I can't be asked to write a blog on motivation

Motivation is a strange animal at the best of times. What makes us want to do something or not do something has been studied by behaviourial psychologists and business gurus for decades.

In selling the most important thing you can do is be in front of customers prospecting, asking questions, listening, finding out their problems and showing how your product can help them overcome their problem and provide them with some personal, emotional benefit.

So why do some salespeople complain when they are asked to spend more time with customers? I was recently working with a client whose senior management had set a target for customer facing time. This, in my view, was not a difficult target to achieve but it seemed to be causing a problem for the salespeople who saw it as arbitrary and burdensome. Fancy that a sales force complaining that having to be in front of customers was a problem for them!

To understand the motivation behind this I did some digging. What I uncovered was an emotional set of issues linked to performance management and a difficult set of targets that were stretching in a difficult trading period of economic hardship and uncertainty.

So what did I conclude?

1. Motivation is a personal thing that is based on your own internal needs aligned in selling normally to an external reward (e.g. earning a bonus)
2. Given it is personal it is dependent on the individual adapting a set of behaviours to his/her needs
3. You can have an organisational target that is sensible and based on organisational needs but if it is not recognised by the individual as relevant to him/her then it will create friction and uncertainty and may actually demotivate
4. When people feel under pressure even the easiest of targets seem impossible to achieve

Talking to the sales managers in this organisation provided me with the opportunity to try to understand what was really happening. The managers take on what was going on was very interesting - their teams felt micro managed, resources seemed stretched after a long period of down sizing and the difficult trading and economic conditions were making their targets even more difficult to achieve

So how can you personally remain motivated when organisationally you feel everything is difficult or even virtually impossible?

1. Keep the faith. Believe in your ability to remain focussed on what you have to achieve to win business and hit your number
2. Do first things first - the important stuff like visiting customers, prospecting meetings that have purpose and outcomes and qualifying good quality opportunities comes before any reporting, spreadsheet manipulation or email chain responses
3. Have a plan and stick to it, adjusting slightly as you go, not knee jerking and changing direction every time there is a slight hitch
4. Write down your objectives and work on them every day. Understand what makes progress towards your goal of hitting your number.

Being positive and having a set of goals will completely obliterate any issues you may have about target customer facing time. In fact you will find that your only concern will be fitting in all of the customer facing time!

So next time you are worried about being motivated to hit your customer facing time think:-

• what actions am I taking to achieve my sales target?
• how can I get in front of more decision making customers?
• what coaching is my sales manager giving me to help keep me focussed and motivated?
• have I reviewed my goals today and ensured I am focussed on achieving those?
• what can I do to fit in more customer facing time?

Motivation in selling should be about doing everything you can to provide benefit to your customers. You can only "sell " benefit if you understand your customers needs. You can only understand your customer's needs if you ask them great questions, listen intently and get underneath their emotional demands. You can only get underneath their emotional demands by getting out and talking to them.

Selling activities should be focussed on 3 things -

1. preparing for customer meetings

2. meeting and presenting your ideas based on listening to your customer needs

3. following up to progress opportunities

Everything else is noise and fluff (before you cry foul, writing sales call reports is part of following up )

If you are not motivated enough to visit customers as often as you can then you are probably in the wrong job. Maybe you should do something else - I dunno how about becoming a hermit?

Do we want people who "can" or people who "do"

This will be a short blog as both Fred and I should have been on holiday this week, the good news is that we have been very busy so holidays have been put on hold in order to focus on our clients. The even better news is that this has given me the opportunity to use my new iPad to write this blog. I have only had my iPad 2 weeks and I am just coming to the important decision, toy or useful business accessory. I will let you know in a few weeks.

During the last week we have had a number of conversations with companies on the subject of assessments. They can be neatly broken down into the following issue. What do we want to know, do we identify those people who have the attributes to be a sales person or those people who are selling well.

What is interesting is that the answer depends on who we are talking to. If the lead is HR then they start with the attribute question, "do we have people we can invest our training in who will become world class sales people?" If, on the other hand, we are speaking to the Sales Director, there is a far more pragmatic question, "are my people able to sell in the way I wish and if there are gaps how do I coach the people to improve?"

Attribute or approach
There is not necessarily a right answer, they are both useful. The key question is what are you trying to find out? Here at Accredit we believe that we come from the pragmatic end of the scale. If you have a sales team in place you need to find out what you must do to maximize their performance. This requires an assessment of how they are actually selling and then building a program to address the identified issues (which could of course be environmental or poor messaging). If on the other hand you are looking to overhaul your sales organization a review of their attributes is a valid exercise.

Avoid letting attribute over-ride the doing
Our experience shows that a well motivated team of people who are selling well will always outperform a team of people who have the attributes but are not motivated. Strong and clear leadership is of course essential. The pragmatic approach not only identifies how people sell, but it reveals the state of leadership, especially by showing what they focus on and why.

Warm bodies are still better than no bodies
The other issue we have come across of late is the fact that many of the organizations who are heavily focussing on attribute assessment are linking this to a re-evaluation of their sales organization, a polite way of saying have we got the right people and if not how do we "lose" them. What they often forget is that you still need people to talk to customers and an average sales person talking to 10 customers will always deliver more revenue than no sales person talking to those customers. Again pragmatism must rule, all assessments must be undertaken in association with the strategic objective of the company, the revenue target. It is not purely an HR issue, it is a sales issue.

What do we recommend?
Accredit is recognized for it's pragmatic approach to sales enablement, as such we will always start by focussing on the "can they do?" elements. However, when it comes to recruitment and also talent management we recognize the value of attributes. In fact we do partner with an assessment company who focus on this type of assessment. The difference is that we recommend this approach on a target audience as opposed to the whole sales community. It is also worth highlighting that if you are relying on self assessment for attributes, a key attribute of a successful sales person is confidence, therefore they will exaggerate their abilities!

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson orFred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.