Struggling with Sales Motivation? Take This Quick Test to Find Out Why
by Susannah Mathieson
In sales, motivation isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a crucial component of success. Sales professionals often face rejection, competition, and high-pressure targets, making it essential to stay motivated. On top of that, the introduction of working from home has caused teams to no longer need to be in the same office, and for team leaders and managers to rely even more heavily on their employees' abilities to self-motivate.
I know just how hard it can be to stay motivated in a sales role and have often found my mind wondering towards other tasks or thoughts during a normal working day, especially when working remotely. And that’s on a normal or good day! So how do you maintain your drive when you simply don't feel like it? This article explores the importance of motivation in sales, shows you how to measure your own motivation and offers practical strategies to keep your enthusiasm alive, even on the toughest of days.
Let’s for a moment assume that most people go to work to earn money to provide for themselves and their families, with the basics like food, water and shelter. This is commonly explained using the Hierarchy of Needs Model (Maslow, 1943). The model identifies that peoples’ needs fall into three categories: basic, psychological or self-fulfillment and, in brief, a human must meet the basic needs first (such as food, water and shelter) before they can progress to fulfilling their psychological needs in the form of relationships and friendships.
Assuming the above is true, let’s dig deeper into how to understand exactly how motivated we are to do the job we are paid to perform.
According to the Job Characteristics Theory (Hackman & Oldham 1976) there are five key job characteristics that strengthen our motivation and ability to perform a job role effectively:
- Skill variety:
is a variety of skills used in the role?
- Task identity:
how visible are the outcomes of the individual’s effort?
- Task significance:
what impact does the job have on others?
- Autonomy:
how much freedom or independence is there to complete the tasks?
- Feedback:
how clear and direct is the feedback received on performance?
These characteristics influence the meaningfulness of the role to us, the responsibility we perceive ourselves to have and whether we can directly see the impact of what we do and the impact that has on team or company performance.
We can score each of these characteristics to calculate the MPS (Motivating Potential Score) by giving each of these categories a score out of seven (1 = no evidence of this in the role to 7 = this is a strong characteristic of the role). The scores are then calculated as follows:
MPS scores range from 1 to 343. The higher the score, the higher the internal work motivation, job satisfaction and work effectiveness.
Let’s take the example of two SDRs (Sales Development Representative) performing the same roles. Imagine we asked them to score each of these characteristics of their role between 1 and 7, using the following questions:
Please rate your answers between 1 & 7 (1 = there is no evidence of this in my role, 7 = this is a strong characteristic of my role)
- Skill variety:
I use a variety of my own skills to perform my day job and the tasks I perform are highly varied.
- Task identity:
I can clearly see the outcomes associated with the effort I put into my role.
- Task significance:
I know the importance of the role I perform within the company and know what impact it has on the company / team’s success.
- Autonomy:
I have the freedom and flexibility to complete the tasks required of my role the way I see fit.
- Feedback:
I receive regular and clear feedback on how I am performing in my role against targets.
The table below shows how the two SDRs scored their own roles from their own perspective:
In this example, SDR 1 is likely more motivated and effective in their job role than SDR 2. Their high scores for task identity, task significance and feedback suggest that they are more comfortable or perhaps driven by dashboards and KPIs than SDR 2 and are therefore scoring those much higher than SDR 2, who maybe appreciates more verbal communication or time with their team leader when it comes to feedback.
Using this model alone to capture motivation is not enough. This is the starting point from which we can start to reflect on why such scores have been given (both high and low). Some self-reflection questions we can ask ourselves after scoring could be:
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What opportunities do I have to use more of my skills in my current role? How else could I use my skills in my role? What else could I get involved in and where could I be of benefit to my role or the team with these skills?
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What measurements can I track to see how I am performing in my role? How can I see these more regularly?
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What would happen if my role didn’t exist? Who would be impacted? What would that mean for company performance?
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How important is making my own decisions in role for me? Who can I speak with to change this? What small decisions can I already make today for myself?
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What forms of feedback am I receiving in role? Where else can I get feedback? Who else can I ask for feedback?
As managers or team leaders, using the Job Characteristics Model can give us an approximate estimation of where our team members see themselves in their current job roles and provide a guide as to where we can help them to improve not only their motivation, but performance as well. By asking our team members to give their roles an MPS score, we can take this as a basis for discussion to understand how motivated each team member is, and more importantly, what we can do to support them in identifying more with their roles.
About the author
Susie Mathieson is the founder of the small stuff and has been working in and with sales teams for over 20 years. Her focus on motivation in a home office environment was the subject of her Masters (MBA) thesis in May 2020 and is a popular training topic amongst the small stuff clients.
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