Working in a sales department is a hard task. This is essentially true when the company you’re working with is a large company. You’ll not only have competition against the other brand’s team, but it is also expected that you’ll have to compete with other sales team in your own institution. Because of this,it is not only necessary to reach your team’s quota but to surpass it and maintain the performance each month. Landing on a bigger account will even be more difficult, especially if the big account is one the company wants to sell.
Of course, your team will work hard for long hours; giving ideas,participating in preparations, doing researches, thinking of the best way to achieve more sales. This venture will only be successful if your team will work in harmony and is actually motivated. A handful of motivated employees will be more useful than a hundred people who aren’t passionate about their jobs. How would you keep your team motivated and maintain their outstanding performance? How would you steer your team to perform better and keep up with the other teams? Here are the five ways to encourage your sales team to achieve goals and even surpass them.
1. Recognize their efforts
There are ways to recognize the effort of your team. One of the easiest ways is to give them certificates or trophies that recognize their biggest contributions in the team. Custom awards are becoming more and more common in the workplace because it has proven to be effective to encourage your team. This is one of the most thoughtful ways to recognize the team’s hardest workers.
2. Give a group reward
If custom rewards are the best way to recognize the hardest workers, giving a group reward will be a great way to recognize the effort of the whole group. A dinner in a restaurant with all the members is a common way to reward all the members of your group. If your company can handle it, a trip to a beach or similar recreational location will even let your members create a bond with each other. Building bonds will also improve productivity and reduces the chances of internal conflict.
3. Create a positive workplace
In any team, the team leader or the employer should make it a priority to create or maintain a positive workplace. Unhappy employees will have reduced productivity and will not have the motivation to keep working hard. Stressed out team members are also easy to be distracted and will be poor performers.
4. Relate with them
As a leader, it is important that your team can relate to you. With this, they will work hard to achieve something you have set for them. If your members don’t really like you or cannot relate to you, you cannot expect them to have the same enthusiasm to work harder for your goal. Instead, they will settle for the basic and will not work harder to improve.
If the team had a good performance, celebrate with them and make them feel that the achievement is not only credited to yours, but to their hard work as well. In the hard times, it is your job to inspire them and steer them to a better path. You can’t inspire employees if they cannot relate to you.
5. Show appreciation
There are ways to show appreciation to your team members. One of the easiest ways is to give them a handwritten note thanking them for their hard work.Another way of showing appreciation is praising your employee in front of his or her colleagues. Posting their name and achievement in the bulletin board is also a great way of recognizing your employees. They will feel empowered to continue giving contributions to the betterment of the team.
Getting their ideas is a way to tell them that their voice is also important in the decision making. Ask them about their opinion on how they think a product would sell and the ways to market that product in the market. It is worthy to take note that disagreeing with them might achieve a negative result, so it would be better if you’ll also tell them the reason why their suggestions might not work.