Why Sales Reps Are Not Motivated – A Must Read For Sales Managers

Selling anything is not an easy task, regardless of whether the price is low or high. Nowadays, even if you offer something for free, it can be tough to sell. People tend to dislike marketers and resist being sold to, even if they really need the product or service. This creates challenges for sales reps, leading to a loss of motivation. Bad days can be hard to handle, especially when closing sales feels nearly impossible. Often, getting a prospect’s attention can be difficult, which is discouraging for many sales reps in the field.

That’s why as a sales manager you have to do all you can to keep your sales reps motivated, of course, you can’t do that all the time, but at least you can give them a push whenever they need it the most. But before you’re able to motivate your sales reps you need to first sort out why they’re not motivated in the first place, this will help you come up with ways you can motivate them easily and in this article, we’ll share the reasons why sales reps aren’t motivated in their field.

Why Sales Reps Are Not Motivated

KISS Theory

Sales representatives are considered very passionate and competent people. Like all other employees, sales peoples can also be kept motivated by incentives being offered with a specific target of sales but the key behind the success of the incentive program is its simplicity. If you burden your incentive programs with too many terms and conditions then sales representatives would get confused and frustrated eventually leading to bad performance and disinterest in selling products to the customers. Therefore, an incentive program with too much ambiguity is of no use and a complete waste of time and resources because it will increase the disinterest of sales representatives instead of keeping them motivated.

Training and Education

Training programs should be provided to the sales representatives to equip them with the knowledge of the product, not just a distributor list. Knowing the benefits and competitive advantages of the products over other products gives a helping hand to the salespeople in making more sales.

Incentive programs are offered to keep the employees motivated but sometimes it makes them confused leading to disinterest in that program, therefore every company should educate and provide complete guidelines regarding the incentive program to keep the employees interested and motivated. A sales representative without knowledge of the product that he is marketing is like a soldier without arms on a battleground.

Competition

The success of an incentive program depends on both the proper planning and the right execution of the plan at the right time. If the execution time is not right and appropriate, then that program will be of no good and will get the company out of the competition.

Reward

The reward delivery time serves as an important factor for keeping employees motivated. It is in human nature that if we see getting rewards instantly then we will be more interested and put more energy into getting things done as compared to when the reward will be delivered after a long time. Therefore, for the success of an incentive program and keeping the sales representatives motivated, the sales manager should set the reward delivery time as short as possible. Most of the employees focus more on short term and instant gains instead of long term benefits, as a result of which if a company plans an incentive plan that will pay reward the hard work of employees instantly then it will be accepted with much enthusiasm as compared to the incentive program that will reward after a long time.

Recognition

The cheapest way to keep employees motivated is through recognition. Recognition affects the psychological feelings of the employees and why they are considered recognized for their efforts, then it makes them more motivated and full of passion for becoming leaders or role models for other employees.

In order to achieve recognition among other employees, they put as much effort as they can to become the champions of the teams and eventually other employees all want to become like that champion.