Motivating The Sales Force? Essay

Employee motivation is, or at least must be, one of the key issues for directors, managers and personnel managers. The leader must be able to find the sensitive strings of his subordinates, which can be motivated by influencing them to achieve high performance. The correct use of motivation encourages staff to make more efficient use of their knowledge, skills, and talents. In today's turbulent, often chaotic environment, commercial success depends on the employee's talent and effort. Despite the many existing theories and practices, some of the motivation of leaders today remains a mystical term. This is partly due to the fact that people are motivated by different things and techniques.

According to researcher Lindner (1998), motivated employees are needed in our rapidly changing workplaces to aid in the survival of organizations. Not only is it important to meet the needs of the consumer, it is equally important that to make sure that associates are taken care of and remain motivated. For this reason, Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly and Konopaske (2012) “states much of management’s time is spent addressing the motivation of their employees” (p. 125). According to the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2007), employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity employees bring to their jobs; the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals (Lindner, 1988). Despite its obvious importance, employee motivation can be an elusive quest for managers due to the multiplicity of incentives that can influence employees to do their best work. The reality is that every employee has different ways to become motivated and the knowledge of how to motivate them is key to organizational success. It is imperative that employers get to know the personal needs and wants of their employees in order to establish tactics in which to motivate each of them. Once achieved, “managers are in a better position to encourage and reward employees to behave in effective ways” (Gibson et al, 2012, p.

* Inside Sales employees are high in skill variety, but lower in the other dimensions, which cause a lack of motivation. This causes them to have low experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility, and knowledge of results.

In any case, a general notion can be drawn that the the motivator factor are measured in different terms. The Sales staff aggressively pursues more sales opportunities because its success, feeling of achievement and the large financial incentive depend on their individual performance. This does not exist in Marketing as the feeling of achievement or the vague bonus scheme depends on the company’s performance rather than individual success. Furthermore, the hygiene factors such as pay policy, supervision style, social status and working condition seem to play significant role in Pluto Telecommunications. These hygiene factors in Sales department create job satisfaction as the sale staff is well paid, with greater autonomy in making decisions, high social status awareness and self –esteem. Yet, these factors, up to certain degree do, not play important role for Marketing. Therefore, it is essential to understand what and how motivates people.

Although the achievement culture contained a few drawbacks, there were a few perks that allowed the organization to succeed. Many department managers had a goal oriented mentality, this mentality allowed them to become creative in how to meet their goals. When sales goals were met, bonuses and rewards were given to department managers. This type of personal initiative gives employees a reason to work and to want to help the organization. Additionally, when sales goals are met there is usually an increase payroll for the company; this increase in payroll allows workers to work more hours and be more financially stable.

The sales department is the heart of every company. A company depends on the sales of their products. The success of the sales department is imperative to the continued growth of a company. In order for a sales department to experience success, the company must find new ways to motivate the employees on a continuous basis. An excellent way to motivate the employees is to provide incentive programs or total rewards programs. These incentive programs

The success of any business depends on the productivity and satisfaction of its employees. Employees need to be motivated to work. Motivation can be defined as the inner force that drives individuals to accomplish personal and organizational goals. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic. For an individual to be motivated in a work situation there must be a need, which the individual would have to perceive a possibility of satisfying through some reward. Intrinsic motivation stems from motivations that are inherent and arise from performing the task of the job itself, which the individual gets a feeling of either positive or negative motivation as a result of

Fred Maiorino had been a successful sales manager for Schering-Plough Corporation for thirty-one years before Jim Reed was named general sales manager over the South Jersey sales district that included Fred’s sales territory. Afterwards, Reed implemented several changes to try to boost sales including a new performance appraisal system and a hands-on coaching style to motivate his sales staff. The problem arose with Reed’s inability to motivate Fred (Buller & Schuler, 2003).

There are numerous motivational theories that explain why people do what they do. When viewed collectively, these theories suggest people’s actions are driven by the following factors: economic, social, and self-construct. Economic factors include not only money, but health protection, security, wealth, physical safety, and purchasing power. Sales commissions fit most of these needs, but do not fully meet the needs for security and physical safety. When people think about and act upon what others think of them, they are being influenced by social factors. Most people will work harder for positive feedback and avoid performance that garners negative feedback. For example, some people are eager to conform to the norms of a sales team and are positively motivated by the performance of the entire team. Self-construct is the inner voice that drives an individual to perform and differs in every individual. Some people are driven in the pursuit of self-accomplishment, while others are driven by the need for power or acceptance. Each of these factors are combined in varying degrees in all individuals, whether salespeople or not.

Due to the average tenure of the employees in the sales organization being high, the organization is often faced with employee resistance to change. Employees are dispersed throughout a large geographic area, where many face unique cultural, regional, and economic differences while working through their daily routine. In order for the sales department’s leadership to gain buy-in to every trivial new method of operation, the sales managers are designated to redundantly present and sell

Keeping employees motivated in addition to creating incentives and/or additional ways for employees to receive more compensation will create better performance overall within an organization. Contrary if company B gives their employees incentives to perform, without any motivational tactics they probably will not have as many top performances as company A, in addition the company may only seek short term rewards verses have long term success. Lack of motivation for employees within an organization, can cause long term damage for the company’s success. Different things motivate everyone; therefore there should be a system in place to keep employees motivated for the long term success of the company. In the MBM textbook under the concept of incentives, compensation, and motivation, there are a couple of different views of how it should be applied within an organization. We will discuss The Social Role of Profit, Personal Profit and Losses, and the way Market-Based Management view how incentives, compensation, and motivation should be applied and the things that effectively drive employees’ actions while at work.

What is the one thing that all for-profit companies have in common? They must generate sales of their products or services to survive. In order to accomplish this, most companies have a team of sales representatives driving themselves and each other to win the confidence of clients. But just like every sports team needs a coach, every sales team needs a strong and knowledgeable Sales Manager to be successful.

The personal selling process is a continuously revolving cycle of stages that assist the professional sales person of today in developing basic selling strategies and tactics that help them improve and prefect their own personal selling styles. As listed in the text, “there are countless small tasks in the personal selling process that are generally organized into seven major stages that overlap and interact which are:

The results obtained are found to be contradicting with Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory. The study revealed that the strongest motivation factor with the highest significance level on job satisfaction is the working conditions, which is a hygiene factor. The subsequent factors that motivate the sales personnel reported are recognition, company policies and

Motivation is one of the most discussed topics in the present era’s organisations, especially since renowned psychologists like Maslow and Herzberg are dedicating their efforts to understanding it. Companies are investing a significant amount of resources in improving productivity in order to maximise profits. One of these important resources is of human nature. In order to get the very best out of employees, some motivational approaches need to be used. But what is motivation and how do I successfully motivate? I will try to relate one of my personal experiences with a friend to some of the most influential motivational theories. After introducing my story and making a definition of motivation I will address the ideas of Taylor,