What sounds better to you? Congratulations! Because of your outstanding sales performance for the month, you have earned this beautiful trophy that you can hang on your wall forever. Please come up here and accept your award (peers cheer and clap as you approach the podium).

Or, congratulations! Because you have exceeded our expectations by increasing your sales by 10 percent for the year, you have earned a cash bonus of $5,000.

One of those two incentives, cash or recognition, will probably motivate your sales staff to sell even more products in of training and dealer development for ADT Security Systems in Aurora, Colo. Do you know which one motivates your salespeople?

Individuals have different hot buttons that push them to peak performance. Help your salespersons define specific goals, teach them how to reach those goals and encourage them to stay on track.

Uncovering Hot Buttons Boosts Sales

A hot button is an incentive or goal established to motivate a salesperson to perform above and beyond a well-defined expectation.

Contrary to popular belief, the goal is not to sell 10-percent more than the year before; that may be the company’s expectation, but it may not be what motivates the individual. The goal then becomes what the salesperson wants to achieve by the end of the year. For example, the goal may be a Hawaiian vacation or a new car.

Establishing a goal that the salesperson can reasonably reach will motivate. Sepulveda recommends spending time with each salesperson to find out what’s important to them.

The other key to motivating salespeople is to design programs that give everybody a chance to be at the top. Aside from meeting individual goals, salespersons generally have to like the overall hiring package to take the job in the first place. The better the package, the higher the caliber of salespeople your company will attract.

Training Encourages Success

The training provided can also be a great motivator, or it can be a great demotivator. Before deciding how to train, you should look at how you’re hiring people. If you’re hiring from another company, then you probably only have to acclimate the person to your company’s goals and mission. If you’re hiring someone with no sales experience, the training will have to be much more extensive; otherwise, the person will most likely fail.

Healthy Competition Increases Productivity

Another important aspect of motivating your salespersons is competition. The key is to provide contests that every-one can win, not just the top producer. If the same person wins every month, the competitors will get demotivated and eventually stop competing.

To come up with new competitions, you can have brainstorming meetings, attend trade shows and read books on incentives.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!

Related Content