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Unleashing Your Motivation

Written by: Nikki Owen

Article Overview: Motivation is a dynamic state that results in the desire, directional intensity and persistence of behaviour to achieve a long or short- term goal. Without motivation our sales performance and consequently our results can be severely impaired. When we are feeling motivated, we light up our performance like a Christmas Tree and equally when we feel de-motivated, everything seems to be much harder work.

Unleashing Your Motivation

As sales people, if we continually look to find motivation from outside of ourselves, then we are placing ourselves in a risky situation because it may not always be possible to have a drip-feed of motivation feeding us when we need it most.
That’s why, the more we can understand about what motivates us personally, helps us to tap into our internal motivational power.
We are all unique individuals and are motivated by what is important to us personally. The factors that are important to us can be described as our values and are the fuel that drives our behaviour. Our values are unique to us and we each have a different set of values based on different aspects of our lives. For example:

➢ Career
➢ Relationships
➢ Finances
➢ Health and Fitness
➢ Family and Home
➢ Social Life
➢ Personal Development
➢ Spirituality

As sales people, if we can discover our values in the context of our career in sales, we are consciously able to identify what is important to us and can therefore begin to notice ways to leverage our own motivation.
If we are doing a job that satisfies our most important values then we will feel highly motivated and energised. Sometimes, when we feel de-motivated, it’s because we are not consciously aware that certain aspects of our job role are aligned to our career values.

The process to leverage our own motivation is:

1. Discover what is important to us in our career (these are our career values)
2. Prioritise our career values in their order of importance to us
3. Develop reasons why our current job role can satisfy each of our career values

How the process works

➢ Find a partner, because it is easier to discover your career values when somebody else is helping you
➢ In pairs, make sure that you are both in rapport because values are very emotive and trust in your partner is important to allow communication to flow
➢ Your partner should ask the question “What’s important to you in your career?” then “What else is important to you in your career?” until you have given your partner between 8 – 12 values
➢ Your partner should write down your values exactly as you describe them and then show them to you. Then, your partner should ask “ Which of these is most important to you?” What’s next in importance?” until they have prioritised your career values in their order of importance to you
➢ Once you have your career values in order of importance, take each value and describe how your job can satisfy that value

Here is an example of how this 3 - step process evolves:

Step 1 – Discover Your Career Values
• Money
• Recognition
• Challenge
• Advancement
• Feeling part of a team
• Making a difference
• Excitement
• Having fun

Step 2 – Place in order of importance
1. Challenge
2. Excitement
3. Making a difference
4. Recognition
5. Money
6. Advancement
7. Feeling part of a team
8. Having fun

(Notice that the order that this sales person’s values were obtained is different to the order of importance)

Step 3 – Satisfying values
1. Challenge – ambitious sales targets/ more new customers
2. Excitement – getting bigger deals/not knowing which prospects will convert
3. Making a difference – customer feedback about my service/contribution I make to the overall team target
4. Recognition – seeing the reactions of prospects/customers/getting congratulated by my manager
5. Money – more sales = more commission/end of year bonus for achieving annual target
6. Advancement – opportunity to apply for Key Account Role
7. Feeling part of a team – sales meetings/mentoring/achieving my part of the team target
8. Having fun – interaction with prospects and customers/being on the road/sales meetings

Related Articles
  Why Motivation Malfunctions at Midlife
  5 Ways to Motivate Your Salespeople
  Motivation with consequences
  How to Use Inspiration or Desperation to Sell More
  What's Your Motivation?

Article Tags: drip feed, health and fitness, job, motivation, motivational power, pairs, personal development, relationships, risky situation, spirituality



Related Forum Posts
Re: How To Stay Motivated In Your Business - Motivation spurs people into actions every time. When there is no motivation the reason to move forward seems lost. Thanks so much for this post Evan
Re: Finding AND Keeping Good People - Employee retention or as you mention “Keeping the Good People” is one of the biggest challenges for any growing business. It takes a huge effort from the entrepreneur’s end. I can come up with the following when it comes to KEEPing the good people- 1. Motivation of the employees 2. Recognition of the needs of the employees 3. Activities to make the employees feel valuable towards the organization 4. Make benefits more accessible 5. Offer profit sharing incentives 6. Create clear career paths at the company 7. Consider telecommuting, job sharing and other flexible working arrangements 8. Incentives are essential and they don't have to be huge 9. Have other managers praise an employee's work 10. Be sensitive to the balance between work and private life
Re: What Franchisors Want From Franchisees - Kevin - Here's a rough summary of your questions. Your credit score - below 600's and you're considered high risk. Best if you are in the high 600's and above... if you're in 700's you're golden. Franchisers want to see people who can relate to other people. If you are very shy or you dislike working with the public, then this can count against you. Even if you can fake it... why would you bother? Great customer service is a benchmark any business owner should strive for... Financing arrangements will vary - if you can show that you have 20% above all of your start-up costs, this would help. The more assets you own the better. Motivation can be expressed in HOW you plan the start-up. It's all in the details. Are you taking the opportunity seriously? Are you learning and studying business attributes like marketing, salesmanship, and customer service? Demonstrate that you are motivated. Subscribing to their system would be about following their rules. If you have a maverick mentality... then consider starting your own business where you make the rules... not a franchise. Franchisers have different ways in how they evaluate their prospects. Your professional background or history can play an important role in the final evaluation. This is really about common sense...


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