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At the 2008 Olympics, Michael Phelps took home 8 gold medals. Like all Olympic athletes, Phelps trained year-round for four years to compete in this one extraordinary sporting event. As a result, Phelps was rewarded with $200,000 in prize money ($25,000 per gold medal), millions of dollars in paid endorsements and sponsorships from big names such as Kellogg’s, Speedo and Subway and recognition as the best swimmer in the world. Quite the incentive for any professional athlete.
Incentives have the power to motivate almost any kind of behavior if the reward is attractive enough. Let’s look at sales teams for example, the Olympic stars of a corporation. A number of incentives and SPIFFs are implemented into their quarterly sales plans to drive a particular behavior. It could be to focus on a particular product, cross-sell, up-sell – anything the company needs or wants based on its sales strategy. Slap the right incentive on anything and you’ll see results.
Incentives play a huge role in both sports and sales; they are the driving force behind motivation. Although motivation is the heart of success, it isn’t the only factor. For sports and sales, success relies on a number of elements. Motivation, talent, coaching, strategy and communication all play a part in the success of a team.
Motivation
It is important to know what drives your players. What are their incentives? Is it winning, lots of praise, mental coaching or a combination of factors? Finding the right balance is difficult. Managers have the same problem with their sales teams. What will motivate their employees? A big cash bonus? A trip to Hawaii? Fortunately for sales managers, technology has turned this guessing game into a science. With the help of incentive compensation solutions, managers have visibility into sales to see what incentives are working and can adjust sales plans quickly to align employee behavior with corporate goals.
Talent and Coaching
Coaching your players is vital to the success of any team; that’s a given. Coaches provide the right tools and expertise to help the players uplift their performance (individually and as a team). A coach must know how to take an individual from a B player to an A player. It’s the same with sales managers. If a sales rep isn’t meeting his quota, it is up to the manager to coach him to improve his performance.
Coaches must also deal with situations like bringing on new players, incorporating them into the team, as well as letting players go and deciding who has potential and who does not. Time is of the essence; when a coach brings on a new player he must quickly bring him up-to-speed on game strategies and team culture.
Like coaches, sales managers must quickly get new sales reps set up with their plans, quotas and verify they have the right qualifications and certifications required. Time is money, so a fast rollout in essential. Luckily for sales managers there are solutions that can help with this process. Sales performance management software streamlines these processes saving time and resource by eliminating the manual burden.
Strategy
A good strategy is the key to success. No matter how fast, skillful and intelligent your players are, without a strategy, the team is lost. Coaches are responsible for creating the game plan. They must have visibility into the game to be able to see what strategies are working and what they can do to quickly change the plan to overcome obstacles. In sales, a strategy is critical. The strategy ensures employees will meet their quota and execute against businesses goals. Like coaches watching a game, managers must closely watch the performance of their sales team in order to identify weaknesses, motivate the team when the numbers are down and change the strategy to reach the goal. It is important for companies to invest in solutions that provide visibility into performance and flexibility to be able to quickly change strategies in order to meet sales goals.
Communication
For professional athletes, incentives can be much more obvious than for sales reps. Fame, fortune and achievement: the three inherent rewards of any successful athlete. However, for sales professionals, the rewards aren’t always clear. Sales plans are changing constantly; every new quarter, every time a product is introduced, every adjustment affects the plan. If incentives are not clearly communicated, then the sales team won’t realize their rewards or understand how to get the reward. Managers must lay the plan out simply: you get this reward for doing this action. It is imperative to invest in tools that can ensure clear communication between employees and management in order to align sales behavior with the overall corporate strategy.
Go for it!
To turn your sales team into super star Olympians like Michael Phelps, it takes dedication, focus and motivation. Motivation is the powerhouse behind success. In an interview in 2008, six months before the Beijing Olympics, Phelps revealed he kept an article about Ian Crocker’s record setting win in the 2003 World Championships and a list of goals posted next to his bed. “…That’s something that’s definitely there for me to see and get me motivated and more excited.” Realizing his goals on a daily basis perpetuated his motivation.
To foster his motivation, Phelps invested in his talent: a great coach, lots of training time, strict workouts and good nutrition. With this strategy, he honed in on his talent, he was able to change swimming from a sport to a science. This gave him a competitive advantage over the rest of the swimmers. With the correct tools and incentives, he was able to become one of the most well-known, successful athletes in history.
Sharon Seitz is a public relations specialist currently contracted with Callidus Software. She can be contacted at sharonseitz09@yahoo.com.
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