The Unmotivated Sales Force: 3 Root Causes

Why are some seemingly bright and promising employees held back by low- motivation?

  When someone isn’t motivated, these are typically the symptoms:

• Not on time
• Not diligent
• Procrastinating 
• Uncooperative 
• Argumentative 
• Negative
• Refuse to be held accountable 
• Quality of work is lacking

  All of these symptoms can be traced back to one or more root causes. 

I’ve noticed 3 categories of what holds a team back from being motivated. 

Fear

Sometimes people don’t know what to do or how to do it. Solution: Train them and help them retain the information. By showing them step-by-step how to do it, the fear of failure is greatly reduced. 

  I had a client yesterday on a coaching call. They were talking about how certain people weren’t executing on cold calls. I asked my client, “what does your team have in front of them in terms of a roadmap?”

  Was there onboarding training? Do they know how to block/handle objections?

  They didn’t have much in place to teach these things and, as a result, fear of the cold calling process was holding them back.

Our job as managers is to show them how and give them the roadmap.

Apathy

  When you don’t see value in what you’re doing, how it’s helping you, or helping the company goals, you become apathetic. 

If you’re not consistently tying actions (cold calling, presentations) to positive outcomes, your employees are probably thinking:
“What’s the point in doing this?” 

Connect the task to the value and outcome. 

  We are creatures of self-interest.  When we do something, it’s because it is going to serve us somehow. If we don’t see how it serves us, we won’t be motivated.

Skepticism

  Simply put: they don’t believe that it’s really going to work. Maybe your employees tried cold calling in the past and didn’t immediately get great results and became skeptical that it could work for them.

  When someone is a skeptic, someone is thinking that a goal is too hard to reach, they don’t have the skills, or it’s impossible for them to achieve. 

  The job of the manager is to reduce the skepticism by showing them how it can work and how it is possible to be successful.

  Whether through training, leading by example, or investing in professional development, this mindset can usually be changed for the better. 

  These 3 ‘Mental Brakes” are mindset blocks that are holding your team back and we have to manage these “Mental Brakes” in our teams if we’re not satisfied with motivation/performance levels. Our job as managers is to show them a roadmap and teach them skills, show value, and show them that it can be done and that success is possible.