Drive Success: 7 Sales Team Motivation Tips
There are nearly 17,000 franchised car dealerships across the United States.
With all of that competition, it’s crucial to ensure your sales team is at the top of their games. You want your dealership to be the only one your customers visit.
One of the best ways to do that is to keep your sales team motivated to sell. Fortunately, there are many ways to do that though we’re only going to focus on seven of the best methods.
Keep reading to learn some sales team motivation tips that you can use to improve the morale of your team and increase your bottom line.
1. Create Goals
The best way to motivate your sales team is to have each one create goals for themselves that line up with your wider company goals. There are two types of goals to have your team create for themselves.
Big Goal
The first type of goal to set up is a big goal. It should be something that will take at least a year to reach. For car salesmen, this could be the number of vehicles they want to sell or the amount they want to earn in commissions.
This goal needs to be reachable but not easily so it takes some effort to get to. It should also be measurable so they can see how far they’ve come and how much further they have. Always use concrete numbers for goals.
Each person should also state their reason for wanting to reach that goal which is a great motivator to keep working towards it. Perhaps someone is saving up to buy a home or wants to take their family on a big vacation the following year.
Smaller Goals
To create a list of smaller goals, each team member will want to break up their big goal into months and then weeks. The big goal will be far more attainable when it’s done just a day at a time.
You’ll also want to make sure all of these goals are being written down in a place where your team members can see them often. This will actually increase the chance of goals being reached by 42%.
2. Build Community
It’s important for your sales team to see each other as being on the same team. This will allow them to motivate each other without feeling like they’re helping the competition.
One way to build a sense of community is by having meetings which allow others to share ideas, successes, and concerns they may have. This gets people talking and builds trust between employees.
Another way is to have team-building activities outside of work. These can be as simple as requiring everyone to meet at a local restaurant to get to know each other better or as elaborate as a weekend retreat.
3. Name a Sales Coach
Naming one of your senior team members as the sales coach is another way you can build up a sense of community within your sales force.
Choose someone who has years of experience and who is willing to offer help to newer sales associates who have questions. Then, encourage those that have any problems to reach out to that individual for help.
You may even consider taking this a step further and partnering new team members with a mentor that works with them one-on-one for a set period of time to ensure they know all they can as they’re getting started at your dealership.
4. Set Up Weekly Challenges
Permanent motivation can be difficult, so why not start with one week at a time? This can be a great way to encourage every member of your team to meet their big sales goals one day at a time.
Our Motivational Monday videos are a great way to do just that. They provide training to improve sales and a weekly challenge that will kick the week off right and keep you on track.
5. Encourage Efficiency
When salesmen are able to work efficiently, they will be able to generate more sales. It’s also a great way to keep them motivated since it can remove frustrations from the work environment.
Carefully consider your entire sales process, beginning with how leads are generated and ending with how sales are completed. Talk to your sales team and ask them for input on parts of the process that are slow or frustrating, too.
Once you have some information, you can find ways to make your entire sales process more efficient. Then, encourage your sales team to find their own ways to eliminate stress and time from the process.
6. Address Exterior Stressors
Sometimes even if everything at work is perfect, exterior stressors can impact the effectiveness of a team member.
When you notice someone is acting differently or see their numbers slipping, address it immediately. Ask them how they’re feeling and find out what’s causing their performance to drop.
Then, you’ll want to do what you can to resolve those problems. Sometimes, just letting an employee know that you support them no matter what can help them continue to stay focused while at work so they can reach their goals.
7. Recognize All Achievements
Some companies only recognize top salesmen and create incentives that only a few team members can reach. Unfortunately, this can be extremely unmotivating to the other employees.
For that reason, it’s essential to find something good to say about the progress of each person on the team if you’re going to acknowledge achievements in a group meeting.
Even outside of group meetings, you should be constantly looking for ways to let team members know that you see how hard they’re working and that you appreciate them.
This by far is one of the easiest ways to keep people motivated.
Need More Sales Team Motivation Help?
Now you have seven ways you can motivate your sales team to work harder to close more deals. By focusing on sales team motivation, your business will be able to grow and thrive.
If you want to give your sales team a boost in another way, check out our sales process training. We use technology to improve the way your sales team works so they can sell more in less time.
