Manager as Motivator

Motivation-minded managers have always confronted two basic options: carrot or stick, favor or fear, cajole or cudgel. Traditionally most chose the stick, demanding top-notch performance from their salespeople – or else. Today the carrot has gained the upper-level management hand with salespeople offered everything from bonuses, trips and catalog shopping sprees to plaques, contests and increased responsibility – all aimed at producing a dynamic, gung-ho sales organization. So what works best with today’s diverse crop of sales professionals?

According to Tim Kenworthy, national sales manager with Permatech, a Cleveland-based polyurethane coatings systems company, when it comes to motivating salespeople, all that glitters is the golden rule. “I like to do things the way I would want to be treated myself,” he says. “Like most sales managers I used to be a salesperson, and I remember what worked and made me feel motivated, and what didn’t and demotivated me.”

Kenworthy’s thoughts are echoed by Lanny McCormick, VP of sales with Texas-based hazardous waste equipment company Bebco Industries, who adds that his own experience of management by intimidation turned him off using fear as a motivational tool.

“I like people to trust me, to think we’re on an equal level,” he says. “I don’t like to motivate through fear. I’ve had that done to me, and it turned me off. It’s better to respect the person and say, ‘You need to get this done,’ then assume it’s going to happen. Then if they follow through they’re rewarded and if they don’t they face the consequences. It all comes back to treating people the way you’d prefer yourself. As a salesperson my feeling was, ‘Just give me enough room and I’ll do the job and won’t let you down.’ I think the salespeople here appreciate that as well.”

Beyond treating their salespeople with trust and respect, many sales managers would love to discover that one device or tactic that produces results from every member of the sales team. It may not represent that elusive silver bullet, Kenworthy says, but the most effective motivational item in the manager’s toolbox is praise.

“You can throw money at people – bonuses, incentives, rewards, additional skills training – and they’re all important parts of what the manager offers,” he suggests. “But praise is number one. It goes a long way when you give them that pat on the back or say, ‘Hey, good job today of writing all those orders.’ As a sales manager you have to let people know they’re doing a good job. I’ve been in sales situations when the only time you heard from management was when things weren’t going so well, and that’s demotivational. So that’s why it’s so important to me to say, ‘Nice job on that presentation’ or whatever. Clearly, recognition is a big deal to me.”

To recognize salespeople’s performance, however, managers must first know what those salespeople are doing. Contrary to the image of an executive behind a large desk in a closed office poring over financial reports and forecasts, today’s effective sales manager offers individualized attention to every member of the sales team. Kenworthy believes that only by getting to know salespeople can a manager hope to learn how to hit each individual’s motivational hot buttons.

“It’s very important to talk to people one-on-one about everything,” he says, “how they’re closing sales, what steps they’re taking to lead them to the close, how they’re approaching customers – all of it. Whether I have two people or 40 I still need to talk to those people individually. You might have one young buck just out of college who’s an aggressive, straight-ahead type. Then another might be a single mother of two. The same things aren’t necessarily going to motivate the two of them. It’s up to me to design a program that works so I’m pushing the right buttons at the right time. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to be able to read into people’s wants and needs when you sit down with them one-on-one.”

There’s no question that in addition to recognition and personal attention, incentives and bonuses play a critical role in keeping salespeople’s attention focused. The key, McCormick and Kenworthy agree, lies in creating targeted programs that match very specific corporate goals to salespeople’s desires.

“Our largest customer base is in the petrochemical industry,” McCormick says, “and during the past year or two sales have been down because oil prices have been so low. My salespeople can be working just as hard as last year but the numbers are down just because oil’s at $8 a barrel instead of $23. So it’s been important to me to improve the atmosphere and bring a sense of fun to the sales organization. One way has been through creating small competitive contests between regions, along the lines of a weekly $50 gift certificate. It gets them striving for certain goals and reminds them that this can be fun too. Just one big prize at the end of the year can sometimes seem too far off and intangible. But small, weekly incentives can be just the thing to get what you want done.”

To Kenworthy, small incentives provide an effective boost during the inevitable down times that hit nearly every sales organization.

“When your business is going into a slower cycle,” he says, “that’s when you need to put some sort of incentive program in place that’s going to spark you through. But then when things pick up again and you hit your busy season there’s no reason to keep that kind of program in place. Then it’s like flicking matches into a forest fire. That’s more when the praise and recognition come into play, when you don’t really need to be prodding them forward.”

While smaller, targeted incentives are great for driving day-to-day performance, Kenworthy cautions that managers should also offer salespeople a constant reminder to keep their eye on the long-term prize. This is where the big-ticket item comes in, he says.

“It’s always a good idea to use a combination of incentives, bonuses and compensation plans,” he notes. “In addition to the smaller, short-term items, bonuses are great for medium-term or quarterly goals. A Caribbean cruise or a similarly enticing big-ticket item is a powerful carrot to dangle in front of a team for reaching yearly goals. But the caution there is that your salespeople have to feel that the target is attainable, or else it becomes demotivational. But that all comes back to making sure the lines of communication are open and you’re listening to what your salespeople have to say.”

Kenworthy adds that a common misconception exists among sales managers who compartmentalize motivation as its own province, apart from management’s other critical tasks. There is more to motivating salespeople than simply placing crumbs of varying sizes in their path to direct behavior, he argues.

“In terms of motivation,” he says, “if you leave everything to incentives it’s like trying to let something else run your business – letting the tail wag the dog. That’s why extracurricular sales training is so important, both as a skills development tool and as a motivator. Of course I meet with my team regularly where we go over the numbers and assess our plan, but we also get out of the office to seminars that improve our skills. I walk out of these programs pumped up and everyone else does too. As a motivational tool it’s critical that your skills are constantly honed. It builds your confidence and makes you a better salesperson which makes you happier because you’re closing deals and moving closer toward personal and professional goals. That’s just one way that training and motivation are intimately related.”

Unfortunately for the sales manager, there are no guarantees that any motivational tactic will work. Risk is as much a part of the job as hiring, firing and territory management. But McCormick still recommends taking chances to figure out what works to give salespeople that extra pep. It may be the only way to learn, he says.

“Sometimes you may praise someone who says, ‘Thanks but I’ve got better things to do than listen to you tell me how great I am,'” McCormick says. “And, at times I’ve come down hard on people who didn’t have the ego to take it. To a degree it’s trial-and-error but as long as you’re interacting on a personal level with your salespeople you’re learning, and you should use that information, right or wrong, to help you understand what makes each person tick. Then you’ll do better the next time.”

Kenworthy also recommends against following the path of least resistance and resting on your managerial laurels. Within a motivational program there is great opportunity for creativity, he suggests.

“I think it’s important to mix things up,” he says. “Even if a program has worked in the past, rather than doing the same exact thing try putting a new twist on it. Don’t take the wheels off and rebuild it entirely, but make it fun and interesting and constantly changing. That’s the nitty-gritty of sales management. For one person, tickets to a baseball game might be a great motivator. For another it might be free maid service for a week. That’s where the fun is. Whether you hit it right on isn’t even the most important thing – it’s that you’re making the effort and taking some chances.”

At some companies, the sales organization exists as a nearly separate entity from other corporate divisions. This can breed discontent when salespeople feel underappreciated by their colleagues. The impact on morale can be devastating. Faced with this exact scenario McCormick says he has taken a dual track, on the one hand placating the sales force and on the other building bridges with the rest of the company.

“There are people who think all we do in sales is answer the phone and play golf,” he says. “When those people come over here berating the sales staff, that makes my job more difficult because I’m trying to build them up while others in the company are trying to tear them down. This creates a challenge – you must overcome the thought of ‘Why should I want to sell for this company when they do nothing but ridicule me and put me down?’

“To confront this, with the sales staff I take on an ‘us against the world’ sort of attitude, saying that we have to remain a close-knit group and that if we’re producing they won’t have anything to gripe about – so let’s go sell something.

“Separately, when I’m away from the sales staff, in board meetings and manager meetings I address these things. I say, ‘Look, this has to stop.’ I explain that the sales profession has a lot to do with morale and attitude and what they’re doing isn’t contributing, so cut it out. So I’ll say one thing to the sales staff, but another to the rest of the company in an effort to eliminate the problem entirely.”

Just as big-ticket incentives help keep salespeople focused on long-term goals, Kenworthy reminds sales managers that there is more to effective motivating than compelling an extra cold call or two from underperforming salespeople. Managers, he says, need to bear in mind what their own long-term goals are and how they define effective management.

“My salespeople have to feel that they can talk to me frankly,” he explains, “and that I can do the same with them. They have to know that if they have a problem they need to work through, I’m going to help. I don’t have all the answers, and even if I did I wouldn’t give them out that way. My job is to help salespeople work through problems so they figure out the right answers for themselves. By assisting them with the problem-solving process you produce better salespeople and you groom them for someday becoming managers themselves. If your salespeople develop the confidence that they can handle any situation that arises, well, that’s more motivational than any prize you could possibly offer as an incentive, isn’t it?”