If you notice that there has been a decline in employee sales, the problem may not be with the product or the prospects, but may instead be with your employee morale. While employees are partially motivated by a desire to earn an income, this is often not enough to maximize your company's sales. The following are lessons I learned when I was a LipSense distributor and leading those under me. These are things I am using today:

Build Trust

Cultivate trust in your sales representatives. When you notice that your sales representatives are not meeting their sales goals, you will need to have a conversation with them. but you will not be able to do this if they do not feel that they can trust you. One way to do this is to simply tell your representatives that you would like to have a trusting relationship with them and to ask them how you can achieve this.

Lead By Example

Try to lead by example. Even if you do not have a background in sales, consider the behaviors that you want to see from your sales representatives and think of ways in which you can demonstrate these behaviors. For instance, if you would like your sales representatives to be more detail-oriented in how they track sales data, find ways to be more data-driven yourself.

Find Other Ways To Motivate

Look for other ways to reward employees besides providing them with money. For instance, as a LipSense distributor, SeneGence motivated their distributors by providing a free vacation to a sales representative who has the highest number of sales or who has placed the most cold calls. These types of rewards make work more interesting and fun, which can be much more motivating for your employees. Also, for those who are focused on achievement, rewards and other motivators are a great way to help these employees feel like they are recognized.

Give Them The Right Tools

One way to improve the morale of sales representatives is by making it much easier for them perform their jobs. Providing your employees with automatic phone dialer programs will allow them to place more sales calls more quickly. This will lead to your employees to making more sales as they connect to more customers more quickly.

Understand What Motivates High-Performers

One of the difficulties of motivating sales representatives is that sales professionals are driven by different things. For example, high-performing sales professionals are usually motivated by the desire for personal achievements and may become demotivated if they experience ceilings. For instance, if you limit the number of sales calls a star representative can go on, this may cause him or her to leave for a different company.

Do Not Ignore Average Sales Representatives

For those representatives who are always lagging behind, it may simply not work to keep them on your team. But for those representatives who are in the middle, you will want to devote the most attention because they are the most likely to be able to significantly improve the profitability of your company. In most cases, the incentive you provide is not what they are looking for and you will want to use other methods to ignite the spark.

Respect Your Staff

For your most experienced sales professionals, it is important that you show them respect. Simply ask them how they would like to be managed. Experienced sales representatives will likely have a general understanding of how they like to be managed and can guide you through this process.

The great thing about sales is that it is ultimately number-driven. By crunching the numbers, you can know exactly how well your company is performing. Even motivation can be reduced to numbers when the methods you use to improve motivation make a clear, tangible difference.