How Do You Motivate Inside Sales People?

How do you keep your inside sales staff motivated?  This question showed up for me this week when I read an email from a sales manager praising a top performer and then telling everyone else they needed to quit talking about personal stuff and follow his example and get out there and make calls.

How would this motivate you if you read this email?  Would you jump right on the phone and make some calls feeling like I am supported in my sales efforts and am motivated to be successful?  Some people are naturally motivated/driven and will do whatever it takes to be successful. But many potential good people need to be guided and discover what motivates them and managed maybe a little differently.

As a coach with a sales background, I say get some outside help if you are as their manager, burned out, frustrated with performance, feel that there is nothing to motivate people or you just want to throw your hands up.  I have been trained to listen and ask questions so if I was hired by the above mentioned company's situation, I would ask to go in and sit with each person and listen to them on the phones, ask some questions about who each person is, ask them what motivates them, ask them what is really hard about their jobs and ask for some suggestions to bring them more success. Probably a great opportunity for a brief but concise survey to get a feel for what is going on in their culuture. Management and leadership need to be OK with this for it to be effective and be open to possibly making some changes. I would also have a one on one with the manager to find out who he/she is and what drives them, what do they do to be successful, what their biggest frustrations are, etc.  I would then find out from the top producers what drives them and have them describe how they are successful. Why not possibly use them to give ideas and suggestions but in the process allowing others to share their ideas as well.  Bottom line, there may be some who don't fit the environment and may have to leave the company. If the company has a "warm body filling the position" mentality and has no desire to help people be successful, things aren't going to change.  A possible suggestion is leadership getting really clear on what they expect and describe the best types of personalities who can succeed there and put that in the job descriptions. Given the high pressure environment, it would be most benefical to have some quality training or coaching on an ongoing basis to help bring success to the company.

Unfortunately, the above example of ineffectiveness in call centers or inside sales departments is more the norm in business operations than not.  Companies can be very SMART in how they are structured but not very HEALTHY in how they view the people driving the business.  Change is hard but change is also good.