The Newest Way to Think about Motivating Your Salespeople

By Selling Power Editors

The following interview was conducted by Selling Power Editors with motivation expert Miguel Yacobi, CEO of ThinkSmartOne. Download ThinkSmartOne’s complimentary e-book, Salesforce.com is Not a Garbage Can: Unleash the Power of Salesforce!

Selling Power (SP): Why do sales leaders find it so difficult to effectively motivate salespeople?
Miguel Yacobi (MY): We’ve been thinking about sales motivation for almost 20 years. We’re really transforming how companies use motivation because we think of it in a holistic manner. Rather than just rewarding various activities, we look at a variety of elements that can be used to motivate desired behaviors, including adopting business standards, adhering to security protocols, or meeting sales goals.

It isn’t difficult to track the activity of 500 salespeople using a modern CRM, but convincing those 500 salespeople to use the CRM – much less use it correctly – is a lot harder. Additionally, you add an extra layer of complexity when you are trying to track and reward behaviors such as reporting phishing emails as part of a security initiative, or taking breaks to exercise for wellness, or attending training sessions, all by tapping into lots of different data sources, including your CRM, point-of-sale systems, and big-business intelligence systems.

So integrating multiple systems and both defining and sharing multiple motivational KPIs across the organization is exactly what we have been developing over the past several years.

SP: Why do some sales teams consider Salesforce.com to be a so-called “garbage can?”
MY: CRM is a major investment for companies, because you pay not just for the setup but also for monthly usage. If that CRM system is missing data, you’re not getting full ROI.

Implementing and using a CRM requires training and behavior change at every level of the organization.

The CRM stops being a useful tool when the correct data is missing. Reporting becomes misleading, deal tracking becomes inefficient, data becomes unreliable, etc. This is when the CRM becomes a data garbage can, and, if put garbage in, you get garbage out. Salesforce is a great tool when used the right way, but, when it is used incorrectly, Salesforce becomes a garbage can.

What we help companies do is set up motivational programs to help the end users of Salesforce have a better approach to usage of the system. Again, motivation is not just about getting salespeople to close deals. It’s more often about getting them to follow a process, like updating or cleaning CRM data.

SP: Do any of your customers use your solution to help with Salesforce adoption?
MY: Yes. Our ultimate goal is to help salespeople sell more, and you need Salesforce adoption to do that. Between 30 to 40 percent of our customers use our platform to increase Salesforce adoption.

A CRM is a tool that helps good salespeople become great salespeople, but not all salespeople see a CRM in this way. You need to train people to show them that Salesforce can actually help them be more efficient and, ultimately, sell more. Essentially, you need to change their behavior at the core.

SP: Tell us about some of the successes you’ve had with clients.
MY: We worked with Liberty Mutual – specifically, with their Insurance Agents Channel. We created an incentive program not only to increase sales but also to motivate their agents to correctly qualify leads and opportunities. The program improved sales effectiveness by 12 percent.

SP: What sets your product apart from others in this space?
MY: We see some companies that are particularized into very specific things – like gamification for sales, for example. Others are just doing data integration and reporting. By contrast, our solution addresses almost every level of a business – from administration to information technology and from sales to support. We do data integration, implement motivation strategies, develop wellness programs, and reward platforms. We build KPIs, launch specific tactics, and conduct reward fulfillment – whether those are monetary or based on a catalog. We have everything integrated into our platform.

SP: Is your solution only compatible with users of Salesforce?
MY: We have two different platforms to help large organizations with incentives. One is specifically for Salesforce, which is our ThinkSmartOne platform. You can download it on the AppExchange and launch in less than 9 minutes. It’s completely automated.

For companies that don’t use Salesforce, we have Motivate4One, which is much more customizable and tailor-made; it allows us to integrate with almost any solution.

To learn more, download this complimentary e-book, Salesforce.com is Not a Garbage Can: Unleash the Power of Salesforce!