Sales Force Management Sales Force Motivation

Meaning of Motivation
• Sales Manager’s Performance depends upon the composite
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performance of the individuals making up the sales force

• Hence Sales Managers are greatly interested in the factors influencing
individual sales personnel to achieve given performance levels
• What causes a salesperson to achieve a given performance level?
• Native ability or potential - No one achieves more than they are capable of
achieving
• Performance is influenced by skills that come with education, training, and
experience
• The amount and effectiveness of effort expended by the individual
impacts performance
• Most sales personnel require motivation to reach and maintain
satisfactory performance levels
Performance( P)  Ability( A)  Motivation( M )
 Meaning of Motivation
• Motivation is goal-directed behavior aimed toward achieving
given results, which, in turn, provide rewards in line with the goal
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• Some sales personnel are self-starters, requiring little external incentive –

but they are exceptions
• Most sales personnel require motivation to reach and maintain
satisfactory performance levels
• The process of motivation starts when a motive prompts people
to action
• The behavior of the salesperson comprises a series of activities that the
person does by being motivated to achieve individual or organizational
goals
Motive

Behavior Tension Reduction

Goal
 Need Gratification and Motivation

• All human activity including the salesperson’s job behavior – is

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directed toward satisfying certain needs (i.e., reaching certain

goals)
• Individual behavior differ because individuals seek to fulfill
different sets of needs in different ways
• Some salespersons are more successful than others because of
the differing motivational patterns and amounts and types of
efforts they exert in performing their jobs
• How individual behaves depends upon the nature of their
fulfilled and unfulfilled needs modified by their environmental
and social backgrounds
• The motives lying behind any specific action derive from
tensions built up to satisfy particular needs.
• Any action taken is for the purpose of reducing these tensions
 Motivational Help from Management
• Important reasons why sales personnel require additional motivation are:
• Inherent Nature of the Sales Job cause salespersons to become discouraged, to
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achieve low performance levels

• Succession of ups and downs
• Interaction with pleasant/courteous and unpleasant/rude people
• Aggressive competing sales personnel
• Working after-hours time away from home
• Salesperson’s Boundary Position and Role Conflicts
• Salesperson must try to satisfy the expectations of people both within the company as well
as in customer organization
• Conflict due to the dual role as an advocate for both the customer and the company and the
salesperson’s basic interest as an entrepreneur
• Tendency towards Apathy
• Lack of interest and enthusiasm because of covering the same territory and virtually the
same customers
• Maintaining a Feeling of Group Identity
• The salesperson working alone, finds it difficult to develop and maintain a feeling of group
identity with other company salespeople
 Motivational Theories – Hierarchy of Needs
Self
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Actualization
Needs

Esteem Needs

Belongingness and Social

Relations Needs

Safety and Security Needs

Basic Physiological Needs

 Hierarchy of Needs
• Abraham H Maslow developed a theory of motivation based on the notion
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that an individual seeks to fulfill needs according to a hierarchy of importance

as shown in the figure
• Abraham Maslow’s need hierarchy theory proposes that:
• All people possess five sets of needs
• These needs follow a hierarchical pattern from the most fundamental or basic
survival instincts to the most advanced needs of personal growth and
development
• People are motivated to engage in behavior that will result in the satisfaction of
the lowest level of needs currently not fulfilled
• Once a need is satisfied, the next need in the hierarchy becomes dominant, i.e., a
higher order need cannot become active unless the preceding lower order need is
satisfied.
• A satisfied need is not a motivator and an unsatisfied need activates goal seeking
behavior
• People wish to move up in the hierarchy and seek growth. No individual is content
with physiological needs
Sales Force Management Motivational Theories – Hygiene Theory
 Hygiene Theory
• Frederick Herzberg and his co-researchers developed the motivation-hygiene
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theory by grouping the motivating variables into two categories: Hygiene

factors and Motivators
• Hygiene factors are those factors that when absent increase dissatisfaction with
the job, and when present help in preventing dissatisfaction but do not increase
satisfaction or motivation
• Motivators are factors that when absent in a job prevent both satisfaction and
motivation, and when present lead to satisfaction and motivation.
• Motivation-hygiene theory has two important implications for sales
management:
• Management must see that the job provides the conditions that prevent job
dissatisfaction – this means that management needs to provide an acceptable
working environment, fair compensation, adequate fringe benefits, fair and
reasonable supervision, and job security (to get a fair day’s work from the
salesperson)
• Management must provide opportunities for achievement, recognition,
responsibility, and advancement (to motivate performance beyond that of a fair
day’s work)
Sales Force Management Motivational Theories – Expectation Model
 Expectancy Model
• The expectancy model, developed by Vroom, conceptualizes
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motivation as a process governing choices of behavioral activity

• The strength of an individual’s motivation to behave in a certain way (in
terms of efforts) depends upon how strongly that individual believes that
these efforts will achieve the desired performance levels
• If the individual achieves the desired performance, then how strongly
does the individual believe that the organization’s rewards/punishments
will be appropriate for that kind of performance
• And to what extent will this satisfy the individual’s needs (goals)
• Put differently, The strength of a tendency to act in a certain way
depends upon the strength of an expectation that the act will be
followed by a given outcome and on that outcome’s
attractiveness to the individual