Despite the current economic challenges, sales leaders are still expected to increase sales revenue. While this may seem like a formidable challenge, it is possible. Take a back-to-basics approach and focus on the core activities proven to help Sales Managers drive revenue.

Here are 3 strategies to help you maximize your sales team's productivity and effectiveness to grow sales this year. 

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If the Wolf of Wall Street, Glengarry GlenRoss or Jerry MaGuire are to be believed, salespeople are only motivated by money. Surely that’s why they’re in the profession in the first place - to hit the targets and bring in the big bucks?

They hunger for it. They would step on their grandmas for it. They want you to show them it.

And, yes, in a study of more than 2,000 salespeople conducted by Barnett Consulting (Money Motivation in Sales People), 74% said their primary career motivation is money, while less than 25% disagreed with the statement “my most important goal is to make lots of money”. The report goes on to say that companies that put less emphasis on money are likely to attract less money-motivated people, which sounds like the antithesis of a good sales rep whose primary goal is, after all, to generate revenue.

But it’s not the only motivator.

Read the full article at: salesenablementcollective.com

What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and get to work? Is it the fact that you work with a fantastic sales team? Are you excited about a new opportunity in the pipeline? Do you just really love your job? All of this could be true, but sales incentives still play an important role in keeping sales teams performing.

You could have the best job in the world and work with the most wonderful people, but there will still be times when motivation doesn’t come naturally.

This is true for both sales managers and their reps.

How can you keep your team motivated?

Sales incentives have been proven to boost employee engagement: One study by the Incentive Research Foundation found that when an incentive program is built correctly, it can increase performance by up to 44%.

Especially during these times, motivation can be hard to find. If you’re thinking of starting a sales incentive program to boost morale on your team, you need to make sure it’s set up in a way that truly appeals to them.

So, what kind of sales incentives will keep your team motivated to keep selling, even when it's an uphill battle? How can you develop a program that motivates your whole team?

11 sales incentive ideas to motivate your whole team

Is it enough to offer pure cash rewards, or are there other sales incentives that will really light a fire under your reps? Let’s discuss 11 different sales incentive ideas that sales managers are using to motivate their reps.

1. Cold hard cash

Yes, it’s true, money talks. This is why many reward programs for sales teams revolve around a set amount of money as a bonus for hard work.

Cash works because, let’s face it, your team is at work to earn money.

To make this incentive work, you can set up a clear commission structure, or use cash bonuses to help your reps focus on a specific goal. Usually, this involves giving a set amount of money for a specific achievement: For example, reaching the quota, exceeding quota, closing a certain amount of deals, or hitting a sales activity goal. (That's one of the reasons why sales teams should embrace leaderboards.)

That said, don’t take for granted that your team prefers cash to any other kind of prize. In fact, another study by the Incentive Research Foundation found that up to 85% of people would choose a non-cash reward if they really liked the other option.

So, what other options are there for sales incentives?

2. Product prizes

Giving away physical products as a sales incentive is a fun way to motivate your sales team.

You might offer:

• Tech gadgets, such as the latest iPhone or a smartwatch
• Fun products for the home, like a high-end coffee maker, 4K TV, or advanced sound system
• Hobby products, such as a high-end bicycle, rock-climbing equipment, or a musical instrument

Product prizes are a great incentive for your team (as long as it’s a product they actually want) because they’re a physical reminder of their achievements. It’s something that people might ask them about down the road, allowing them to relive the glory of winning over and over again.

To make sure this incentive is appealing to all the different members of your team, you might offer a choice between two or three different products.

3. Courses and training

Personal and professional development can be a powerful motivator for reps who are eager to improve themselves.

And this type of incentive is severely lacking: According to the American Psychological Association, only 44% of US employees are satisfied with the development opportunities they’re offered at work.

So, why not offer professional development opportunities as an incentive, such as:

• Special sales training from a professional coach
• Tickets to an upcoming conference or sales event
• Sales courses to develop advanced techniques
• Workshops, training, and guides to make better use of sales tech, such as CRM training

The opportunity for personal development may also appeal to your team. You can offer incentives like:

• Cooking classes
• Art classes
• One month of a fitness class membership
• Access to an online course website, such as MasterClass

4. Entertainment

Tickets to the big game. Front-row seats to their favorite band. A romantic dinner for two.

Entertainment incentives are good motivators because these are the things your reps would love to do but may not be willing to splurge for themselves.

Of course, during these times you may need to be a bit more creative with your entertainment options. For example, that nice dinner out could be replaced with a fancy dinner at home with food delivery services.

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Succeeding in sales is 95-percent mental. If you don’t think you can succeed or land a deal, you will ultimately be right. But if you can remain positive you have a huge competitive advantage.

In this decade, sales is a very challenging profession. The way businesses sell is constantly changing, and many sales reps are facing impossible deadlines, strict accountability, dozens of curveballs with each deal, and pipeline scrutiny from all sides.

But there is a secret weapon — positivity. A positive outlook is essential for every sales performer and is one of the keys to my personal success. Wondering how you can you be positive when you and your team are at 48-percent to the plan with two days left in the month?

Or when you have to hit a high goal without any marketing support? Or when the deal you promised your manager and director you’d close this month just doesn’t happen?

It turns out staying positive in sales is all about your attitude. In 2008, Brian Halligan asked me to do a presentation at HubSpot called "Dan Tyre on Attitude". I was flattered but surprised that he wanted me to speak on that subject matter. So I asked my co-workers if they thought I was an authority on staying positive and they unanimously agreed.

It turns out, unbeknownst to me, that I had a very positive attitude about just about everything.

Based on experience I learned that staying positive had a big benefit to my sales performance, for my beautiful partner Amy, for my family (who complain periodically that my positivity is flat out annoying) as well as for my prospects, customers, co-workers and community.

So much of staying positive comes down to perspective and mindset. It’s all about the lens through which you see your job, your day to day tasks, and your career. As Wayne Dyer said, change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.

Here’s what Mike Noonan, Growth Specialist at HubSpot says about staying positive in sales:

"In order to stay positive, you have to focus on what you can control. If I can control or influence an outcome, then I will. If I have no control over something, by definition I can’t do anything about it, so what’s the benefit of worrying?

Understand what you could’ve done differently and move on. Of course this is easier said than done and it takes practice, but this mindset pays in the long run..

When it comes to staying positive in sales, a lot of it boils down to your 'why'. Why are you in sales? Why do you work at your company specifically?

If you know why you do what you do, it makes it easier to focus on your goals while being able to ride the ebbs and flows that come with any sales job. I love my job, I believe in our product and our vision, and I have awesome coworkers and team members, so that keeps me positive."

Staying positive also means remembering you are not your number. Jill Fratianne, HubSpot North American Channel Account Manager, frequently reminds me that your quota is not an indication of your effort, your thoughtfulness, or your values. "If you worry a little bit every day in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years," she jokes.

"If something is wrong, fix it if you can, but train yourself to not worry, Worry never fixes anything."

That also means cutting yourself a break and recognizing that you are going to be faced with some trying times. When the going gets tough, implement the following strategies to help you stay positive.

How to Stay Positive in Sales

1. Write out your annual goals and make them visible.

Goal setting is one of the best reinforcements you can have for staying positive in sales. According to Dr. Heidi Halvorson, author of the book Succeed, goals can be one of the biggest factors that impact your attitude because you focus on the positive outcomes rather than the nitty gritty problems. It also helps if you break down those goals into an annual plan for attainment.

Marlon De Assis-Fernandez, HubSpot SMB Growth Specialist in North America has the best spreadsheet for attainment staying positive I have ever seen. It breaks out everything he has to do for the year, with quota relief, number of deals, and deal size so he knows every day where he stands.

Where most sales people are worried about their standing for the month or quarter, Marlon has the data updated daily so he can avoid the emotional turmoil and stay positive because he always knows exactly where he stands, and how much progress he’s made towards his goals. He says:

"By planning, and visualizing their goals, salespeople are able to visualize worse case scenarios in detail. Especially those that give them fear or prevent them from taking action.

Through visualizing it and playing out the worst case you’ll find yourself able to come up with a better game plan to get out of that difficult situation and take action and by definition stay more grounded and positive."

Essentially, keeping your goals front and center and preparing for challenges before they arise are helpful best practices for salespeople of all levels.

2. Create a vision board.

This is a fun way to remind yourself of your key priorities. A vision board is a digital or physical compilation of pictures of what you want and desire for your career and/or personal life. This can include major purchases, travel destinations or big milestones.

Looking at your vision board should help you feel motivated to not sweat the details and keep you moving in the right direction.

3. Have a strong foundation.

Good health is not something to take for granted. According to Harvard Health, the three pillars of performance are eating right, getting enough sleep and exercising. In a demanding field such as sales, these are critical activities that can help you keep a positive mindset.

When salespeople get cranky or are experiencing burnout, it could mean it is time to take a step back and focus on self-care.

4. Incorporate more humor into your day.

Find a good joke, pun, haiku or sales phrase that makes you, and people you engage with happy. The ability to laugh at yourself or break the ice with appropriate humor can help you feel more positive.

If you aren’t comfortable bringing the jokes, you can try adding stand-up from your favorite comedian to your playlist to get through the day with a bit more positivity.

5. Turn on your favorite playlist.

A good playlist is essential. Nothing gets me smiling and ready for my next sales call more than a great playlist of motivational tunes. Some of my favorite artists to listen to when I need to pump myself up are Aerosmith, Tool, and Government Mule. I have several motivating playlists to lift my spirits when I need it most.

6. Look at all your mistakes, even the big ones as learning experiences.

Though making mistakes can be painful and costly, they are one of our experiences to learn from. I sometimes ask reps to make a list of the three mistakes they make most often so they recognize and remember them, don’t obsess over them, and realize making mistakes is part of the learning process of becoming a better salesperson.

7. Create a shameless self promotion folder for future reference.

I learned this tip from Katharine Fischer, HubSpot CAM NA. She mentioned if I sent her a nice email she was going to save it in her SSP folder. "What is an SSP folder? " I asked. She explained that SSP stood for "shameless self promotion," and she looked at her SSP folder when she needed a reminder of how good she was most of the time.

Now, every time I receive a message complimenting my work I save it to my SSP folder. I have hundreds of emails from people, so when I verge into negative territory, I know just where to look.

8. Prioritize positive connections.

There are always three people in your network who make you feel great. Identify those three people in your network and when you are having a bad day, check in with them. I usually call them and say "Remind me why I am a good person, again?" They should be able to tell you your best attributes which can give you a boost when you need one.

Taking a critical look at your network, you can likely also identify three individuals who skew you towards the negative. Be mindful of when and how you contact these folks, especially if you’re working your way out of a rut.

9. Focus on relationship-building.

Kathleen Rush, North American Channel Account Manager for HubSpot is one of the most positive people I know and is a big believer in building relationships to stay positive. She says:

"When you work in sales, every call or meeting is a fresh start. Whether this is your first call with a particular prospect or the tenth, you have the power to make incremental changes to better your chances at closing or at least better your approach.

If a call doesn’t go your way, there is hope in the next call. The same is true of your quota. If you didn’t hit your quota, there is some small change you can make to better your chances the next month or quarter."

10. Find inspiration in your co-workers.

This is another best practice from Kathleen Rush. She is constantly looking to her colleagues for inspiration and knowledge. Here’s her advice:

"Everyone on your team brings something unique to their roles and they understand exactly what you are going through. Learn from them."

It’s widely accepted that if you are in sales, you will have a quota. Achieve your quota, good job. Miss your quota, bad job. Miss your quota by a lot or miss it multiple times: no job. This creates stress for individual sellers and the sales organization as a whole.

 

Plenty of jobs are stressful and have objective measures of achievement. But there is a special kind of stress reserved for the sales function. When the numbers are down, the reaction from management is to turn up the heat on the sales organization. At a global technology conference last year, I asked an audience of CEOs what they do when they are behind on their numbers. “We beat on the sales team to bring in more,” one CEO immediately said. Everyone laughed. The follow-up comments and questions revealed that this approach was common across the group of 70 CEOs.

 

While it is the sales team’s job to bring in business, simply cranking up the heat to get the numbers you want can produce an environment where stress backfires. Too much stress in any professional situation will mask talent and lead to poor decision-making. Our ability to focus, solve problems, and accurately remember details declines dramatically in the face of excess stress. We’ve all seen it happen when someone “chokes” under pressure.

 

When sellers are under inordinately high pressure to close deals, they may become overly aggressive and damage (or end) promising sales cycles. Pushiness and other desperate behaviors reduce sales effectiveness and cause margins to shrink. If your team is selling any kind of complex solution, most customers will become non-responsive when pressured.

 

Stress can cause entire sales teams to behave as if any business is good business. Need a discount to make the deal easier? Sure! Wrong kind of prospect or problematic deal? Who cares, we have a number to make this month. The attitude is “any revenue, at any cost.” Sellers become myopically short-term focused, just as they’ve been directed. This approach has long-term consequences for the business: mounting losses and failure to create a compelling sales experience.

 

In an effort to produce maximum effort and create urgency in a sales organization, leadership will apply mounting pressure, drilling down on the importance of making the monthly or quarterly number. In most cases, leaders believe they are pushing hard in the spirit of driving for results. While it’s important to a point, leaders risk pushing to a point of diminishing returns.

 

You can clearly see how stress affects performance in the below graph, originally created by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson. Their research illuminates how performance on tasks improves with increased physiological or mental arousal. Stress does help us get the job done — but only to a point. Too little stress, and you’re in the weak performance zone; too much anxiety, and performance is impaired. In the middle, an optimal level of stress produces what we’d call peak performance. The technical term for that zone is eustress, which is exactly where leaders should set the pressure to create optimal results.

These quotes from sales professionals could give your staff the inspiration they need.

Since WHO (The World Health Organizations) declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, the world as we know it has experienced a drastic change.

 

For weeks now, the business community has been ramping up efforts to help contain the virus. Large corporations like Airbnb, Google, and Twitter all asked their teams to work from home to reduce the spread. Annual events have been canceled, business strategies have shifted, and companies everywhere have been forced to rethink the way they approach their sales activity.

 

As travel restrictions, hiring freezes, and evolutions in market demand all create new challenges for brands, one thing hasn’t changed: Our need to access regular sales.

 

The question is, how do you guide a sales team towards measurable results in a sales environment unlike anything we’ve ever seen before? We’re going to guide you through how to approach team management during a crisis so you can keep your company growing and your team positive and productive.

It All Starts with a Plan: Strategic Selling in a Crisis

All successful sales strategies start with proper planning.

 

Now that the world as we know it is evolving at an incredible pace, business leaders need to think carefully about the kind of challenges they’re going to face. For instance, will a remote sales team be harder to manage than in-office employees?

 

If so, then you need a campaign in place that allows you to keep your team members motivated and productive during this crisis. Accessing new tools for workforce optimization, time tracking, and team management is crucial to keeping everyone on the same page.

 

According to Richard Harris, the Founder of Harris Consulting Group, early adopters will thrive by researching new opportunities and looking for new ways to keep teams motivated through training.

 

To figure out how you’re going to progress through the crisis, think about:

• How big your sales team needs to be to continue delivering the same quality of service to clients. As tempting as it may be to reduce your personnel during this difficult time, a reduction in team members could threaten your reputation.
• What kind of communication strategies you’ll be using. Face-to-face conversations might be out, but you can keep team members engaged and informed through video conferencing and real-time chat instead.
• What resources do you need to deliver to your sales teams? Beyond CRM systems for customer management, what other tools are necessary? Do you need a way for your clients to track their individual performance for gamification purposes? Would a service that helps your clients track sales sequences online keep them on the ball?
• How will you support your teams? Offering the right training and technology is a good start. However, you also need to provide support in the form of reassurance and regular updates, so your people feel educated and informed.

 

As more companies ask their employees to work from home, it’s important to remember that there’s more to building a digital sales team than giving them a laptop and sending them on their way. You need a clear picture of how work can be done in their new environment to ensure your team members have the right technology and support to thrive.