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How to Improve Employee Productivity…… Sales Motivation Tips…

Sales Motivation plays a very important role in boosting work productivity and efficiency. Yet, it is often ignored by management. The ways for motivation can be different, but the ultimate goal is extracting the best work efficiency. What measures should be taken to improve work practices in an organization so that employees give their best at the workplace.

As a sales manager or team leads, you can influence your team’s sales performance in two aspects: Their existing and achievable skill set (what they can do), and their motivational level (how repeatedly or passionately they do it).

Before we come up with any strategy to help our employees emotionally or technically we should understand their performance history and other personal information to create a more targeted training session for each segment of employees.

In many big organisations, bulk training is provided to every employee in one department which leaves very less window for personal interest and often results in attrition and unhappy employees.

Some of the ways which will help in improving the overall productivity of employees are as below:

Give Recognition To Team Members

Give your teammates recognition, a feeling that their work and contribution to the organization is highly recognized and appreciated. They are an important pillar of the organization. It is often found that self-realization is found more motivating than any other factor and motivates the team to be more productive. Thinking out of the box, while rewarding the best performer in the team goes way beyond than just handing over some monetary rewards.

As we all know sales job can be a tuff work to on. By giving a day off for the best performer, who has worked day and night for a deal will feel more motivating to the employee than just handing a small cheque for his hard work.

Many employees may not turn into a best performer from mediocrity by just giving rewards, but providing these small motivating actions on a regular basis will help employees to feel required and wanted for the jobs they do and help them to perform with best of their caliber.

Give respect to each and every employee

All employees should be given respect, irrespective of their work profile and designation. If you give respect, you will earn respect, and employees will be more positively driven to work for you and the organization.

Understanding each other’s limitation is one of the best ways to work as a team. As rightly said – “To get the respect you should first learn to give one” . As sales managers and group heads, we should make sure every employee should be treated with the best of professional ways.

Help employees strike a correct work life balance

Showing your sensibility towards personal responsibilities is very important for any sales manager. In cases of important family issues, health emergencies, children etc, managers should allow some stretch from the regular schedule. This type of thoughtfulness is worth admiring and motivates employees. In today’s world of technology and smartphones, employees should have options to work through mobile sales apps or online web based application which allows them to complete their work on the move. Also, there should be no limitations of location or timelines to complete work items.

In many on-premises business models, employees need to be available in office premises to complete their work completely, which causes a lot of imbalance between work and personal life. Also, with flexible work culture employees can work on their assignments during holidays and festivals and enjoy their personal space as well. These facilities goes a long way to keep employees motivated and satisfied to work for an organisation.

Listen To Your employee’s suggestions

Listening is an important factor. While meetings and discussions, take suggestions from your team mates, give importance to their suggestions and implement them if that is a value addition. As sales heads, we should be open to take feedback and understand employee’s concerns on their job related or other problems which they probably would like to share with you.

Understanding and having a friendly relationship with your team is the first step to having an open work culture and create a healthy environment for employees to work.

Be Responsive

Approachability is another important way to keep your employees content to your organization. Many people agree that employees generally don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses.

In many cases, managers are either cold or not approachable for a discussion which increases discomfort and unhappiness with the team members. As managers, you should respond to your teammates, attend their phone calls and messages, don’t ignore any option to strike a chord of communication with them. These small gestures will strengthen the connectivity between you and your team and they will be more sincere towards the job.

Set goals

As we all know, deadlines are a very efficient way to get things done from anyone whose incentives are tagged to every deadline they meet. Many sales heads and managers, setup daily, weekly, monthly or six monthly targets and deadlines to meet which will help to not only have a common understanding of the expectation from each employee but it also helps in providing a motivation factor for the team to meet a certain amount of requirement from their work.

Give regular feedback

In many organisations, employees and managers often have a personal meeting or oncalls to understand their growth curve on a regular basis. These meetings are more of a handshake talk where both parties will review the work being done by employee and foresee it with proper feedback which will be helpful for employees to continue or perform better in upcoming assignments. It also creates a transparent workplace for employees and help them to understand and share their pain areas and get appreciated for regular work they do on a daytoday basis.

Conclusion

As quoted by Colin Powell – “ There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”As employers we often forget the smallest but the most efficient part of our success- our employees. Keeping them happy and satisfied is the best way we can continue to achieve our business goals.