Scaling a sales team is a difficult task that founders have to face from day one. We had Stu Wall in the studio this week to chat about the topic of motivating your sales team as it grows and matures. Stu is the CEO of Signpost, a local business marketing solution that currently has over 100 sales people spread across 3 US cities. As Stu says, it’s important to keep things interesting and mix things up, so we thought we would share 3 ways Signpost does that. Hopefully, you can incorporate these tips into your sales team’s playbook.
(1) Don’t Just Reward the Top Performers – A lot of companies have competitions in place that help motivate their teams. It makes sense to reward the team members who bring in the most money for the company, but it’s important to also incorporate competitions that reward the good but not great contributors on your sales team. If you focus solely on rewarding the very best of the best the other 95% of your sales team might lose motivation as soon as they realize their chances of winning a particular competition are slim to none. Remember, the top performers are already rewarded for their efforts with their commission checks so try to come up with competitions where everyone is in the running.
(2) Make Sure Training Isn’t Just for New Hires – Your product offering is constantly changing, the way that you sell your product is always evolving, and the way you train your sales people is probably improving as well. Make sure that you show your longer tenured sales members that you’re invested in their well being by continuing to coach them and train them in new skills. Offer refresher product training sessions or voluntary lunch and learns where members of the team can learn something that might not be involved in their day to day. You should also make sure that you’re providing one on one coaching the everyone on the team, not just the poor performers.
(3) – Publicly Recognize Success – Signpost uses Hoopla to power their sales leader board across all three offices. Regardless of what software you use to share key performance metrics, you need to make sure that company and individual successes are celebrated. Bang a gong or play a song whenever a sale is made. Take the team out for an early happy hour when the monthly quota is hit. Send around an email when a new recruit closes his first sale. Don’t underestimate the power of public recognition and use it frequently to help motivate your team.
