We started our online Sales Management course last week. I asked the attendees (a mix of retail owners and managers), “what’s the most frustrating thing you see your team do on the sales floor?” Two answers stood out:

 “I hate it when my staff is indifferent whether a customer makes a purchase or not.” 

And

 “It’s frustrating when we have an established process for the customer experience, but people don’t follow it.”

In both cases, it seems to me these employees have no incentive to change their behavior. In the universe of Sales Management, your sales skills, training skills and product knowledge must also be matched with a healthy dose of Psychology. Consider, why would my staff want to offer the best, most consistent experience to our customers? We must ask, “what’s in this for them?”

The first, best answer to this question is you all are committed to the same shared vision. When you are on the same page as to why we are in business, we can all enthusiastically pull in the same direction. In his book, “Delivering Happiness”, Tony Hsieh wrote about the early days of his company,  Zappo.com. Even though the company was an online retailer of shoes, they focused instead on their vision, which was built around “Delivering Happiness”. If the team’s job—and shared vision—was bringing happiness to customers, you can see why it was easy to get team members engaged and performing at a high level. 

Of course, I’m assuming you have a great vision. But don’t you assume that everyone on your team is fully aware of it or engaged in it. You have to make sure. 

But incentive goes beyond the vision. The Win-Win of employment involves compensation. And here is where we face our challenge to balance competitive compensation with company profits. Last week, I wrote about Productive Payroll (read it here) and the challenge of motivation in hourly pay. Everyone can’t just change their overall compensation plan, so here are some other considerations when you look to create incentive within your compensation plan:

1. When recruiting and hiring, don’t just talk about starting pay (which may be lower than expected). Instead, be sure to fully explain the compensation journey. Lay out the path the employee can take to achieve the rate of pay they aspire to. 
2. Make your payroll standards are transparent. Nothing breeds distrust and disloyalty like believing you are being treated unfairly—or that someone else has negotiated higher pay by relationship or favoritism. 
3. Track the individual contribution of each team member so that their compensation evenly matches their contribution. Higher contributors deserve higher compensation. 
4. Offer training and personal development. While this doesn’t immediately translate to money in the bank, it does demonstrate an investment in the employee, and your achievement-oriented team members highly value this benefit. 

By focusing on these areas, you can create a more motivated and engaged workforce that is aligned with your company’s goals and values—and watch their engagement grow!