To motivate your sales team, you must identify what matters to each person as they do their job. Simply focussing on the business KPI’s will make the job about hitting targets, when exceptional performance comes from achieving personal objectives.

If you don’t know what your team wants, you are left trying to motivate them with what you want, which is a strategy with a limited effect. When having a one-to-one conversation with your team, ask each of them what they want so you can understand what is important to motivate them.

For example, when a group of VIPs at the recent Outbound Sales Conference had a conversation, one individual confessed that he quit his job because his sales manager did not know he had three kids, who he said was his greatest motivation. The manager would try to use his own reasons to motivate his sales team, which led to him realising his manager did not care about his team but only about his own goals.

Some people will find a level of income they are comfortable with and, once they reach it, stop doing what they were doing to get there. When they get to this point you then need to understand what will make them go past being comfortable staying where they are and motivate them to go further.

You never need to use negative force to motivate your sales team to do their work when you know what their goals are and what motivates them.

Start to get to know each of your sales team on a personal level, such as learning their family or children's names. Start your one-to-one meetings with them by asking how they are keeping track of their goals.

As you're having more conversations with your sales team you will notice familiar themes such as family. You will see that different team members have different goals, one may want to make more money and another may want to retire early. Many will say they want to make more money but research shows there are always other motivators.

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