Sales Managers: How to Motivate Your B2B Company's Sales Team

How motivated is your sales team? If a sales rep isn't motivated, he or she's productivity will be low resulting in few sales leads and closes. At the same, unmotivated sales reps are often responsible for low buyer satisfaction. They fail to respond to a buyer's questions in a timely manner, and when they do respond, the answers are less than satisfactory. If you are a sales manager or responsible for the overall revenue generation for the company, there are several steps you can take to motivate your sales team and avoid these otherwise common problems.

Offer the Right Sales Tools

Sales reps like quick and easy sales tools that can help manage the sales cycle. When sales reps are given the right tools, they'll naturally be more motivated to succeed in their sales efforts. Unfortunately, not all B2B companies recognize the importance of investing and using sales tools. Instead, their sales reps are forced to use complicated software or rudimentary techniques that doesn't fulfill what the sales reps needs to do their job. This creates frustration and the sales reps become unmotivated. What type of sales tools should you provide? Consider these:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is arguably the single most important sales tool. Using CRM software, sales reps can easily nurture leads and prospects through each stage of the sales cycle.

SalesLeads helps sales reps manage sales leads with an easy to use dashboard. Here's what's included:

* My Projects: manage your project reports by date, company, project type and more. 

* News Alerts: keep on top of news the sales rep needs to track for key clients. This allows the sales rep to make critical decisions on how to handle the sales cycle with the applicable news.

* Search Companies: allows the sales rep to be sure they know all of the key players in the decision making process. Simply search by company and choose the contact you want and need with name, title, email and phone.

* View Contacts: helps you to manage all of the contacts in one place.

Reward High-Performing Sales Reps

You can also motivate your B2B company's sales team by rewarding high-performing sales reps. When sales reps are rewarded for their performance, they'll feel a newfound drive to generate more sales; it's just that simple. Some B2B companies use higher percentage of commission once they go over quota, or even send them on trips. Regardless, come up with an incentive for high-performing sales reps.

Recognize and Show Appreciation

Another way to motivate your B2B company's sales team is to recognize and show appreciation for sales reps. According to Forbes, over one-third of employees say lack of appreciation is the most common reason why they quit. If a sales rep doesn't feel appreciated for his or her hard work, he or she probably won't perform well. And in some cases, lack of appreciation may drive sales reps to seek employment elsewhere, which can further disrupt your B2B company's operations.

Set Sales Goals

Finally, setting goals -- both short term and long term -- can increase motivation among your B2B company's sales reps. Goals, or sales quotas, offer a quantifiable means of tracking sales performance. Sales reps can see exactly how many sales they've generated and whether it's aligned with your B2B company's goals. As a result, they know where they stand, and they'll feel more motivated to try a little more to succeed.