Many of us will have been through a situation where we’ve tried to get someone to do something that they really don’t want to. Whether that person was your partner, your child or a sibling. Sometimes, you may even be trying to persuade a colleague or an employee!
Psychology 101 tells us that the best way to alter someone else’s behaviour is to add an incentive to encourage the desired behaviour. This makes total sense, however, you’d be surprised at the number of managers who use negatives to try to inspire the desired behaviour.
Negatives stimuli such as reprimands and punishments will not help inspire a person and may even impact on their ability to complete the required task. It is much better to try and find ways to encourage people to do what you want willingly. Everyone will be much happier this way and the required tasks will (hopefully) be completed accurately and much better than they would be otherwise.
But, how can you achieve this?
1. Ensure you’re assigning challenging but realistic goals
If you have built up a strong and solid workforce then they should all (hopefully) be willing to learn and ambitious to achieve. However, employee’s ambitions can be swiftly knocked if they are given tasks that are seen as too junior or too unrealistic for them to achieve.
Tasks should be as varied as possible in order to keep your employees engaged. You also need to make sure your employees are being challenged as this gives them something to strive towards and a sense of accomplishment when they have completed the task.
Employees should be consulted and set goals which tie in with their own ambitions, otherwise you will find you never get the best out of them. It is also crucial to ensure goals are achievable, otherwise you are setting employees up for a fall.
If sales goals are not reached, you should never punish your employees. Instead you should take the time to sit down with them and work out why the goal wasn’t reached and what can be done next time to ensure they’re reached next time.
2. A team is only as strong as its weakest link
Team building can be very tricky. There will always be members in a team who are more popular than others, who work harder than others or who are more team orientated than others and this can be a very difficult thing to deal with.
You need to make sure you get the best out of your teams by teaming up like for like individuals, whilst not excluding anyone or making it obvious that certain members do not get on. There is no point forcing people who really do not get on to work together, as this can lead to disagreements and failure to meet certain sales targets and deadlines.
You need to build your sales team in a consultative manner, ensuring that everyone comes into the team on the same page with the same goals and desire to work together. If you get your team to agree on their core objectives right from the start, you should be able to trust them to work together in order to ensure they achieve their goals.
3. Ensure your company culture is engaging with a worthwhile mission
Every company needs to make money in order to carry on. Everyone knows this. However, if you want your employees to be truly inspired to go above and beyond, perhaps undertaking tasks they’re not keen on, they must believe it’s for a cause other than just making money. After all, they may be in sales but it’s not their company!
The best companies to work for are those which have great company culture; where the employees are treated as more than simple drones who are there to work and nothing else. Employees like to be rewarded and valued for their hard work and this doesn’t have to be in monetary form (although it will probably cost you a bit of money…)
Some companies choose to provide benefits such as break out areas, where employees can grab a healthy snack or perhaps play a game of ping pong with their colleagues. Other companies organise a work holiday every year, fully paid for as a way to thank their employees for the years’ work.
It’s also a very good thing if a company can associate itself with a local cause and get its employees involved in helping too. For instance sponsoring a youth club or local charity, organising fundraising events etc. Anything which gives the company a little bit more of a reason for being, other than to make money.
If you’re stuck for ideas, ask your employees and together you can come up with a compelling mission and vision for the company.
4. Lead by example
This is the easiest but perhaps least followed piece of advice that has ever been given. Why? Because often the tasks people give to others are those they don’t want to do. But this is not the way to inspire others!
If your employees see that you’re getting stuck in and throwing yourself into doing many of the nitty gritty tasks that they’re complaining about doing…well they can’t really complain any more can they? Leading by example will not only inspire your sales team to follow your example but will also earn you a great deal of respect, which is an incredibly important factor in inspiring your sales team to success!
