It is vital as a Sales Leader to keep your staff motivated, you never know when your sales team are going to come knocking on your door, to say they have had a better offer elsewhere. Motivating your sales staff should help you retain them! Here are eight steps that I think would help any Sales leader…

• Competitive Salary – it is important to pay your staff what they are really worth! You must look closely at what your competition are offering. Look at their compensation and benefits package. Create a commission stricture that is effective and realistic. If your staff gets approached by your competition, they may be offering a significantly better salary, it might be the same opportunity & same career progression – but you will be surprised at how many candidates will want to leave to get that better salary.

• Trusting Relationship – I think this goes without saying! If you don’t trust your staff, why should they trust you? Listen to what they have to say, appreciate what they are telling you. At the end of the day your staff are the ones talking to the customers every day, they know what their clients want – they will know what is working and what isn’t working. Without trust you cannot move forward together.

• Challenging Environment – Give them a challenge, a sales person loves being set a challenge. And they love it even more when they hit that target and / or over achieve. You should recognise their sales achievements, congratulate them on their hard work, whether it is publicly or just on a one to one (Dependant on the person).

• Treat with Respect – Respect is probably one of the most important factors when motivating your sales teams. Understand and appreciate what they are doing. If you don’t respect someone who works for you, why are they working for you? If they don’t respect you, will you really get 100% effort? Being courteous goes a long way, trust me!

• Mentor & Involve – Every business wants to grow and be as profitable as possible. In order for this to happen, it is critical to involve the sales team. You need to sit down with each individual to discuss business growth and how collectively as a business you can achieve this. Make them aware of what the company wants to achieve, if you want to double revenue in 3 years, they need to know. Keep them up to date with how well the company is doing; guide them so they can improve their skills and as a result it will gives you a great opportunity to try and build a bigger revenue stream.

• Provide Advice – You are the Sales Manager for a reason, you are good at your job and you have been successful in hitting and over achieving against targets. What is better than giving your peers free proven advice? If someone is not forecasted to hit their target, sit down with them – understand why they are not hitting their target, give them reassurance and explain how you have overcome this issue in the past, and how you can help them.

• Career Development – Give your staff the opportunity to develop their career, if they ask for your advice sit down with them and discuss how their career can progress, could they do a training course? Look into different courses; get feedback from training providers and see what courses are well suited for each individual.

• Praise & Reward – There is no better feeling then getting told what a great job you have done! Ask your staff in to a meeting, and ask them what motivates them! Is it money? Is it a promotion? Collectively, discuss an incentive with them; give them that goal and confirm what the reward will be. Each person within your sales team could want different rewards; make sure you tailor to everyone’s needs. Incentives will increase friendly competition, this will make the sales team push each other – of course you don’t want your office to turn into World War 3, friendly competition only!

To conclude I think it is clear that as a successful Sales Leader, you need to learn to listen to your sales team and adjust how you can help them, according to what matters most to each individual , rather than treat them as just a number.