Tips for creating a winning sales cultures that drives sales performance. With the high degree of competition in the sales market today, creating and maintaining a top-performing sales culture is more important than ever. Developing this strong culture is crucial for long-term sales growth. In our last blog, we discussed strategies for enhancing an organization’s sales culture using data and tools. In this article, we will delve into ways to improve sales cultures by using motivation and incentives.

1.     Maintain Open Communication

Concept: Communication is one of the most important facets of motivating sales reps.

Practice: Sales reps need to understand how their role plays into the overall company goals and objectives. They need to know they are part of something bigger. Sales reps should have individual performance goals and personal goals that tie into the overall company objectives. Weekly team meetings, coaching and one-on-one reviews help keep reps focused and motivated to reach their goals.

2.     Establish Sales Targets

Concept: Establish the correct goals and targets for sales reps to meet company objectives.

Practice: Organizations need to ensure their incentives are tied to the correct objectives in order to drive desired behaviors. If your sales reps’ bonuses are tied specifically to sales revenue, that’s where they will be motivated to perform. But what if your organization wants to grow their market share, acquire new clients or retain existing customers? Organizations need to establish metrics for those objectives and associate the proper incentives.

3.     Identify Performance-Based Incentives

Concept: Create an incentive plan that motivates your sales force.

Practice: While cash bonuses are a great incentive, it isn’t the only motivator for sales reps. Depending on your organization, winning paid time off, flex time or work-from-home options may be a great way to inspire reps to meet or exceed performance goals. Additionally, prizes are another great sales culture motivator. Concert tickets, sporting events and all-expenses-paid vacations are an excellent way to get the whole sales team excited.

4.     Provide Milestone Gifts/Gamification

Concept: Provide milestone gifts and/or gamification for your sales team.

Practice: Sales organizations understand how important it is to retain knowledgeable sales reps. Recognizing employee contributions is important. Provide items like company-branded mugs, coolers or bags when reps hit certain milestones, such as their 100^th sale. Not only does this provide sales reps with a layer of personal pride, but it also generates some friendly competition within the sales team.

5.     Give Success Awards

Concept: Provide recognition and awards for sales rep successes.

Practice: Provide sales reps with awards that have no monetary value but are given to publicly recognize their success. During a sales team or all-hands meeting, present the sales rep with their performance award. Designate a common area, like a lunch room or hallway to display awards. Recognizing sales reps with awards inspires the sales team to set and meet new goals.

Creating a successful sales culture within an organization motivates and inspires sales rep performance.  An effective sales culture creates healthy competition, decreases turnover and establishes processes that allow problems to be quickly identified and addressed. Improving your sales culture will, in turn, create a positive impact on your bottom line. Revecent can complete an analysis of your sales culture to identify any areas of opportunity. Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.  

We help our clients maximize sales effectiveness by delivering a complete system to hire, train, equip and manage high-performance sales teams. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization’s sales team exceed expectations.