During a recent meeting of several business owners and managers I asked, “What’s the one thing you would like your people to be doing better or differently that would truly have a positive impact on the profit line?”
The answers included having passion about what they are doing, being more self-motivated to hit their goals and, of course, developing more business.
As a manager, what are you doing to ensure your people are motivated?
First, it’s not your job to motivate someone else. But as a manager it is your job to provide the best conditions, tools and support so your people can motivate themselves. Motivation must always be individual. One size does not fit all and your ability to uncover what internally motivates each individual must be based on your knowledge of what makes that person run.
In the movie “With Honors,” a 1994 comedy-drama starring Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser, the main character talked about the difference between losers and quitters. At one point he tells a Harvard student, “Winners forget they’re in a race, they just love to run.” Every person has their own reason for running.
Goals, incentives and bonuses that are linked to the individual’s personal goals will have a greater chance of success. Why is that?
When your sales people’s feet hit the floor in the morning is there any chance they are passionate about making their budget goals because you said it must be done? My experience tells me they are hitting the bricks hard for one reason – their own.
Do you know what those reasons are?
- Do they want to save for a down payment on a first home?
- How about to renovate their current home?
- Send a kid to college?
- Go see the Super Bowl?
- Special recognition or awards?
- What about a 25th anniversary cruise? Or maybe he’d really rather have a new fishing boat and motor.
Passion and motivation comes from inside us. It’s individual. The job is simply a means to that end. As a manager, you need to know each of your sales people to know specifically what will make them run and, when you find out, it’s your job to help them reach that goal.
A well-planned compensation system that rewards the individual and helps them specifically achieve their individual goal will have equal returns for the manager and the company. Base the reward on reasonable overachievement. Set the bar so they not only reach that goal but can overachieve it.
As their manager have them do “what if” scenarios with the compensation plan based on varying degrees of success. Let them report back to you on their individual sales goals for the year and exactly how accomplishing those sales goals will enable them to achieve their personal goals.
I suggest even taking it a step further, having the sales person create a “vision board” with pictures of the specific personal goals he or she has and have them put it in a place where they will see it regularly. In the book, The Secret, the vision board is one of the keys to achieving goals you set. The payoff for the company is incremental sales and a passionate sales person.
Image credit: www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/
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