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Don’t be fooled, experts say. Money isn’t the only motivator in the workplace. To find out what gets your sales team going, you must first understand how each person views and experiences his or her job. What you learn just might surprise you…
Imagine keeping your sales force—each and every individual—motivated and performing at peak performance. Sound too good to be true?
According to the founders and owners of Transform, Inc., a specialized training and consulting firm based in Laurel, Maryland, this fantasy can become reality—right now. They firmly believe that understanding how each of your sales people ‘view’ and experience selling, what motivates them toward peak performance, and how you, as sales manager, can tap into this knowledge is your starting point for success. “We know from experience that all sales people don’t see selling situations the same,” explains Mary Anne Wampler, who spent more than 15 years in the business development field before teaming up with her Transform co-founder, Theresa Gale, in 1994. “What motivates one person may not even begin to entice another. That old-fashioned notion that money is the only motivator for sales people just simply isn’t true.”
So what is true? Wampler and Gale maintain that each of your sales people has a particular ‘lens’ or way of interpreting the world in which they live. Through their lens, they interpret situations, events, encounters, and experiences. One sales rep may see everything as an opportunity, yet not have the ability to sustain focus on actually landing accounts. Another’s talent may come from establishing relationships—sometimes even at the expense of asking for business.
“The difference is in how the sales person ‘views’ the situation,” Gale states. “We all know that how we view the world impacts the way we respond to situations and people. Well, it also impacts a sales person’s success in sales—and leadership’s success in coaching and managing the sales team effectively.”
To understand the ‘lens’ each sales person operates from, Transform uses a powerful and dynamic personality system called the Enneagram, which describes nine distinct patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. Unlike the Myers-Briggs, The Big Five, and other personality systems on the market today, the Enneagram takes companies one step further—to reveal the motivation behind behavior.
“The Enneagram is tremendously effective in helping us understand why we do what we do,” Wampler explains. “It’s a powerful, cutting-edge tool, especially where sales are concerned,” Wampler states. “Time and again, we’ve seen the Enneagram transform the way the sales team interacts and works together—and we’ve seen dramatic improvements in companies’ bottom-line results.”
The Enneagram’s nine-pointed model helps you discover core motivations of your sales people, where they habitually focus their attention, and what their personal hidden agendas are. It also helps you identify your own—as well as your organization’s—unconscious beliefs that can support or sabotage the potential for growth and unprecedented success.
Using the Enneagram helps sales managers, and sales people themselves, understand the following:
- What motivates each sales person on the team
- How to train and develop sales people
- What stands in the way of a sales person’s success
- What supports or hinders a sales person’s performance
- What strategies to use when coaching a sales person
- How to be efficient in your sessions or in the field with your sales people
- How to get buy-in for change initiatives, even when it includes doing paperwork
Both Gale and Wampler enjoy their role in helping individuals and companies along the Enneagram’s road to discovery. “Without exception, people are amazed at what they learn—about themselves and about their colleagues,” Gale explains. “The Enneagram shatters our individual perceptions of other’s intentions and reasons for acting because we’re able to see how others view an experience that we may have always interpreted quite differently,” she continues. “Once we open our minds to other points of view, we can communicate and interact more effectively with others.
We can also examine our own individual barriers to success and work toward achieving our full potential, personally and professionally.”
Transform’s holistic, systems-based approach to understanding sales and organizations as a whole has earned the respect of companies nationwide—from family-owned businesses to ‘green’ and environmental organizations to chambers of commerce and non-profit associations. Regardless of the industry, Wampler and Gale encourage their clients to embrace change and growth as a way of life. “We want leadership to see their company as a truly fascinating system, made up of all these interrelated and interdependent parts that are continually in flux,” Wampler states. “And we want them to know that’s okay.”
Marlene England is a freelance writer based in Frederick, Maryland. Transform, Inc. was founded in 1996 by Theresa Gale and Mary Anne Wampler. Transform, Inc.’s powerful approach to leadership, sales and client relationship management as well as organizational effectiveness has helped businesses across the country achieve maximum results. For more information, visit www.transforminc.com or call 301-419-2835.
