How is Emotion the Key to Motivating Your Sales Team

Tapping into emotion is key to building purpose and connection and driving a successful sales team. This article will explore how to motivate sales team members using various incentives and discuss how emotional engagement can significantly enhance your team’s performance and cohesiveness.

We will cover the following:

• What does sales team motivation mean?
• Why is sales motivation important?
• What motivates sales teams?
• The role of emotion in sales team motivation
• Strategies to motivate your sales team

What does sales team motivation mean?

Put simply, sales team motivation is the driving force that pushes your team to achieve and then surpass their sales-related goals and objectives. It’s the spark that inspires your salespeople's desire to engage, perform and excel.

Your organisation can build this motivation by focusing on your employee experience, activating strategies that foster engagement to create a high-performing sales culture.

The good news, organisations can significantly impact the overall motivation of their sales teams with simple changes and set the stage for success and organisational growth.

Why is sales team motivation important?

The motivation of your sales team directly influences performance, productivity and overall contribution to your organisational goals. In fact, there is a direct correlation between sales team motivation and sales performance. It has been proven that a motivated sales team, combined with an engaging company culture, is more likely to meet or exceed their sales targets. This boost in performance comes from the satisfaction they have in their job and the sense of purpose they feel.

Sales team motivation is most impactful when you cultivate a collaborative team mentality. Collaborative teams will naturally support one another and overcome challenges more effectively leading to improved results and enhanced morale. With the transition to remote and hybrid working models, this has re-emphasised the importance of creating intentional engagement strategies that focus on maintaining a strong company culture that keeps your employees motivated regardless of physical presence or geography.

Another benefit to a motivated sales team is that they contribute and influence a positive company culture which in turn supports retention of wider talent. It is suggested that employees who aren’t engaged, or those who are quietly quitting (emotionally and psychologically disengaging from their work), amount to a global business economy loss of $8.8tn a year. This amount of loss shows the importance of understanding how to motivate a sales team and how to prevent demotivation in the future.

What motivates sales teams?

In the multi-billion-dollar field of sales incentive programmes, there’s one topic that seems to generate more research, debate and division than all others: What's the most effective approach to recognition and rewards — financial or non-financial incentives? In other words, will your salespeople work harder to earn a cash bonus or points to use on tangible rewards and experiences?

Financial Incentives

These are the rewards that result in direct financial incentives. Within this category, you’ll find incentives such as commissions, target bonuses, profit-sharing schemes, gift cards and stock options. As an extrinsic motivator, financial incentives can be an effective motivator enhancing financial security, supporting a sense of personal achievement. A challenge to the efficacy of financial incentives for motivation is ensuring effort matches the reward value. With multiple external factors influencing this perception this should be a careful consideration.

Non-financial Incentives

These are the rewards that have no cash value. They focus more on recognition, personal achievements and professional development and include performance awards, personal development opportunities, and points systems that can be redeemed for experiences or merchandise. Non-monetary rewards fuel core motivation. They’re more personalised and offer your employees a way to connect with the company and its goals on a more emotional level.

Learn more about financial vs non-financial incentives.

The role of emotion in sales team motivation

It’s a common misconception that cash bonuses are the ultimate motivator for your sales teams. It makes sense as these rewards offer a straightforward and rational reward for enhanced performance. However, behavioural economics challenges this concept and multiple research studies have proved that non-cash incentives often lead to much higher levels of motivation and performance.

What is behavioural economics?

Behavioural economics is when rational thought and emotions combine to drive decisions and behaviour. It highlights how people often make decisions irrationally and inconsistently. Humans are not purely rational agents. It is suggested, that as much as 77% of human behaviour is driven by emotion rather than reason. When it comes to sales incentives, this emotion-led response shows in the improved performance of non-cash incentives.

Why are non-monetary incentives more effective in motivating sales teams?

As proven by multiple academic and industrial studies, non-cash incentives are more effective at tapping into the emotional side of the brain.

With cash rewards, research shows they often get absorbed into daily spending and obligations making the impact fleeting and practical. However, non-cash rewards such as luxury goods or experiences cannot be forgotten so easily. In fact, the emotional connection we have to rewards of this nature create a re-consumption effect allowing us to re-live the emotions of receiving the reward each time the goods are used or the experience recalled.

Its this emotional response that sets non-cash incentives apart when it comes to moving a business forward. Emotional engagement elicits a stronger, more long lasting performance in your sales team in a way that money can’t unless it’s a substantial amount.

Strategies to motivate your sales team

Now that we’ve established why motivating your team is so important and the importance of tapping into your sales team's emotions, how do you do this exactly? It’s not as complex as it may seem.

1. Build trust with your team

Trust is the foundation that any team is built upon. With trust, you find open communication, mutual respect and a shared commitment to goals. Trust inspires your sales teams to take calculated risks and share their innovative ideas. Here are some ways to build trust:

● Spend time with your team: Dedicate time to get to know your team members on an individual level to understand their dreams and challenges.

● Be transparent: Share successes and setbacks openly.

● Listen to your team: Actively listen to your team’s ideas, concerns and feedback.

● Follow through on promises: Consistency in what you say and do reinforces the trust you want.

● Recognise and acknowledge effort: Publicly and privately recognise the efforts of your team members.

2. Create personalised goals

It's important to create goals for your sales team that resonate with them on a personal level. The goals can be for the whole team, but they also need to have an individual aspect to them. Who wants to strive for a goal that they don’t feel connected to? Use the SMART goal framework to make them clear and attainable.

Best practices for recognition:

● Conduct goal-setting sessions: Work with each team member to set personal goals that reflect their career path and ambitions.

● Provide resources to achieve targets: Give your team the tools they need to achieve success through training and support.

● Regularly review goals: Schedule time to assess progress, adjust objectives and reinforce the importance of personalised goals.

● Celebrate achievements: Recognise all wins, big or small, and highlight how all of them contribute to the success of the team and the company.

● Encourage peer recognition: Create an atmosphere and culture where other team members acknowledge and celebrate each other’s achievements.

3. Tailor your leadership style

Make sure that your style of leadership meets the individual preferences and needs of your sales team. Each team member may respond differently to leadership approaches. Adapting your leadership style to individual needs can enhance trust, collaboration and overall motivation.

4. Don’t neglect the role of personal development

9 in 10 employees who state their job allows them to master the skills important to them feel like they belong at their organisation.

One of the best ways to improve motivation is by providing continuous opportunities for learning, skill development and career growth. This creates an environment where employees feel valued and are motivated to do their best.

● Offer diverse learning resources: Provide access to online courses, workshops and seminars that are relevant to each employee’s career path.

● Tailor development goals: Set up development objectives that align with individual aspirations and strengths.

● Encourage mentorship: Pair up team members with mentors within the company who can help guide their careers.

● Support employees attending conferences: Allow employees to attend industry conferences where they can network and find learning opportunities.

● Engage in open communication: Create an environment where thoughts and ideas can flow freely.

● Enquire about feedback preferences: Ask your team members how they want to receive feedback and what format is the most helpful to their personal growth.

● Understand their communication styles: Discover and adapt to the preferred communication style of each team member.

● Set clear expectations: Define what success looks like for each role, and make sure that their goals align with the team and individual strengths.

5. Have regular check-ins

Consistent and open communication links the team with their leadership. An open and continuous feedback loop helps to address concerns, recognises achievements, and enables strategies to be adjusted quickly when needed. Having regular check-ins reinforces your team members' value within the team and boosts morale and motivation.

● Schedule meetings (and stick to them): Create a regular schedule for check-ins and make sure that you adhere to it.

● Maintain clear communication channels: There are various platforms for communicating (emails, messaging apps, face-to-face), so make use of them.

● Focus on progress and achievements: Use these meetings to discuss employees' progress towards their goals, celebrate their successes, and strategise on how to overcome challenges.

6. Provide personalised, meaningful rewards 

You need to recognise individual achievements with rewards that inspire each team member personally. This boosts their emotional engagement with the incentive, increasing their effort and sense of appreciation and value, and strengthening their loyalty.

● Conduct preference surveys: Use surveys to get a feel for the preferences and interests of each team member.

● Offer a variety of rewards: Providing a range of reward options means that your team members can choose what feels most meaningful to them.

● Use a dedicated rewards platform: Use a reward platform to help streamline the selection, options and distribution of these personalised rewards.

7. Appreciate and recognise employees

Employee recognition is a powerful tool when it comes to making your employees feel valued, respected and part of a supportive work culture. Recognition boosts morale and encourages a higher performance and loyalty to the company.

● Celebrate milestones: Point out significant personal and professional milestones to reinforce the value of every team member.

● Offer frequent recognition: Make sure to emphasise both big and small wins to maintain motivation.

● Use a recognition platform: Use a platform that makes this recognition public and part of your company culture.

● Encourage peer-to-peer recognition: Create an environment where your employees feel encouraged to cheer for their colleagues.