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.

Reality of the situation

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.

Motivation is measurable and predictable

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.

Jeffrey Bean: personality profiles.

Personality profile

Research undertaken by Dr Larry Craft, an occupational psychologist specialising in the study of sales performance, has yielded a personality profile capable of identifying which of the various factors above motivates an individual at a given point in time. The resulting tool, the Craft Personality Questionnaire (CPQ) incorporates eight primary traits of personality, four of which relate to drive and motivation.

Social Drive

The most significant of these traits Dr Craft labelled Social Drive (Sd). The significance of Social Drive is that individuals who have it in abundance have a high desire to be successful and, crucially, be seen to be successful. In essence, they love to be in the limelight. League tables of performance broadcast throughout the sales team (or better still, the entire company) provide the perfect forum to promote and maintain high levels of performance from such individuals. The winning of incentives and prizes, especially if these are given as part of an awards ceremony, go further in enhancing the reputation and status of these recognition-hungry individuals.

High Sd: many would sell their grandmother.

Given that it feeds on itself, ie high performance brings with it the public recognition and reward sought by high-Sd individuals, there is a downside. If, for some reason, their performance slips and they are no longer top of the sales league and not winning the incentives they are used to, this denies the individual his/her prime source of motivation. It’s then all-too-easy for them to slip into a tail-spin of poor performance and de-motivation.

Whilst it’s possible to help previously successful salespeople recover their performance when this happens, it requires sustained effort on behalf of the sales manager. Many have neither the skills nor patience to provide what they may feel is excessively high maintenance and prefer to let events take their course resulting in the salesperson ultimately leaving the business.

Low Sd

But what of individuals with low Social Drive, are these unsuited to the sales profession? Quite the contrary.

Low-Sd individuals often make up the most consistent top performers in a company. Unlike their high-Sd counterparts, low-Sd people are internally rather than externally motivated. They work to satisfy internal needs that may not be at all obvious. They usually set their own standards of performance and will move heaven and earth to achieve these.

This is fine if their standards are equal to or higher then their sales target, disastrous if not. Most importantly, low-Sd individuals need to believe thoroughly in the product/service being sold, for they are unwilling to compromise their beliefs/personal value system in order to close a sale. In contrast, many high-Sd individuals would sell their grandmother for a shilling if they won a prize as a consequence!

Field-based roles

Another important difference is that low-Sd scorers can comfortably work in field-based roles remote from, and with little contact with, head office. They tend to maintain a consistent level of motivation, provided of course that their faith in the company, its products/service and the management, remains sound.

As individuals’ Sd scores are relatively stable over time, one of the reasons for a loss of self-motivation amongst low-Sd scorers can be a change in direction or culture of the company under new management. One then hears comments like: ‘It’s no longer the company I joined….’

Horses for courses

In terms of employability, one of the main differences between high and low-Sd scorers is that for products that have to be ‘sold’ – life insurance, double-glazing, time-share and other largely undifferentiated products/services – most top-performing salespeople are of the high-Sd variety. This is why the companies selling such items run incentive schemes that pander to individuals with high recognition need.

In contrast, in technical sales and professional services where there is more often a real desire to purchase based on satisfaction of genuine need, low-Sd individuals are often the star performers as they derive their motivation from knowing they have provided real benefit to the customer, rather than just closing a sale.

Knowing where an applicant for a given sales vacancy (or a member of your existing team) sits on this spectrum of recognition need helps recruit (or move) individuals into jobs with greatly increased accuracy. It also helps sales managers know how best to manage and motivate the individual once employed.

Traditional incentives

Whilst the task of finding how to ‘target motivate’ any low-Sd scorers has to be discovered, it is obvious from the outset that the ‘traditional’ incentives used by most companies will not work.

Right incentive: alcohol-filled orgy...

Example

A recent example is that of a high-performing salesperson in one of our clients who had qualified for the company’s holiday ‘incentive’. This reward was a week’s all-expenses-paid trip to a luxurious holiday resort with the other prize winners.

The individual’s reaction to this was to decline the offer as he said he spent enough time with these people, many of whom he didn’t particularly like. The idea of being cooped up in a resort with them in an alcohol-fuelled orgy of self-congratulation had no appeal whatsoever. In contrast, had the company offered to pay for him to drive his family and their caravan to a quiet resort in the south of France and stay there for a week, he would have been more than happy.

... or quiet resort?

Whilst critically important, Social Drive is not the only trait of personality that can be accurately assessed at the recruitment stage, in order to determine suitability for a given sales role.

Other measurable traits

Of the remaining seven scales of CPQ, those of Social Confidence, Goal-orientation and Need for Control all significantly influence drive and activity level. The precise combination of scores on these scales helps determine suitability for internal or field-based roles.

Scores on the scales of Need to Nurture, Detail-orientation and Scepticism help determine the natural bias of an individual towards a new business generation versus account management role.

Hunters and farmers

Recruiting a ‘farmer’ into a role best undertaken by a ‘hunter’ is one of the major reasons why many new recruits fail to meet expectation. ‘Farmers’ are typified by a higher degree of patience and better interpersonal skills than is commonplace amongst ‘hunters’ where the desire to establish and form close personal relationships with prospects and customers would be disadvantageous.

People who really care about people are also concerned about what people think of them. Whilst this aids the ability to form strong and lasting relationships (great for account managers) it also leads them to take criticism and rejection personally. This seriously undermines their resilience – a key attribute in any role where there is a great deal of prospecting, qualification and strong closing required – which is typical of most new business roles.

Hunters: trail of devastation.

Challenges

But ‘hunters’ are not without their challenges. For, their drive and activity levels coupled with their relative insensitivity to the needs of others can result in a trail of devastation in their wake. This often comprises customers who suffer ‘buyer-remorse’ feeling they were bludgeoned into a sale and colleagues and support staff who feel used and abused.

Other factors

Whilst important, personality is only one factor in the recipe for success in sales and to achieve the best possible fit, one also needs to take account of the impact of mental agility and selling skills. The requirements of each are equally dependent on the nature of the role undertaken and like personality, using appropriate test instruments, both are readily measurable as part of the recruitment process.

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