Motivating salespeople is a mystery to most owners and managers. Even the man who invented management consulting, the late Peter Drucker, struggled with it. "We know nothing about motivation," he wrote, "all we can do is write books about it."

Selling requires specific behaviors. It is much easier to manage the gap between the behavior you have and the behavior you want. For example, if you want to suggest an additional product or service to ten existing customers, you can identify those customers and practice when and how you will do that additional selling. Specificity.

Frederick Herzberg wrote Work and the Nature Man" and developed the Motivation-Hygiene theory. "Employees are motivated by their own inherent need to succeed at a challenging task," he said.

Closing a sale is the achievement that motivates salespeople. That's everything you need to know about motivation.

That knowledge should cause you to devote your time to closing the gap between the behaviors you are exhibiting and the behavior you want to exhibit. If you need ten prospecting calls a day and are getting only seven, you need to close that gap. If you want three corporate account presentations per week and are getting two, you can focus on that gap.

When the new increased activity results in closing more sales, you will be a motivated salesperson.

The Productivity Loop

Ultimately, long-term sales success is more than closing. Long-term success comes from helping your customers get the outcomes they want. If you solve the customer's problem, you will feel even better about closing the next customer.

The "productivity loop" (...Close - Commission Check - Happy Customer - Close - Commission Check - Happy Customer) describes how motivation grows and takes hold in salespeople.

Closing the sale is motivating because achievement is motivating. The extra commission recognizes that achievement again. And the customer whose problem you have solved continues to use your product and refers you to other potential customers. This makes a salesperson want to close more sales, help more customers and earn more commission checks.

Lack of motivation is always caused by a deeper problem, lack of success.

Losing a big customer can create feelings of failure and decrease motivation. When this happens, one of the fastest ways to get back on track is to focus on all the times you have won and not the one deal you have just lost. Salespeople who keep a "victory log" report that recalling their wins helps them get back into the state of mind they had when they were winning and, therefore, motivated.

The trick is to create the victory logs before you need them. Write down twenty-five victories you have had in sales, sports, school, extracurricular activities and life in general. Recalling past wins and how you felt when you won can bring those successful feelings flooding back. This exercise will be more motivating than anything anyone can say to you. Try it.

Until you're clear about what you want in behavioral terms, you will be frustrated.

Achievement is motivating, so manage the selling process. Manage the gap between the behavior you are getting and the behavior you want.