Have you noticed how sales teams often have loud meetings and boisterous events to pump themselves up? Yet, this activity is seldom seen elsewhere. Whether the position has metrics (lawyers, doctors, truck drivers, teachers, etc.) or not (secretaries, assistants, handymen, etc.) other professions rarely engage in similar action to boost morale or pump up the group. Why?
For one, the energetic activity has short-term effect and could be self-defeating once repeated too often. Banging a gong can rouse people and certainly draw attention, but if repeated can lose it efficacy. In other words, this type of motivation is alas short-lived.
Why would managers follow such techniques: Perhaps the answer is a short term boost is warranted. Fair enough. Often though it is a lack of known alternatives or desperation that drives management to doing things that do not have the necessary impact. Management does not know about an alternative.
While the earlier mentioned behaviour has merit, one wonders what sort of an action could have a longer-term effect? The answer is training/education and the feeling that one is part of something bigger and in a team environment. Both are factors in competency and self-motivating. One of the requests and needs that employee clamour for, other than base pay and a work/life balance, is education. Not only is education motivating, but also the act of knowledge helps with consistent and longer-term enthusiasm that lasts beyond the adrenaline of a loud sales meeting. Simply put, people like doing what they are good at. On the flip side, how is it that managers often ask their salespeople to do what they do not know how to?
These are the goods for lasting motivation.
Being good at something provides for the self-sustaining adrenaline that drives the individual. Helping someone get there, coaching them for better results and allowing them professional education are longer term solutions for motivation.
Managers and organization should pay close attention because education credits and training are one of the pillars of sales employee satisfaction and simultaneously positively affect the salesperson’s performance. Performance clearly has to be measured, which suggests education and training need to be monitored and staff held accountable for practicing it.
Salespeople need skills. The motivation is a by-product of being good at their jobs.
