All Salespeople Are Just Money Motivated? Some Thought Starters

• Money is firstly to do with safety and security needs.

• Money then becomes an enabler of lifestyle.  The more aspirational the lifestyle the more ‘money motivated’ the person becomes.  What’s known as extrinsic motivation.

• Life stage changes mean the motivation for money (lifestyle) ebbs and flows over time.

• Money can be a proxy for many things:
  • self esteem
  • achievement
  • worth to the organisation
  • a way of measuring personal value in the way a boss, spouse, friend or colleague perceives that person

  All the above points are intrinsic motivators.

• Running an unchanging ‘one size fits all’ monetary incentive scheme over many years will retain/attract similarly money (un)motivated individuals.

• Any motivating incentive must be linked to a future outcome.  By definition, surprise bonuses don’t motivate (perhaps briefly if you’re lucky), but they are an excellent way of saying thank you.  More of a ‘why work here’ than a ‘why work harder’.

• The closer effort and reward are connected the greater change in behaviour (if people are money motivated enough, see previous points).

• An end of year incentive has to be perceived to be achievable across the whole year to motivate the individual across the whole year.  It also has to be worth more than 40% of their salary to keep them interested, when it might be over 10 months away from (possibly) paying out.

• Appropriate awards (intrinsic) can often deliver more motivation per £ than expensive badly designed rewards (extrinsic).

• Having an informed awareness of the personal profiles (vis-à-vis extrinsic and intrinsic motivation) of each of the sales team will enable you to create highly motivating frameworks.

• The more mediocre the sales management, the more they will rely on blunt financial incentives to motivate their teams.

If you would like to talk more bout getting some help in designing a motivating (financial) framework for you sales organisation please contact:

Claudine McClean

tel: +44 (0)1789 734 400
email: claudinem@salespathways.com

Copyright Notice

© SalesPathways Ltd. 2006

The material in this article is the property of SalesPathways Ltd. We would ask you to respect this copyright by always crediting SalesPathways Ltd. if you choose to copy, transmit, communicate or in any other way disseminate this material. Thank you.