Managing a sales team is in itself a challenging task, but a door-to-door salesforce requires consistent motivation and guidance to get out in the field every day, face the customers and convince them to buy your product or service.
If you’ve been dealing with an unmotivated and unenthusiastic sales team lately, or if your sales numbers aren’t improving despite your best efforts, it may be time to look deeper than financial perks and rewards.
Here are five fail-proof strategies to inspire and motivate your frontline sales reps.
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1] Create clear goals
Providing a clear direction to your salesforce is an important aspect of keeping them motivated. When your team understands the vision and goals of the organization, they’ll be better equipped to align their personal goals and work out a common path to achieve both.
If employees are clueless about where a company is headed in the short and long term, they won’t be able to stay motivated and focussed for long. The best way a good leader can keep the sales force driven and mobilized is by carving a path out for them to follow.
2] Be direct and transparent in your communication
Nothing demotivates employees more than the lack of direct interaction and clear communication channels with their managers and team leaders.
To infuse a sense of enthusiasm and ownership in your direct sales staff, hold frequent meetings where you do more than just discuss the figures. Use huddles as an opportunity to appreciate and recognize well-performing individuals as well as to lift up the ones who have the potential to do better.
In addition, share your sales team’s achievements with the rest of the company and vice versa, to make them feel valued and involved in the business even though they spend most of their work days out in the field. Use video messages from top management to inspire your D2D sales guys to outdo themselves.
3] Teach your salesforce to collaborate and compete in a healthy way
You cannot take competition out of direct sales, but a good leader knows how to instill a healthy competitive spirit in each member of the sales team by building a strong sense of collaboration and teamwork.
Regular training, recognition, appreciation and skill sharing are important if you want to build a team that can work together rather than against each other to achieve organizational goals.
When you treat everyone equally and are not partial in your praise or your reprimand, your team will know that they are all the same in your eyes. This further fosters a sense of togetherness.
Another great way to encourage sharing and collaboration is to get employees to share their strengths and learning with others.
For instance, your star performers can teach the others a good way to reach customers and close sales without being pushy; the crafty negotiators of the lot can hold a training session for new D2D sales reps; and so forth.
4] Foster a sense of team identity, belonging and ownership
Creating a unique identity of your sales team is a great way to develop a sense of belonging and ownership, which will encourage them to work as a team to achieve targets.
A team name, a distinct logo, personalized t-shirts, caps or jackets, vehicle stickers, back sacks and other such paraphernalia can work wonders in helping each member of your workforce identify themselves as part of a bigger picture.
Hold team events, family days and one-on-one meetings that foster an emotional and meaningful connection that goes above and beyond the number game. This works wonders to instill team spirit in employees and encourages them to give their best efforts to accomplish personal and common goals.
5] Establish a culture of positivity
When everyone has targets to meet and competitors within their own team, negativity can set in real fast. As a leader, you have the power and the authority to dissuade negative behavior within the team and the organization.
Just as you define business goals, it is important to set the tone for acceptable behavior from the very start.
Discourage your subordinates from harboring negativity and toxic feelings toward each other or the organization and don’t give in to unnecessary dramatic behavior and extreme reactions to underachievement.
Be supportive yet firm and encourage your door-to-door salesforce to open up and share their frustrations with you rather than blow their fuse on social media or other public forums. By creating a culture of positivity, you’ll be able to lead your team in the right direction.
