Most sales personnel require motivation to reach and maintain acceptable performance levels. They require motivation as individuals and as group members. As individuals, they are targets for personalized motivational efforts by their superiors. As members of the sales force they are targets for sales management efforts aimed toward welding them into an effective selling team. Four aspects of the salesperson’s job affect the quality of its performance. The following discussion focuses on these aspects; each is an important reason why sales personnel require additional motivation.
Inherent Nature of the Sales Job
- Salesman meets many prospects some of whom are difficult to deal with.
- Competition is high because many compete for the same business and they meet numerous turndowns.
- Targets are set high by superiors.
- Sales people spend considerable time away from home.
These conditions cause salespersons to become discouraged, to achieve low performance levels, or even to seek no selling positions. The inherent nature of the sales job, then, is the first reason that additional motivation is required.
Salesperson’s Role Conflicts
The salesperson must try to satisfy the’ expectations of people both within the company (in the sales department and elsewhere) and in customer organizations. There is linkage with four groups: (1) sales management,(2) the company organization that handles order fulfillment, (3) the ‘customers, and (4) other company sales personnel. Each group imposes certain’ behavioral expectations on the salesperson, and, in playing these different roles, the Salesperson faces role conflicts
Not much can be’ done to reduce the role conflicts of sales personnel. Some evidence exists that experienced sales personnel perceive significantly less, role conflict than do those with less experience. This suggests that a salesperson’s perceptions of and ability to cope with, role conflict are influenced not only by experienced but by the effectiveness, of sales training. It also suggests that those who become experienced sales personnel may cope better with role conflict than those leaving the sales organization earlier.
So improving sales training effectiveness and revising selection criteria are two roads to reducing, the impact of role conflict on sales force morale.
Tendency Toward Apathy
Tendency toward Apathy those who, year after year, cover the same territory and virtually the same customers, lose interest and enthusiasm. Gradually their sales calls degenerate into routine order taking. Because they know’ the customers so well, they believe that good salesmanship are no longer necessary. Their customer approach typically becomes: “Do you need anything today, Joe?” They fail to recognize that friendship in no way obviates the necessity for creative selling and that most customers do not sell themselves on new products and applications. The customer’s response, as often as not, is: “Nothing today, Bill.” Later a competing salesperson calls on the same account, uses effective sales techniques, and gets an order.
Many salespeople require additional motivation to maintain continuing enthusiasm to generate renewed interest in their work.
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. Team spirit, if present at all, is weak. Thus, the contagious enthusiasm—conducive to improving the entire group’s performance-does not develops. If sales management, through providing added motivation, succeeds in developing and maintaining team spirit, individual sales personnel strive to meet group performance standards. Few people who consider themselves members of the sales team want to appear as poor performers in the eyes of their colleagues. Providing the kind of working atmosphere in which all members of the sales force feel they are participating in a cooperative endeavor is not easy-nevertheless, effective sales management works continuously to achieve and maintain it.
