Energize your sales force

by Terry Bragg

When business is booming, it’s easy to keep salespeople motivated. During downturns, however, they may require extra attention.

Where is your sales staff’s energy level? Do they come to work excited and raring to go? Or, are they just putting in their time, dragging along, or burnt out? Every sales organization experiences the blahs at times. Use these tips to re-energize yourself and your staff.

Celebrate
Don’t wait for some really big accomplishment to celebrate. Have mini-celebrations to keep the enthusiasm and excitement level high. Celebrate milestones. Celebrate relationships. Celebrate special events or days. If you have trouble with this idea, hire a few party animals to guide you through the process. Celebrations bring people together and help build working relationships.

Recognize and reward
Reward behaviors and accomplishments you want repeated. Show appreciation to your staff. Recognition and rewards don’t have to cost a lot of money. The best rewards are usually inexpensive and creative. Show you care about your staff by showing your appreciation of them or the work they do.

Communicate
Let people know what’s going on (both good news and disturbing news). Give the reasoning behind decisions and plans. Be open and honest with people about how the organization is doing. Remember that communication is two-way. So listen to your staff. Really listen with the intent to understand their situation, ideas and problems. Move from a monologue to a dialogue.

Practice safe stress
There are two kinds of stress, good and bad. Good stress helps you achieve peak performance by keeping you sharp mentally and physically. Bad stress drains energy, creates health problems and damages performance. In the extreme, bad stress leads to burnout, a common condition in the modern workplace. People get stressed when they feel they are under pressure and cannot control their situation. Fight bad stress by learning effective stress management techniques.

Develop a sense of humor
No, you don’t have to be a comedian. You do need to lighten up and find ways to have fun at work. Plenty of studies show that people who have fun at work outperform grumps. The best humor is situational humor where a group finds humor in the same experience.

Caution: Make sure you avoid put-down humor and discriminatory humor.

Break down barriers
Ask your staff what prevents them from doing a better job. Ask about the obstacles they encounter at work. Then try to remove those barriers. Assist your staff by making their jobs easier. Barriers often involve the “white spaces” in organizations. These are the spaces between departments and groups that seem insurmountable in getting support or cooperation.

Promote a sense of pride
Show your staff that they can be proud of their work and proud of their organization. If you are proud of them, they will be proud of themselves.

Create a shared vision
What’s your higher purpose at work? What’s your vision of what you’re trying to accomplish? How does your work fit into the bigger picture? Create a shared vision by discussing your vision and listening to the visions of your staff. Create a shared vision that drives people to achieve a higher purpose together.

Be congruent with your values
Walk your talk. Make sure your work, work ethic and values match. Make sure the work your staff does matches their values. For example, if you claim that you value life balance, then don’t require people to work 60-hour weeks.

Watch your attitude
Salespeople perform the way their managers expect them to perform. If the manager thinks a salesperson is a slouch, then the salesperson tends to be a slouch. If the manager thinks a salesperson is a peak performer, then the salesperson usually lives up to that expectation. A manager’s attitude has a tremendous impact on the attitude of a salesperson. Make sure your attitude is positive.

When you or your sales staff needs an energy boost, use these tips to get you out of the doldrums.

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2001 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2001.

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