Breaking down the fundamentals of sales we can see where low energy and motivation can adversely affect parts of the sales process and construct significant countermeasures.

Motivation

Motivation itself may be at the core of the issue. There are numerous schools of thought on this. Motivation is the core of pushing the sale. Motivation does not exist. It is just a label for our behaviors. Regardless, the concept of motivation is one of action toward a goal. But, motivating a sales team can be difficult.

This is something low morale can adversely affect to a staggering extent. Here are several ways how to motivate a sales team.

Create Deeper Value

Whether it is from a higher purpose, a sense of community within their team, or even a vision for a better position and brighter future, motivation to action comes from a deep place. By finding value agents and servicing them toward the team’s individual needs you can harness a much more powerful response.

It is unlikely that many of the people on the sales team aspired to be in this place as children and even less likely to aspire to remain here into their final days. Truly motivating a sales team stems from a deeper sense of purpose and calling. Think about what the team needs. What are the team’s individual callings?

Make People Feel Good

Make people feel wanted, valued, and respected. Heck, make people feel special. It does not matter so much what the nuance of the term is so long as you can tailor what you do to make each individual feel good. That feeling of reward from doing a job well is all that many individuals need to propel themselves forward.

It could be as simple as allowing performing salespeople to have greater involvement in decision-making. They are important and their opinion matters. It may take the form of a flexible work schedule. They are important and their time matters. Compensate them fairly and offer them growth opportunities and autonomy in their providential future. They are important and the work they are doing matters.

Create the Right Environment

This involves building the right sales team. However, once you have collected that sales team with all the proper moving parts and people you need to begin fostering your environment. This will in part be a piece of company culture. That means the demeanor will be tilted in the direction of whatever job you are aiming to accomplish. One could presume that a professional football team will have a different mentality than a bakery. Maybe not, I don’t know.

Regardless then it is your job to take that group and define where you need to be within the space of that industry. This depends largely on the skills and demeanor of the people you have hired. Cultivate the environment that works best for them.

Concise, Clear, Consistent/Confident/Complete

It seems there are believably endless amounts of “3 C’s of ______.” Well here is another. Technically three others, because ironically “experts” are unclear on what the final C actually is. No matter, I can break down all five of them and how a lack of motivation can impact each along the sales line.

Concise, Clear, Consistent, Confident, and Complete. These are the three (five) C’s of communication. They exist to streamline conversation and messaging so that they can be held in high regard throughout the duration of the sales opportunity. Sales mean communication.

Concise

This is keeping the conversation inbounds. It does not necessarily mean that the conversation itself needs to stay “on point.” However, it does mean that only things that help the conversation need to be said. Concise, means letting the prospect speak. Then using your mind to return their problem to the solution that what you are selling can solve.

A lack of motivation in this area could result in the salespeople not listening and understanding the prospective client or failing to keep their pitches highly efficient.

Clear

Clarity is the baseline of understanding. If the client cannot understand you then you will have difficulty selling to them. You must be understood as a salesperson. Being concise will help with this. Conciseness should keep it simple. Simplicity acts as a favor to clarity. Clarity is paramount to being understood by another. It could be favorably argued that sales and communication as a whole are most fully reliant on this one, singular aspect. You must be understood.

The lack of motivation could affect this by instilling apathy in the salesperson to be understood. If the salesperson is not understood and does not aspire to be understood, the result will likely be flubbed sales. Even with potential eager clients sales will fall short.

Consistent

Get the idea across. Increase familiarity and conversational rhythm with having intermittent “touchstones.” Fair enough? Being consistent establishes confidence within the prospect which is what this driving part of sales is all about. Confidence and reliance within the client’s eyes.

Again, no motivation here will take form in the conversation going off the track. The salesperson will likely not keep it to a point. From there the lack of flow will likely stunt the sale for anyone unsure of their desire to purchase the product or service.

Confident

This element serves the same function as “consistency.” It serves to create confidence in the potential customer. While you are trying to sell the customer on the product. The savvy salesperson is trying to sell the individual on their own confidence throughout the conversation. High-end selling is the transfer of emotion from the salesperson to the client.

Belief in oneself commonly lacks with loss of motivation and in regard to confidence. The lack of motivation here is one of the most apparent as this is one of the exposing elements of the idea of “selling” someone on something. That energy and verve is once again paramount and a lack of motivation heavily affects that.

Completeness

Pull it all together. Completeness is the “trial-ready” version of your pitch and style. Likewise, this involves taking the other person’s perspective and fear’s into account. From there it asks how to tailor your messaging to best work off of that. Completeness additionally asks that you make no assumptions within that and are understanding and open to the parts of the conversation that may change the course of the plan. From there be able to review and fully break down the natural elements at play during the process.

No motivation here will likely take the form of disorganization and scattered thinking. Like “confidence” there will be the feeling of a missing element. Which is why these two are so often exchanged. They provide the unspoken backing of the other areas of good communication.

The post Low Morale? How to Motivate Your Sales Team appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What do business leaders say to help keep themselves motivated?

Innovation

“You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.”
Marissa Mayer, cofounder of Lumi Labs and former president and CEO of Yahoo!

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat.”
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and CEO of Leanin.org

“If you don’t innovate fast, disrupt your industry, disrupt yourself, you’ll be left behind.”
John Chambers, chairman emeritus of Cisco and CEO of JC2 Ventures

“We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.”
Larry Page, co-founder of Google

Focus on People

“Customers should be number one, employees number two, and then only your shareholders come at number three.”
Jack Ma, co-founder and former executive chair of Alibaba Group

“Transparency within your organization is the difference between having a business that’s simply running, and having one that’s moving in one direction.”
Michael Riedijk, CEO of PageFreezer Software and director of West Coast Ventures and Lucent BioSciences

“If you’re competitor focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”
Jeff Bezos, founder, CEO, and president of Amazon

“It’s very difficult to design something for someone if you have no empathy.”
Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr and Slack

Skills

“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.”
Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, co-founder of Tesla, and co-founder of PayPal 

“Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation.”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

“For me, it matters that we drive technology as an equalizing force, as an enabler for everyone around the world.”
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google

“Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.”
Reed Hastings, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix

Personal Development

“Work takes on new meaning when you feel you are pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it’s just a job, and life is too short for that.”
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

“You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.”
Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies

“Desperation sometimes drives innovation.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber

Trends and Tips

“Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter

“One way to understand human progress is to look at how technology has made products and services — once reserved for the elite — progressively more accessible and affordable.”
Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal and chairman of Symantec

“Growth and comfort do not coexist.”
Ginni Rometty, president, chair and CEO of IBM

“Do you feel good in your role? If yes, that’s the perfect time for you to experiment with something new, to get out of your comfort zone.”
Pierre Nanterme, former chairman and CEO of Accenture

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison, inventor 

Beat the business blues by keeping these motivational quotes close by.

There’s no one better to learn from than leaders who have been there and done that. Motivational quotes mean more when the source is someone who’s gone through the frustrations we experience and come out the other side.

The post 20 Motivational Quotes from Technology Leaders appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.