss any challenges that salespeople might have encountered.
Everyone is able to safely speak their minds and offer solutions and this is exactly what you need when encountering any sort of crisis.
- Invite new ideas during team calls
- Suggest tactics and measures that all salespeople can take during trying times
- If prospects push back during a crisis, ask your salespeople not to hard-sell your products
- It is better to focus on the long-term relationship with the customer than just push for a sale when the world is going through a crisis
5. Put together a schedule everyone will have to follow
Putting together a schedule that your team will have to follow during a time of crisis is the perfect motivator for continuing to work hard.
What you are aiming to create is a sense of urgency, where deadlines still apply and everyone has to complete their responsibilities in time.
This schedule can apply to a lot of different things with regards to their work.
You can schedule things such as your weekly meetings and certain deadlines that will be visible for everyone.
This will remind everyone of what they need to complete and be a good sales motivation move to achieve their co-workers’ results.
6. Establish good communication
A big part of leading a successful sales team is having a united team. When a crisis strikes, a united team will not panic but be able to go to one another for advice and guidance.
Good communication goes beyond holding weekly meetings in difficult times. Being able to reach out to you or to other co-workers is what is most important when a crisis is present. It is up to you to make sure that everyone in your team feels comfortable with reaching out to their peers for help by setting up the right remote working tools.
If you have not already, you should pick a messenger app that will be compatible with everyone’s devices. Emails can be great for formal communication, but when it comes to handling a crisis your messages need to be more personal. Therefore, a messaging app can break the communication barrier and make the exchange of opinions and information a lot easier at times like these.
7. Remind your employees of their hard work
No matter what comes your way, you need to make sure that your team never forgets all the things they have achieved so far. Difficult times will come and go and there is no way to predict when something out of your hand will go wrong. At the same time, though, this by no means cancels all the hard work your team has put in.
You should make it a priority to remind your team of their accomplishments during meetings and motivate them to continue working hard to overcome this.
Such situations will only strengthen the bond between a team and prepare its members for future problems. Their hard work will serve as a reminder of their accomplishments for the future.
8. Give and receive feedback
Last but not least, it is also important to make giving and receiving feedback a priority at such times. This doesn’t only have to take place during meetings, but whenever someone sees fit or needs advice on any issue.
Being able to receive feedback without creating issues has a lot to do with your team’s culture and bond. This is exactly why you should be the first one to ask for feedback and expect honest answers from your team.
When a crisis is taking place, people can make rushed decisions. Giving your team the right feedback can help everyone adapt to the situation faster and improve the way they handle things.
This will not only make everyone more productive but it will also motivate them to make drastic changes to their sales tactics and approach.
9. Surviving difficult situations as a team
Whether your sales are being affected by a global pandemic, some missed goals, or a budgeting or funding mishap, it is important to remember that this is not permanent. Through hard work, sales motivation and sticking to your goals, you will be able to turn it around.
At the end of the day, such situations can strengthen the bond between your salespeople and make everyone learn how to work under pressure. Sales motivation plays a key factor in boosting the morale and impacting performance of your sales teams.
Finding the positive aspects of such difficulties can help motivate your sales team and improve their working styles so they know that the show must go on.
Dorian Martin is a professional content creator for GrabMyEssay. He has a passion for creating educational content for his readers and he often creates guest posts for platforms such as WowGrade and SupremeDissertations, where he is able to offer his advice on various topics. In his spare time, he enjoys reading books and spending time with his dog.
