Great salespeople are naturally competitive and driven. Still, it's challenging for anyone to stay fully motivated day in and day out.
When you're running a business, it's important to keep motivation high for your sales team and ensure that off days are few and far between.
Setting goals and encouraging salespeople are common motivational tactics, but because they're used so often, they usually don't make a huge impact.
That's why today, we're bringing you five unique (and fun) ways that can teach you how to motivate a sales team.
Pictured: PhoneBurner’s real-time and self-updating sales “Leaderboard” feature is a great tool for daily sales motivation, or to use with the techniques below.[/caption]
1. Do One-Hour "Sprints"
When salespeople have daily targets to meet, it can start to feel like a grind towards the end of the day. Try giving them hourly targets instead so that they can work hard on their goal for the hour, and then have any leftover time to relax and regroup.
2. Hold a Company-Wide March-Madness Style Tournament
A great way to get your employees into a competitive and productive spirit is involving the entire company in a March-Madness style tournament (in the spirit of the popular NCAA March Madness tournament). Make sure you set up a scoring system that's fair for everyone. You can have everyone competing solo or pit team against team.
If you opt with a March-Madness style tournament, you can create a bracket pitting teams or individuals against each other. Whoever makes the most sales that day advances to the next round. You can then have prizes for different rounds of the tournament - for example, the final four and the championship.
This is a fun and topical way to add fun and friendly competition to the work environment.
3. Try a One-Day Sales Contest
A one-day sales contest is as simple as it gets. Whoever gets the most conversions that day is the winner (depending on your business, you may decide on a different scoring system). These really come in handy when your sales team has been feeling burnt out lately and needs a boost.
4. Hand Out Prizes
Recognition is great, but let's be honest – no one gets amped up over a pat on the back. Prizes are the perfect way to motivate your sales team during contests. One fun option that doesn't require you to keep buying new prizes is to get a championship belt like they have in professional wrestling. Or even easier, a trophy. Every day or week, the top performer gets to hold the award until someone dethrones them.
If you do want to add a lucrative prize, consider doing something like a fun trip to a vacation destination, or a cool new electronic (like a laptop). Gift cards, or restaurant gift certificates are always a good option as well.
5. Celebrate Successes with a Party
When your sales team has been working hard and made you proud, throw a party to celebrate. You could take everybody out somewhere fun or get food and drinks at the office. To make it more fun for your employees, consider letting them invite their significant others.
Wrapping Up 5 Unique Ways to Motivate Your Sales Team…
Every sales manager wants to get more out of sales reps. That's why a big part of  leading a sales team is keeping reps properly motivated, focused, and productive. To recap, here are five unique, fun and effective ways to give your sales team more motivation:
- Set targets for your employees by the hour.
- Get the whole company involved in a tournament.
- Fight burnout with a one-day sales contest.
- Give employees prizes for meeting goals.
- Throw the occasional party when your team does well.
What's the best sales motivation technique you've seen or been a part of?
