Sales have always been one of the major concerns of any type of business.

Generally, sales
are directly proportional to the success of any business, i.e., if the sales go up the business
does well and if the sales arm is week, so is the business. So after hiring people for the job
the most important thing which needs to be dealt with is - How can they be kept motivated
so that the sales number doesn't go down? In fact the graph of success should be a line
with its nose up in the air.

Few steps that will help you motivate your sales team follow:

1. To have a proper plan: 

A proper plan should be laid before you even hire any sales person. Because if you don't
have a plan, for your sales team to follow, motivating them would be of no use as they
won't know where they are heading. So a clear vision and action plan will ensure that the
complete sales team is focused on a common end result.

2. Assign roles according to aptitude: 

As a manager you should talk to your employees and discuss with them their natural
inclinations. Accordingly, suggest for that individual a new or modified role. This is a useful
exercise as this way you will not only fill in the talent voids in your but also the open job
title. Moreover, your employees will perform much better for the company.

3. Sales Training: 
Training is generally overlooked as a tool for motivating a sales team. But providing right
training is very important. This will give a boost to their confidence and equip them with the
tools they need to reach personal and company goals which are interlinked. The process of
training should not be one time, but held at regular intervals with the entire staff. Training
should comprise of sales techniques, team building strategies, exercises, attending
tradeshows and seminars and encouragement to pursue different avenues for their personal
development. Investing in your employee's growth, means investing in your business.

4. Proper Communication: 
One of the major causes of the failure of a sales team is that employees are clueless about
what is expected of due to improper communication by their leader. Make it a point to have
a clear understanding about what you need. Just like the e-mail's, status report and
meetings , meeting and talking with team members is necessary and important specially
when they are not performing and falling short of goals set for them.

5. Offer a base salary: 

Generally people appoint a sales person on commission basis which creates a high level of
stress and thus leads to quick burnout of the employee. However, if you appoint your sales
team on a salary basis in addition to their commission it helps you to retain talent and along
with it the obtain work solely for your company instead of from the person in question
rather than have him working for two companies at the same time (which is the normal
trend in the case of commission basis work). Apart from this, the sales team will
concentrate on activates that will lead them to a higher sales rate rather than spending
more time pursuing stronger leads than your company.

6. Set achievable goals with competitive benefits: 

If setting of goals is important for success, then setting up of achievable goals is even more
important. You might be the cause for the failure of the sales team by setting lofty goals for
them. Concrete goals are essential everywhere be it sales or any other genre of work.
To achieve these goals the sales person should feel that you support him and value his
inputs. One of the best ways to do this is by providing all your employees with competitive
benefits. In the benefits you can include anything you like from health insurance to a
retirement plan or give them a generous vacation with family if they were amongst the
outstanding performers.

7. Celebrate and provide positive feedback: 

Achievement of goals or surpassing any milestone set for your sales employee deserves
credit. Celebrating this accomplishment highlights the value that each person brings to the
company and also motivates other team members to achieve such a milestone.

Your positive feedback or a pat on the back is also necessary for primarily achieving such a
feat. Many managers speak to their sales personnel only when they fall short or commit a
blunder. A positive feedback from you once in a while won't hurt you and will motivate your
sales team to do wonders for you.

8. Open-door policy: 
Last but not the least, make yourself available for any of your sales people if need to share
any of their concerns or grievances or need some constructive advice because if they feel
that they cannot share their concerns with you it will lower their morale which is not good
for any company.
Going Back to Go Forward 
In the face of complex performance environments and looming worker scarcity, sales executives must
return to the basics of human motivation to understand why financial incentives alone cannot hope to
move the behaviors of the sales organization in a direction that can support business growth. When
compensation is approximately equal among the sales forces of competing companies, those with a
better chance of achieving high performance will be the ones that recognize the importance of such
things as peer recognition and a trusting relationship between salespeople and management.

Fulfillment of Potential
At the highest level of Maslow's motivational hierarchy is what he called "self-actualization," which we
have expressed more simply as the fulfillment of potential. People have an instinctual need to make the
most of their unique abilities, and they advance toward that goal by having the conditions in place—
which often means acquiring new knowledge and skills—that enable them to take on ever-greater
challenges.

Esteem and a Sense of Belonging

Moving further up the modified Maslow hierarchy, we come to two principles that are closely linked in
terms of motivating a sales force: the need to belong and feel a part of a group, and the need to be held
in esteem and receive recognition.

One important aspect of belonging and esteem is the respect accorded to individuals by senior
management. But recognition from a peer group is also critical to motivating the sales force.

Trust
Above physiological needs on Maslow's hierarchy is the human need for safety and security. In a sales
context, this need can also be understood as one involving the level of trust a sales force has in how it is
treated and compensated.

Trust is a difficult thing to establish within a sales organization when it comes to the complex and ever-
changing calculation of commissions. The story of Canadian telecommunications company Telus Corp. is
instructive in this context. Telus was suffering from the effects of inconsistent and manually intensive
incentive management processes, dependent on multiple data sources that have little or nothing in the
way of audit trails and traceability. As a consequence, the company's salespeople were very skeptical
about how their compensation was determined: Without reliable, detailed reporting on commission
payments, the compensation system was a "black box" as far as the sales force was concerned.

Compensation 
Looking at the reconstructed figure, one can see fairly quickly why financial compensation alone is not
sufficient to explain the motivations at work in a sales workforce. Financial compensation—though not,
strictly speaking, a physiological need—is analogous to the lowest tier of needs in Maslow's hierarchy. It
is basic and important, but it touches upon only one dimension of motivation, and a comparatively low-
level one at that.