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When Motivating Your Sales Force, Traditions Are King

Many of you are trying to think of creative ways to inspire and motivate your sales force. These efforts usually fall into one of two categories: the “quick fix,” usually a one-time activity or reward to motivate in the short term; or the “analytical approach,” which tends to involve tons of (often intrusive) data gathering in an attempt to find that one key pressure point that can be pushed to drive sales higher.

Unfortunately, both of these solutions ultimately fall short. The quick fix only motivates for a short time, and tends to lose its impact quickly. This month you may have offered a free steak dinner to the highest producer, but next month you’ll need to up the ante and offer something bigger. This tactic also does not motivate equally. The guy who is already the top producer in the office probably won’t be incentivized by anything other than a very large reward, and the other employees may feel they have no chance at passing his production anyway, so why try if they can’t win? The analytical approach can produce what I call “over-analysis paralysis,” where you gather so much data you ultimately don’t know what to do with it. You also run the risk that you will focus so much on the data that you ignore the people on your team and their individual feelings and goals – things that can’t always be quantified but have a huge impact on your team’s production.

Ideally we need to find a program that keeps our employees engaged, connected and motivated for the long term. It’s the same dilemma faced by football coaches, who have to get their team to buy into their strategy for the season and keep putting in maximum effort all season long.

Over the years I have found creating meaningful traditions to be an excellent way to help accomplish this goal. They don’t have to be complicated, either – sometimes simple is better.

My alma mater, Virginia Tech, is fortunate to have one of the best football coaches in the country, Bud Foster, as their long-time defensive coordinator. He has created a tradition at Tech where the player who works the hardest during practice in the week before a game is presented with an old, dented metal lunch pail to carry with them into the stadium on game day. Though nothing special on the surface, the lunch pail symbolizes a “blue collar” work ethic, where physical labor and effort are prized and people take pride in their work every day. Each week the chosen player carries it with pride, knowing it indicates to anyone who understands the tradition that he gave his maximum effort in preparation for the game.

One of our competitors frequently turns out some of the top commercial real estate brokers in the country. They host annual bashes at places like the Ritz Carlton to honor the multi-million dollar achievements of their top producers. But an old friend of mine who worked there for 30 years told me once that the highest honor they all strove for was to be featured in a simple black and white framed photograph that hangs in the main hallway of their office. The four people featured each year in those photos represent the top producers in the entire region for that year. I’ve walked down that hallway, and the thing that struck me most was how there seems to be a different group of people pictured every year. Clearly it means enough that many different brokers strive to reach that achievement.

As you can see these aren’t complicated or expensive traditions. If you have created a culture in your company that recognizes and values hard work and effort, sometimes a simple photo on a wall can mean more than incentive money or a big party. It starts with the traditions you create and the values you ingrain in your company’s culture.

Have a great weekend,
Ro

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