We are approached by many companies who are looking to grow their revenue line, and in the process of understanding their approach to business development one question is universally asked – “How Do We Motivate Our Sales Team?” Sales Team Motivation benefits greatly from Inbound Marketing.
First off- you cannot really motivate anyone. Motivation comes from within an individual. A person’s preference of behavior, both adapted and natural, really determines this. Having said that, we have enjoyed working with many good leaders, who have inspired a team of people to accomplish great things.
Second- a sales team is a group of individuals is not a collective or group mind set. Our workflow always involves the application of scientific online assessments to understand each sales person’s unique behavior and their motivators. When we understand a person’s preferences we can build a plan that aligns with that and truly engage their future drive to succeed… and drive greater results.
What drives motivation?
For some people it is purely money (and we screen for this especially where we are seeking people to fill commission based sales positions for a client). There are several other motivators that can be measured using our assessment process. EG: You seldom see altruism as a motivator in business development profiles. So an understanding of a person’s unique behavioral and motivational preference can be a powerful dataset.
We also have an effective sales evaluation assessment, which measures a person’s understanding of the entire sales process. This valuable dataset lets us identify where a salesperson’s strengths lay, as well as where they might need additional coaching. It can be applied to an existing team or a potential new hire.
In other words, a plan that is broadly based is always going to be less effective than one that is built from the individual team member’s motivational perspective.
Give Them the Best Support to Really Drive Results
We then take this process one step further, by helping make the overall sales effort more efficient through the deployment of an inbound marketing process. If you want to see the batting averages of a sales organization skyrocket change the paradigm of cold calling into one where they are speaking to highly interested opportunities that, people that have the BANT necessary to insure success.
We use the term BANT a lot. This is an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline and all four of these conditions must exist for any salesperson to close a sale. Inexperienced sales people invest a lot of time in the sales process to learn one (or more) of these factors isn’t present and results in an investment of time and talent but no desired result. Experienced sales people know ways to navigate (or argue) their way around these factors but it can be very time consuming and not always fruitful.
Motivationally speaking, when a sales force knows the odds for success are higher with every phone call or email inquiry (because the inquiry has a high BANT probability) they approach the sales call more confidently. It is a lot of like athletics- players get into a cycle of success and that feeds more confidence and that usually leads to more success. Sales people also go through periods of ups and downs based on their close rates or the quality of the orders they are generating. A well orchestrated inbound marketing process can create this environment, one that drives better inquiries, improved lead conversion, and generates more success for the sales team… and the company.
Perhaps You Should Change Your Approach to Marketing?
With the proper application of a well defined plan along with a robust inbound marketing platform (we recommend Hubspot® and use it ourselves) you can consolidate almost all of your marketing endeavors into a single software-driven process. The advantages to this approach are:
- You will extend the reach of your company’s value proposition
- Your target audience will understand your company culture
- The value your company brings to your clients will be broadly and repetitively understood
- You will be able to quantify which tactics are most successful and where to shift your investment of time and talent
Perhaps best of all you will share that across a blog and different social media applications automatically and seamlessly. You will now have the ability to:
- Create and/or enhance the awareness in your brand that rivals the best public relations tactics
- Repetitively establish your credibility
- Provide opportunities for interested parties to become qualified prospects
- Maintain a high level of engagement over time
- Understand where in the sales process your investment in training and continuing education needs to be applied
Get the Facts
We have a comprehensive e-book that illustrates the inbound marketing process in great detail, and would love to share it with you. To obtain your copy, with no strings attached and no sales person phone calls, just complete the short form, above, right.
And if you would like to schedule an initial assessment of your current website and see an inbound marketing quotient just drop us an email and request a complimentary consultation.
