How can a sales director make his or her team increase sales without monetary incentives?

As a sales director, there are many ways to support and enable strong performance. Relying on monetary incentives can cause you to fail to stretch your coaching and leadership skills.  In fact, there are many factors essential for good performance. If these are not in place, you may not get results even with the right monetary incentives.

So if you want your teams to increase sales, consider the following.

Set clear expectations  

• Is it an expectation of their role that they are accountable for increasing sales?  Have you reinforced this expectation during one to one meetings?  Have you discussed it in team meetings?

Provide feedback

• Do they have feedback about their sales results?  (e.g. regular reports that show actual results vs. expectations).  I recommend using a coach approach for feedback.  Ask vs tell.  This means you ask questions that have them assess their own performance instead of you providing the feedback.    

Provide resources and support 

• Have you provided what they require to deliver on the expectation?  To increase sales, this may include customer lists, product information, computer, telephone, training, etc.

Make performance and results matter 

• What difference does it make if they increase sales or don’t increase sales?  What are consequences for not achieving targets?
   
• Connect ‘increasing sales’ to something that matters to them personally.  Ask how they will feel when they achieve their targets.  What will it mean to them if they are a top performer?  Ask questions and then listen as they reflect on which of their values connect to this achievement.  Don’t assume that you know what is important to them.  For instance, if they have a deep desire to be of service, ask them how they can be of service in a way that the customer does more business with us?

Provide coaching

• Good performance requires people to have high levels of awareness and responsibility for what they are doing.  Use coaching questions to increase their awareness and accountability for increasing sales.  Some examples:  How are you doing vs. target?  What are your plans for meeting target?  What else can you do?  What other support might you require?  

Celebrate what you want more of

• How can you recognize people who are achieving increased sales?  Place attention on what successful people are doing to increase sales.  Highlight and celebrate this.  Have them share about their approach and success at team meetings.

Help them to use more of their strengths and talents

• Help them identify the strengths and talents they can use.  If they are analytical, how can they use this skill to help uncover the best customer and market opportunities?  If they are creative, how might they prepare top-notch presentations?

This is just the beginning.  Instead of focusing on what is outside your control (monetary incentives), a sales director must get creative.  Pay attention to the many tools you can use to support your team to increase sales.  And don’t forget to have fun – which is also an important characteristic of successful sales teams.