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Découvrir Cockpit“So, are you sulking?”
When results don’t meet expectations, it can quickly affect the morale of your salespeople.
Although you’d love to see your sales team celebrating success after success, that isn’t always the case.
And, in difficult times, good management makes the difference.
Has a salesperson on your team not closed a deal for weeks, and is it affecting them?
There’s no point in piling on the pressure because their “down” period might worsen.
However, you must act.
If your sales team is the engine of your company, then motivation is its lifeblood.
The true challenge of a manager’s role isn’t when your salespeople are at the peak of their energy, but precisely when they are at their lowest.
That is when it is paramount to support them in bouncing back and restoring the results.
Here are 6 tips to overcome your sales team’s slumps and keep your salespeople motivated in the long run.
Summary
- Know your salespeople well
- Improve your management
- Step back and return to basics
- Recall past successes
- Clarify future successes
- Praise the work rather than the results
1/ Know your salespeople well
Each individual is different, each salesperson has their own talent.
Placing each member where their strengths lie not only improves your sales performance but also boosts the motivation to achieve ever more ambitious goals.
Some are driven by prospecting: meeting new people, promoting the sales promise, and guiding the prospect all the way to closing.
Others prefer client retention: building a relationship of trust, being attentive to needs, and happily solving problems.
Identify each person’s interests and preferences to assign them tasks in which they will excel.
Personal motivations are also very distinct from one person to another.
Not everyone is necessarily driven by competition; it can be both a source of motivation and a source of pressure…
Other factors can motivate salespeople: opportunities for growth, compensation, recognition, or even a positive atmosphere within the company.
Observe the personalities within your sales team to tailor tasks and your managerial approach.
2/ Improve your management
Salespeople learn to listen to prospects and customers; the manager’s duty is to listen to their team.
It is well known: communication is key.
Through transparent and caring exchanges, you can better understand each salesperson’s needs. You can therefore more easily resolve issues and establish the right conditions for success.
This is a considerable time saver.
Obviously, for your salespeople to feel free to express their difficulties, it is necessary to create a climate of trust.
The attention and support of a manager are the pillars of a team that forges ahead in all circumstances.
In short, a good manager is the primary supporter of their salespeople.
3/ Step back and return to basics
Motivation dips often occur when you’re so caught up in the grind.
Sometimes, you need to return to basic methods to gain clarity.
Whether it’s regarding sales techniques or the company’s values, it’s beneficial to remind everyone of the deeper meaning behind daily tasks.
Even simply the promise of your company can generate incredible energy because it represents how you make the world a better place.
Just look at how the speeches of passionate entrepreneurs inspire you to surpass your own goals!
But returning to basics also means being able to rely on colleagues when things aren’t going well.
Success also depends on a close-knit team that supports one another and lifts each other up.
When collaboration is encouraged, if a hurdle is felt, a call or prospecting session done in pairs can restore determination.
4/ Recall past successes
A drop in motivation leads to a decline in confidence in one’s ability to deliver results.
At this point, it is necessary to break the vicious mental cycle so as not to fall into a spiral of failures.
To help lift the spirits of a salesperson whose morale is low, take some time to acknowledge what they have accomplished.
Not only do you show them recognition that can warm the heart, but you also help them step back and realize that the results will return.
Sales tools can trigger this awareness as they highlight performance gaps, the good periods, and the not-so-good ones…
It’s all about cycles: sometimes energy is at its peak and successes follow one after the other, sometimes it’s more challenging.
A slump isn’t the end of the world. What matters is knowing how to bounce back eventually.
5/ Clarify future successes
Achieving one’s goals is an art to master.
Lack of organization generates stress and a lack of visibility demotivates.
You know what needs to be done: show the path to success. Set fair objectives—using the SMART method, for example—and support your salespeople in building the action plan to achieve them.
The objectives set should depend on the actions of the salesperson. Instead of asking them to secure a certain number of discovery calls, define a number of calls to be made.
It is essential that the objectives rest entirely on the responsibility of your salespeople and are not partly left to chance.
Beyond that, visualization holds immense motivational power, and that enduring motivation matters.
Visualizing the achievement of one’s goals and taking the time to imbue your mind with the feeling of success is the hack to influence your brain into being motivated.
The human brain adapts easily to thought patterns, so why not program it with a mindset of success!
6/ Praise the work rather than the results
Results depend on numerous variables: circumstances, management, the time of year, the prospect’s context, the weather (no, I’m joking)…
It isn’t on results that you should evaluate your salespeople but on the daily work they put in.
Whether during acceleration phases or periods of slump, what truly counts is the consistent work of your sales team.
Encourage disciplined actions, as they are the seeds from which future results will eventually emerge.
Even if it’s not directly correlated with tangible outcomes, it is the salespeople who consistently and diligently do their work that deserve praise.
Finally, don’t forget to thank your sales team.
Some think that thanking carries the risk of complacency; that’s false. Being thanked means being valued and feeling useful—in other words, it’s a motivation boost!
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