The exact opposite is true. At the start of a new sales assignment or sales quarter, you need to stay in very close contact with them, through field visits, phone contact and around the office. The purpose is to capture them doing something correctly. With most sales managers, they spend most of their time chastising their salespeople for doing something incorrectly. However, the singular most effective way for you to motivate your salespeople is to DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what conventional sales managers do.

The average sales manager waits until his salespeople do something exactly right before they give any praise. The key error is the “waiting” and the “exactly right”. Don’t wait, praise when they do something on the way to getting it right. This doesn’t mean you should be praising your salespeople for having matching socks on or wearing a tie or some other type of assumed task.

As a result, many salespeople never become high performers because their sales manager focuses on criticizing them for doing things wrong. Or anything that falls short of the exact desired outcome.

After receiving no feedback and getting criticized frequently, salespeople may not know what correct behavior looks like. They end up not moving all day long. It’s too hard to do anything because of the fear of being punished. Why take any risks if the environment is so hostile?

What the average sales manager does is welcome the new people in, introduce them to meet their co-workers then leave them alone.

In this unfortunate scenario, the only attention that the salesperson gets is occasional criticism or maybe no feedback at all.

This is the most popular management style in America. The average sales manager leaves the person alone expecting good performance from them and when they don’t get it – they criticize them.

After a while, the salesperson does as little as possible.

This is what is wrong with most sales organizations; much of the reason for poor sales performance is because the salespeople are led so poorly.

Post a comment and tell me if you are doing the exact opposite in motivating your salespeople.