Sales managers and business owners are always looking for different ways to motivate their sales team. This often comes in the form of contents and financial incentives.
 
 In this episode, you will learn:

· A small adjustment you can make for greater motivational impact.

· Additionally actions you can take to motivate your sales team without contests.

 

There is a lot of important psychology about when and how to reinforce positive behavior to max out the motivation of your salespeople and you will learn a little bit of that psychology in this episode.

 

Subscribe to this podcast today and stay up-to-date on the latest in sales psychology.

 

For additional motivation resources, check out our blogs: How to Motivate Your Sales Team and How to Keep Sales Team Morale Up While Working Remotely.

If you are looking for a more guided motivating and coaching program, check out our course: Motivating and Coaching Your Sales Team to Peak Performance. In this course, you will learn strategies implemented by some of the world's greatest coaches and leaders, as well as psychological techniques to engage your sales reps on a deeper level.

At SalesDrive, LLC, we help companies perfect the salesperson hiring process by offering a variety of tools, like a sales assessment and psychologically-based interview guides, that aid companies in never hiring a bad salesperson again. SalesDrive was founded in 2005 based on the single biggest frustration many companies face, selecting sales candidates who interviewed well, only to flame out when placed on the line. Dr. Croner reviewed more than 80 years of academic research as well as his own work in conducting intensive behavioral interviews and discovered that high-performance salespeople shared three innate personality traits. After identifying a gap in the marketplace, he went on to develop The DriveTest® sales assessment. The only sales assessment to measure the three non-teachable traits necessary for new business acquisition.
 
 If you are hiring salespeople, request a free DriveTest assessment today: https://salesdrive.info/free-trial-request
 

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[00:00]  Katherine Abraham: Hello and Welcome to the Sales Psyched podcast, where we discuss strategies for leveraging psychology within the world of sales. Each episode is hosted by Dr. Chris Croner, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and has spent his career helping companies around the world build stellar sales teams.

[00:20]  Let's get started.
 
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[00:30]  Chris Croner: Dr. Chris Croner here with one of the most powerful salesperson motivation secrets.

[00:36]  As sales managers, you're always looking for new ways to drive your salespeople to higher performance. Could be financial incentive plans, sales contests, various rewards, but sometimes there are very simple things we can do day to day that can have a huge impact on motivation.

[00:56]  Decades of research have shown that the more immediate a reward, or reinforcement, is given following a behavior, the stronger its effect on that behavior. In other words, you get a much bigger bang out of rewarding someone immediately after a win than waiting for, say end of quarter or end of year.

[01:17]  Let's say for example, you have a sales contest going and I win it, with a cash bonus or some sort of other prize. You can acknowledge me as the winner and tell me I can expect my bonus later. Or you can tell me that the funds have already been transferred to my account.

[01:36]  Which do you think is more dramatic, exciting, fulfilling? And which approach do you think fires me right back up to do it again? You already know the answer.

[01:48]  This even comes down to simple things like giving a compliment to any subordinate. It's much more powerful to tie the compliment directly to a certain performance and behavior rather than making generic remarks.

[02:05]  So, while it's always nice to hear "You're doing a good job," in terms of reinforcing positive behavior, it's much more impactful to say "You did a great job explaining why our price is justified by our value with ABC customer."

[02:21]  We all love "attaboys," but there is a real art and a lot of important psychology about when and how to give them to reinforce positive behavior and max out the motivation of our salespeople.

[02:36]  I look forward to seeing you next time.  
 

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[02:40]  Chris Croner: Thank you for listening to the Sales Psyched Podcast. If you haven't already, please be sure to click the subscribe button and leave us a five-star review. If you found this information helpful, please consider sharing it. We'd love your help in spreading the word.
 
[02:57]  Until next time, take care!