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The Seven Forces of Sales Motivation, Part 2

Guest post by: Ralph Burns

Article Overview: On this episode of Sales Management mastery we go into part 2 of our series on the Seven Forces of Sales Motivation. We continue with forces 5 through 7 and further develop our understanding with our psychology of motivating people As a quick review, we went through the first 4 of the 7 forces of sales motivation on last week’s episode.

The Seven Forces of Sales Motivation, Part 2

On this episode of Sales Management mastery we go into part 2 of our series on the Seven Forces of Sales Motivation. We continue with forces 5 through 7 and further develop our understanding with our psychology of motivating people

As a quick review, we went through the first 4 of the 7 forces of sales motivation on last week's episode. On this week we will finish up on 5 through 7.

Just to reiterate, the 7 Forces of Sales Motivation are as follows:

The need for belonging

The need for independence

The need for importance

The need for knowledge

The need for assertiveness

The need for recognition

The need for affiliation

These 7 independent forces are extremely powerful forces that push your sales people towards their ultimate goals. Sometimes they are group goals, sometimes they are company goals, and sometimes, more often that not, what really drives a sales person is their individual goals and forces of motivation. They can be part of an organization or sales team, and be very motivated to produce for that sales team but ultimately most people do want to achieve for themselves and to achieve their own intrinsic motivations. And that is what we are talking about, the 7 forces of intrinsic, internal motivation that drives them to what they want to achieve. As sales people and as we've talked about in previous episodes at Sales Management Mastery, the most important thing for you to do as a sales manager and motivator and to get your sales managers to do on a consistent basis is to try and find out what gets your sales people to tick.

If you can't do that, and if you try and motivate them they way that you were motivated or the way that you think that they should be motivated, like throwing out a "catch all phrase", like "all people are motivated by money", which is partially true, most are motivated by money to a certain extent, but its not their true driver or their true motivator.

Because if you interview 100 sales people you'll find out that yes, many are motivated by money, that is one of the factors, but if that is the only thing that you are using, to motivate your sales people, and then you are not using all of the tools in the tool belt. We want to give you as many tools as possible and to use them as best as you can to apply them into your daily routines.

The 7 Forces of Sales Motivation are an awareness to get you to know what motivates your sales team.

Let's get into numbers 5- 7.

In other shows we will get more into how we can use these forces of motivation to drive your sales people to peak sales performance and to get them to the top of the sales charts and to get you and your company to achieve the sales revenue goal that you desire.

Number 5: The Need to Be Assertive

A sales person's need to assert themselves, the ones that typically want to assert themselves are the ones that are loudest at the sales meeting, always talking about "in my territory", and always think that their agenda is the most important one.

We have all had sales people on our sales teams who have been like this. But it is not necessarily a negative thing, it can actual be neutral if it is harnessed in the right way.

This type of motivation can be manifested in outright leadership on a group. They can bring down an entire group and they can also rise up an entire group.

This is a tricky one to motivate by, out of the 7, the most challenging one to motivate by, especially if you do you own profile, as we are going through the 7 forces, and assertiveness is not one of your top forces of motivation.

It can be manifested in leadership, or it can be manifested in domineering, combative, boorish type of behaviors. I have certainly seen both behaviors manifest themselves in individual sales people that I have managed in the past.

The assertive sales rep is that has the one that has the desire and inherent need for assertiveness is the one that is the loudest, the most vocal. Sometimes they even get to the point where they even bully the operations department. They push the envelope at times in terms of what would be considered "in good taste". Sometimes it becomes difficult to deal with these types of people. Instead of highlighting the negative aspects of this type of personality, this type of personality can actually be used for a very positive leadership role and can help steer your department in the right direction.

They desperately crave to wield their influence and need their opinions and thoughts to be listened to, without question. These sales people will sell by force and even coercion sometimes but can be extremely persuasive if it is channeled by you, the sales manager, correctly.

This is one that is more challenging to harness but nonetheless it is a very powerful motivator. And these are sometimes the best leaders after their sales roles if they wish to move forward in the organization.

Number 6: The Need for Recognition

Most sales people are driven by a need for recognition. I think that most people in general are driven by a need to be recognized. These people are actually more so than the rest. They love to receive acknowledgement for their accomplishments and these accomplishments are extremely important for them. CEO circles, President's Clubs Awards, anything with a public praising are a huge motivator for them. Somebody who is motivated by recognition this is a very easy one to use on the whole to motivate them to top performance.

It is always interesting to know what people did with any of the awards that they have won. Let's say they won a quarterly sales award, or an annual sales award through your company. The way that you can find out if somebody who is driven by recognition is to find out where they really have their trophies and awards.

I have mine, for example, overlooking over my desk, even though some of them occurred nearly 15 years ago. Recognition is certainly something that drives me from a personal standpoint.

So if your sales rep has no idea where their 1996 President's Club Trophy is, this may not be there primary motivator.

But recognition driven sales rep are not insecure adolescent types always seeking approval and recognition, not at all, on the contrary. Recognition validates their efforts that they have put forth and makes them feel the exhilaration of achievement in a public, or maybe even sometimes private, way. Remember, in our 10 questions we talk about how you like to be recognized. Do you like it public? Private? It is very important to match that privacy or the need to be public in order to drive the person to even greater sales heights.

On a scale of desire for all of these motivations, there is a 1 to 10. You've got a 1 on the very low end and a 10 on the very high end. I don't think that anyone really hates recognition, so you are probably not going too have many 1's, you might have some 2's or 3's, but on the high end you might have some 9's or 10's. Some people just crave recognition at all times. This is a fairly one to use to motivate as a sales manager.

Number 7: The Need of Affiliation.

The "belonging" sales rep, the one that needs to be belonging to an affiliation or to a group is motivated by the greater good. These are the ones; maybe if you are in the medical industry, they are far more motivated by what they are going to do for society.

This is a tremendous motivator or them.

Maybe you are selling a medical device that helps elderly patients get hip or knee replacements with recovery time that is 50% less than your competition. This would be something that would be tremendously motivating because they are doing something for the greater good of mankind. This is something that you can use for these types of sales reps to motivate them. This affiliation or belonging or feeling that they are part of a whole, or sometimes people love an affiliation towards a company or a company that they feel is doing well.

One of the companies that I was working for was a company that was a small start up and I felt that every day that I went out into the field that I was really contributing to the betterment of the company as well as myself. It was a great combination of those two things. I felt like I was pushing the stock price up every day with everything that I did and I felt that I was part of something great.

This connection to an organization or company can be a really strong motivator if they feel that the mission of the organization is just and it's in alignment with their own values.

Being a part of something greater than themselves and building upon it daily is what gets these sales people out of bed in the morning. Sometimes the greater good may be for the benefit of their customer as well, then that is even better. If you can tie in your company's missions or your product to this type of sale person, you are going to have a winning combination from a sales standpoint.

These reps build relationships deep into your organization too. These are the ones that forge relationships with the marketing department the operations department and they work things from the inside. They feel that the better they do for the organization, the better they are going to do for the greater good and the better they will feel for their desire for affiliation.

Those are the 7 forces of motivation.

Very quickly we have gone into them just to give you an idea as to what can motivate your people from a core or base level. This is not just for sales people. We've done it in a way that you can look at not only your sales people, but motivation for human beings as well.

So if you can tie these inherent motivations as to what really drives them at a base level with your leadership and motivational message, you are that much closer to producing a top performing sales team and to driving your sales revenues towards your companies sales goals for the betterment of you and your sales people as well.

On further shows we will get a closer look at the 7 Forces of Sales Motivation and how we can use these 7 forces with techniques to drive your people as well as a full questionnaire to tell what motivates your sales people. Now they are going to be motivated by all of them to one degree or another. But, maybe 2 or 3 of them are far more relevant and prevalent than maybe the other 3 or 4. That will be the goal of the questionnaire that we will talk about in future shows.

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Article Tags: sales management, sales management training, sales manager, sales manager training, sales training



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