Motivation is a tricky subject, everyone has a different level of motivation, things motivate people differently, and motivation can even fluctuate several times in a single day. This reality makes it difficult to accurately pinpoint the root of motivation. Thankfully, the science of motivation, that is, the various components that influence motivation, is well documented. This week we take a light hearted, scientific look into how motivation works for the Sales Rep, and how you can maximize the motivation of your sales team.
NOTE: This post dovetails a blog I wrote a week ago about the 2 reasons that sales training fails to improve the sales process. In there, you can find out exactly why sales training is missing the mark, where sales training still plays an important role, and why the subject of motivation is being discussed today.
I suggest starting there for some real insights, especially if you’re struggling with the issue of investing more into training, and seeing no major returns.
A Review from the Last Post
1) Sales training is big business, and investment in this area is growing
Just as with other challenges before it, the challenge of an empowered buyer being addressed with more investment in training. This time, much of this training is being done in the new and innovative format of video training.
Video training is literally the act of putting knowledge into videos for easier and more streamlined dissemination of knowledge.
This is being done because content marketing growth is a direct response to the empowered buyer. If you think about it, the empowered buyer is nothing more than a buyer who can progress their own decision journey.
Marketers create more content in order to add value to this new paradigm of buyer behavior.
The increase in content makes it next to impossible for a Sales Rep to manage and learn this new barrage of info while also making sales.
Therefore, video training is being used to streamline the information delivery of new content, which rebalances the scales of buyer-seller knowledge.
But this isn’t happening.
For more information about the impact that the growth of content and the empowered buyer is having, check out this post about how to produce more relevancy from the sales process. You’ll learn exactly how and why these forces impact sellers, exactly why it’s so tough to adjust, and how the buyer feels.
2) Sales training has absolutely no positive impact on improving Sales Rep behavior, especially long term
Though training, and video training for that matter, are very effective for onboarding and streamlining knowledge, they aren’t very impactful on the long term.
Here’s a few insights from last week’s post:
- 87% of Corporate Executive Board members reported that their sales training programs were either “somewhat effective” or “not effective” at changing Reps behaviour (Source: Corporate Executive Board, 2015)
- 40% of Reps lack the necessary skills to have customer empathy and understand customer pain (Source: SalesForce, 2013)
- 58% of prospects believe that Sales Reps do not have the ability to answer their questions in an effective manner (Source: meetmaestro, 2014)
If you haven’t already made the connection, these issues are in many ways directly tied to an empowered buyer. Reps cannot understand customer pain points because the empowered buyer is incredibly complex to understand.
The same applies to the ability to answer questions. The more empowered buyer poses more complex questions, and creates unknown decision criteria that cannot be foreseen as easily.
Sales Reps would usually need to ask exploratory questions, unfortunately, the majority of buyers are well past this stage of the sales process, and are ready for a sales presentation & close. If the Rep cannot add value to the discussion, the buyer will avoid them.
The same post linked above can help you better understand this complex issue.
Longer term, Sales Reps do not need more training on how to sell the product, or the specifics of the product’s features. They need actionable insights into what the buyer needs to know.
3) Long term, Reps need to unlock actionable buyer insights and awareness
As was concluded in the previous post about why sales training fails to address the challenges, digital sales content management software that provides Sales Reps with the kind of insights that Marketing Automation gives to Marketers; is needed.
This is because Marketing teams use automated content management software that releases them from the arduous task of sorting content and distributing it to the right people, while providing consumption data for improved content creation and marketing insights.
Sales Reps do not have this kind of end-of-funnel awareness, and therefore have no way of knowing what the buyer is interested in, and why, and how, etc.
Often, Reps simply receive MQLs from the Marketing team and engage in their typical sales process.
So, what does this have to do with motivation?
The Current State of Sales Reps
Sales Reps are taking a beating like no other department in business. This does vary by industry, but in general, Sales Reps are spending less time selling, buyers are less impressed with Sales Reps, and the overall psyche of Sales Reps in in a state of decline.
Sales Reps are spending less time selling: between 1998 and 2013, the amount of time a Sales Rep spent actually selling has declined from 47% of a Reps day, to 35%. A 25% drop in the amount of time spent actually selling over 15 years is terrible, especially once you consider that technology for efficiency and convenience has ballooned in that same time frame. (Source: ROInnovations)
Buyers are less satisfied with Sales Reps: only 62% of Reps were deemed as knowledgeable about their own products, just 24% of Reps were classified as knowledgeable about the buyer’s specific situation, and a fewer 22% of sellers are indicated as understanding of buyer issues. (Source: The Sales way)
This means that Reps are investing more time in sales preparation activities, like the sales presentation, and are actually recognized as less effective at it. A dangerous case for selling efficiency.
Lastly, the way that Reps feel about themselves is poor at best: 85% of Reps give themselves a B grade or less for their prep work, 78% give a B grade or less for their presentation skills, and 79% give themselves a B grade or less for their follow-up.
These are three essential skills for sales process effectiveness, and Reps feel poorly about themselves in each area.
The result here is a negative impact to motivation. One study found that only about 33% of Sales Reps are engaged and motivated at any one time. (Source: ASLAN Training, 2014) So, how do we define motivation?
What is Motivation Exactly?
It’s easy to just go and point a finger at the sales process, or blame something else for the issues like inadequate sales rep software, but to truly appreciate the c
hallenge of motivation, you have to understand what motivation is composed of.
Motivation is composed of three basic components: (Source: SELL Canadian Edition)
1) Intensity: This is the amount of physical and mental effort that a person must expend in order to complete a given task.
2) Persistence: This is the amount of ongoing physical and mental effort that must be expended in the face of adversity or challenge.
3) Direction: This is how a sales person chooses to expend their physical and mental effort.
And that’s basically it. Everyone is going to have a different level of total motivation, and various common practices exist to help increase the total capacity of motivation among sellers such as incentive programs, holidays, gifts, comfortable workplace environment, job security, and etc.
But as I said in the onset of this post, motivation is a tricky subject. You can have all the best incentives in place and still see a Rep lose their motivation due to repeated struggle and failure.
As the challenge of an empowered buyer continues to grow, and content marketing matures across many industries, the added adversity doesn’t appear to be slowing any time soon.
How to Maximize Motivation?
So, given the three core components of motivation, it is possible to increase the ROI of the sales process by optimizing these three areas of a Sales Reps day. When you think about it, this is really at the heart of what sales performance management is all about.
To optimize the intensity of the sales process, that is, to decrease the amount of physical and mental effort required to sell, you must enable a Sales Rep with the ability to have a value-added conversation with the buyer every time, in an efficient manner.
Not every interaction will lead to a sale, we get that, but in the face of a buyer who enters the sales funnel at any point, with any information, and unknown buying criteria, reducing the intensity of a given sale revolves around being able to understand these issues and provide material to allow the buyer to progress their decision journey.
Optimizing persistence is really at the core of the challenges. Because buyers are coming into the funnel with unknown criteria, it’s very difficult for a Rep to immediately understand their challenges. Furthermore, as Marketers overload a Rep with content to use, it compounds the issue, as they’re now also investing energy into finding the right content among a vast library of potentially unrelated content pieces.
Now, having content that is effectively tailored to the buyer is another issue in and of itself. For the purpose of this post, let’s assume there is perfectly tailored content in the library, it just needs to be found. Also, if you want to learn more about how to tailor digital content to purchase decision stages, check out the link.
Getting the best direction is about having these components (buyer insight, and, right content) when it’s needed, like during the sales presentation. Marketers, in many cases, have this kind of solution for their content, it’s called Marketing Automation. Sellers use a combination of data sources and strategies like CRM contact details and repeated follow up with content pieces.
The obvious discrepancy is that Marketers can ‘see’ the content that buyers are using, and thus ‘know’ what they’re interested in, this makes content drips and lead nurturing not only easy, but automated. Sellers do not have such a luxury.
The Tools you need to Maximize Motivation
So, given the above challenges, there are some tools that you can make use of in order to better direct the efforts of your sellers in order to reduce the intensity and persistence required to make the sale.
These are sales content management and sales analytics software. Why?
Sales content management is exactly what marketers have at their disposal when using automation programs. This kind of solution puts all digital content in the hands of the Sales Rep, already takes care of updates and expiration, accurately distributes content pieces by appropriate region, and pre-flights sales playbooks to cater to the target audience.
Check out this post about being conversational, and tips to getting more out of your sales presentation, for a deeper look into exactly how content management invigorates the discussion while positively impacting motivation. The post also discusses the role of multi-channel engagement in the era of digital sales.
Sales analytics software addresses that second challenge, the challenge of knowing what the buyer is interested in. We can’t read minds, but we can understand the customer based on their interactions with content assets within the environment of digital content management software.
As Sales Reps interact with buyers and share content with them, they way in which a buyer consumes the content weighs heavily on their interest and desire. For example, if you send a half dozen targeted pieces, and the buyer views only three of them, but one is barely just glanced over, and the other two are viewed for over an hour, we can say with confidence that the buyer was interested in the content of those two assets.
The next discussion can be tailored to enhance the knowledge they would have consumed in those pieces. It’s like fishing, you can use knowledge and insights to find the best possible place to fish, and invest your time in that area. There are plenty of places to fish, just like there are plenty of things a Sales Rep can talk about, the trick is focusing on the right topics.
Why do these work?
If you apply them to the components of motivation, this kind of knowledge would give Sales Reps the exact direction they need in order to optimize the discussion. The ability to access content pre-arranged for buyer personas reduces the persistence required by enabling tailored discussions every time. Lastly, by giving Reps the tools to find content easily, and the knowledge to have the right discussions, the intensity of selling drastically reduces.
It’s difficult to increase someone’s capacity for motivation, but you can optimize the physical and mental effort needed to achieve the sale, thus enhancing the ROI from the available sales force motivation.
Measurable Results
Right, the issue now is that it does no good to anyone for me to say this and hope you believe me, so let’s look at some applicable metrics to help make the case.
Aberdeen has done a number of studies into the effects of extensive forward visibility, like the ones we described above, and they found (among other things) the following:
- 84% increase in ‘voice of the customer’ impact on marketing content, so it is more effective in generating engagement
- 109% greater use of sales playbooks that help the seller develop and customize most appropriate to individual accounts
- 14% more Sales Reps achieving their sales quota
- 33% greater lead acceptance rates
These numbers are compared to all other companies who do not have this kind of insight. (Ostrow. P, 2015)
If you recall some of the issues from the previous section, this kind of visibility enables sales reps to understand customer pain points, have value added discussions, and actually change the behavior of sales eeps.
If you want to see exactly how Skura can optimize the motivation of your sellers, feel free to request a demo with the button below.
Thanks for reading, I hope this has helped you.
