We all want to get paid for our sales work, be that selling or managing and sales team. But is cash really king and do you know how to pay it out, if so? Have a chat and/or attend an event with Noel Paton from Varicent.
2 CommentsIf the ambition is “inspiring people & performance”, the most common mistake in planning and executing incentive programmes is to look at the programme as a “do this and get that” proposition, suggests Craig Thomas of Active Consultancy Ltd.
0 CommentsThe second quarter of 2010 saw ‘exceptional growth’ for the voucher and gift card sector with sales totalling £388.5million, the industry trade body revealed on 11 August.
0 CommentsThe Ferrari sales network was treated to the first glimpse of the new 458 Challenge when the new production-derived track car was unveiled to the company’s annual dealer meeting at Maranello on 14 July.
0 CommentsIs your sales team made of the Right Stuff? Legendary lunar astronaut Charlie Duke will be aiming to inspire his audience to even greater heights at ‘Successful Selling 2010’ this coming October with his keynote address ‘The Ultimate Performance’.
0 CommentsNext month will see three leading names in the rewards, employee benefits and motivation sector – Accor Services, Capital Incentives & Motivation and Motivano – to completing a two-year strategic integration, when they come together as one company – Edenred - from 1 July.
0 CommentsWe’ve just had Chelsea and our summer gardens are in full bloom, so perhaps it’s no surprise that one of the success stories of the rewards and motivation industry is National Garden Gift Vouchers (NGGV). They’ve just announced that corporate sales have increased 33% year on year.
0 CommentsTV presenter and motorsports enthusiast Vicki Butler-Henderson was on hand to present the awards at Mercedes-Benz UK’s corporate salesperson of the year event recently.
0 CommentsDo you have a boss whose idea of leading a team makes Gordon Ramsay sound like Mother Theresa?
Threatening and bullying behaviour is increasingly under the spotlight as employers are looking for new ways to make sure their stressed-out employees get along in the recession. That’s according to communication coaching specialist Personal Presentation.
2 CommentsIt could only happen in Russia! Companies are reportedly offering budding vigilantes the opportunity to go pirate hunting aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.
0 CommentsCombining travel with voluntary work has spawned a whole new industry – so-called ‘voluntourism’ – and now it has reached the corporate market: businesses can reward employees and, at the same time, ‘give something back’ by developing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme.
0 CommentsDancing is an entertaining and healthy activity, and an excellent ice-breaker. Thanks to television programmes like Strictly Come Dancing, showing off your moves has never been more popular, making it an ideal fun activity between business sessions at a conference, as part of a team-building exercise or as a great way to get people up on the dance floor after dinner at a corporate event.
0 CommentsModernselling.com asked five of the world’s top explorers for their best motivational tips….
0 CommentsForecasting, setting sales quotas and formulating compensation plans are perhaps the most controversial aspects of any sales leader’s responsibilities. Here are the seven deadly sins of targeting as seen through the eyes of the team….
0 CommentsHere are three tips to help ensure your sales team compensation plan hits the right target.
0 CommentsIt was a bumper night for the Royal Mail at one of the main events celebrating the achievements of Britain’s sales profession. The troubled public sector giant picked up no less than three winner’s awards at the British Excellence in Sales and Marketing Awards (BESMAs) held at the Lancaster London hotel on 27 May.
Organised by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management, the awards ceremony also proved a successful event for Royal Liver’s Progress team which took home two awards, while other winners included Virgin Media Business, Pareto Law and Huthwaite, whose managing director Tony Hughes picked up a lifetime achievement award. All the BESMAs were awarded folowing a rigorous judging process by senior sales professionals held at the Ashridge Business School.
The judges said that the key requirement for finalists was to ‘prove that they met the criteria set for their category, which reflects performance against responsibilities and skills for each role’. At the same time, ‘selling is increasingly becoming a highly professional, skilled and ethical discipline – more and more companies are setting up sales academies according to the ISMM’s qualifications, for example – and the BESMA winners and runners-up are top achievers in their key roles’ according to the organisers.
The new collaborative selling environment demands innovative ways of measuring performance, setting targets and designing incentive plans. Performance targets, incentive plans and performance measures cannot be considered in isolation as they are highly interrelated, recent research from CRANFIELD SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT has found.
Cranfield today (2 December) unveiled a new framework designed to support organisations in the target-setting process. Called the ‘Cranfield target-setting wheel’ it aims to help businesses ‘transform their existing performance management and incentive systems to reflect the sales environment that staff operate in and establish targets that will generate the expected behaviours’.
What can sales leaders learn about motivation from the world of sports, asks Fiona Challis.
In the world of sports, teams have a coach to provide motivation, inspiration, enhance their skills and help them achieve peak performance. Similarly, in the world of business, sales teams look to their leader or manager to provide motivation, inspiration, enhance their skills and help them to achieve peak performance.
Successful sports teams and successful sales team actually have a lot of similarities. They both need focus, they have shared goals and vision, and individuals within the team have their own personal goals which they take positive action towards achieving everyday.
These individuals take responsibility for their own success; however, they have the ability to work together as a team. They have a leader who provides inspiration and coaches them to recognise their strengths and identify the motivational drivers which they can utilise on a daily basis to sustain their motivation. It is all of these elements which enable both sports teams and sales teams to achieve peak performance.
Executive director of P&MM Events & Communications, Nigel Cooper offers his view on why cutting back on incentives now will prove to be a hostage to fortune later.
In a recession, cutting costs is an essential business priority, always has been, always will be. It’s rule No1 in the economic handbook. However, equally, if not more important, is rule No 2 – how are you going to get out of it?
It’s time to ask yourself some serious questions about your sales strategy.
Although the Oscars are better known, if you want to experience an awards event which is a truly great inspiration for the whole team, indeed an entire profession, you don’t have to look further than the National Sales Awards, writes ModernSelling.com publisher, sales director and category judge Neil Warren.
Creating high-performance sales teams is essential for any business wanting to achieve sales growth: proactive, positive, consistent, new-business-winning teams and salespeople are the holy grail of any sales organisation, writes GAVIN INGHAM.
As managers we all have our own unique ways of motivating, managing and leading our sales teams yet, from time to time, we also have problems keeping our teams on target, focused and ‘up for it’. Here are five of the most effective motivational strategies and techniques that I have used to help many of my clients to achieve their personal, team and business goals.
Director of business development at OpenSymmetry, John Stuart argues there is scope for up to a 12% saving on sales force compensation plans.
I recently read a story about a customer who went into a shop to buy a pair of shoes. After deciding which pair he wanted, he went to the till. Half way there, one of the sales assistants handed him shoe polish, saying that it was free that day.
At home, the proud new shoe owner checked his receipt, only to discover that he had in fact paid for the shoe polish but received a discount on the shoes in turn.
So why had the sales assistant said the shoe polish was free? What had probably happened was that the shoe polish offered the highest profit margins, so the retailer incentivised its sales staff to drive the shoe polish sales.
What really keeps a salesperson motivated, asks editor Nick de Cent?
There must have been more words expended on the topic of motivation in business – and especially in sales – than almost any other, along with enough hot air to fuel the Greenhouse Effect well into the next millennium.
Type in the word ‘motivation’ and Google returns over 87 million references, a large proportion of which turn out to be from the usual suspects – self-styled motivational gurus, peddlers of the latest quick fix and similar snake-oil salesmen – all intent on earning their over-inflated consultancy fees.
Director of Sales Team Focus Ltd, Jeffrey Bean discusses whether sales team motivation is measurable and predictable.
I recently read an excellent article written by Nick de Cent (originally in Salestarget.co.uk’s newsletter ‘The Deal’ and onsite here – Ed) that accurately summarised the collective thinking on the motivation of employees in general and salespeople in particular, into which serious research began in the early 1950s.
Whilst the conclusion and recommendations may have seemed like catch-alls, they reflect the reality of the situation in that no two people are motivated by the same things and in the same way. And what motivates an individual can vary over time depending on personal circumstances.
What use are such generalisations to sales managers seeking to recruit the ‘right’ people and get the best from every member of the team? Well, whilst it is true that we are all unique in terms of precisely what motivates us, there is a surprising amount of commonality in what motivates high-performing salespeople. The best news of all is that it’s measurable and predictable – of great benefit when recruiting new staff.
Without a clear idea of what we really want from our career (and life in general) it can be extremely difficult to stay focused and motivated. Work out the difference between dreams and fantasies. The pay rise we have been promised or the promotion that has been hinted at are both dreams. It is easy to lose touch with our dreams under the pressures of daily life.
We often sabotage the things we really want to achieve by taking on too much. Above all, set realistic goals.
Managing work-load and expectations in today’s frenetic business world is a challenging but vital skill. Where possible, it is almost always more productive to take things at a steady pace.
We talk a lot about motivation in the world of sales, so much so that a multi-million-pound industry has grown up around the concept of keeping employees – and especially sales staff – motivated. But what about the opposite – demotivation?
Systems, organisational policies and management actions can all actively contribute towards a demotivated workforce.
Of the three, it’s probably the individual manager’s actions and behaviour that has the greatest immediate effect on staff motivation… or lack of it.
Here are seven ways you can guarantee to demotivate staff…
'Good news chaps, we're all going paintballing!' I don't think so, says Peter Buhlmann, not when there are so many more imaginative ways to lead your team towards motivational Nirvana.
Not the idle fantasy of a fourteen year-old comic aficionado, but a technique used by Pareto Law, voted the best small company to work for in the 2005 Sunday Times national survey.
'We only take on inexperienced young graduates,' says sales manager Matthew Hague, 'so we have to think how we're going to provide a business that they're going to want to work for. We've tended to sail a little close to the wind sometimes and do something different.