Five Types of Motivation for Salespeople

If you are ready to fire up your sales team, this is the show for you.
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If you are ready to fire up your sales team, this is the show for you. 

Here is a Transcript of this Episode:

There are five types of things that motivate salespeople, five. There are only five levers you need to push or pull if you're a sales manager and you wanna motivate your team. I'm gonna share those five things with you on this episode of The Inside BS Show. Hi, it's Dave Lorenzo, this is The Inside BS Show. Today, we're talking about the five things that motivate all salespeople. 

This is for sales managers that's right, it's you I'm talking to, are you listening? There are only five things you need to focus on to motivate your sales team. Before we get into that, I wanna remind you if you like what you see here subscribe, hit the notification bell so that you know when we upload a new video, we do great interviews everyday, you can see them on the YouTube channel, we do these sales training tips all the time. This is The Inside BS Show we take you inside business strategy, share the insider business secrets and we cut through all that inside BS that's holding you back. So let's get to the five things that motivate all salespeople. Number one, the number one thing. 

If you've hired the right salespeople, the number one thing that motivates them is winning. They wanna win. They wanna get the deal, they wanna close the deal, they wanna beat their competition. That's the number one thing that motivates salespeople. The best thing you can do to take advantage of this drive for winning is share competitive information with your team. Let them know how your company's doing compared to the competition. Let them know how they're doing individually compared to their teammates. 

Let them know how they're doing compared to everyone else who's ever done the job. Salespeople are motivated first and foremost by winning. Give them something to shoot for. Generally I'm not a huge fan of sales contests. What I am a fan of is track, rank and publish. Track the details of their performance, rank everyone in your organization and post their names on a leaderboard that everybody can see. Tracking ranking and publishing is what separates great sales teams from everybody else. Sales is no place for people who have thin skin, sales is no place who for people who get their feelings hurt you need to have salespeople who are motivated by trying to get to the top of the leaderboard. Focus on helping them win, and then show them what it takes to win and then track their performance and let them go. The second thing that motivates salespeople is recognition. They want to walk around the office with a trophy. 

They wanna put plaques on their wall in their office. They want their name on the board for salesperson of the year, they want to be recognized in front of their peers at the annual meeting. This is so important because salespeople by virtue of what they do have big egos. And you need to take advantage of that and you need to give them what they want. When they do something great, you need to recognize them in front of the people who are most important to them, that is their peer group recognize them in front of everybody else who does what they do. Tell the world that these people have done a great job, tell the world that this person is the best for this month. Put them up in front of everyone else, let them get the applause, the accolades they deserve, recognize them in front of the whole company. Recognition is the second thing that motivates salespeople. The third thing that motivates salespeople is money. I know, you think this is number one, Mr. Sales Manager well it's not, money is third on the list. Look, they don't do this because they're contributing to the charity that is your company. 

They do this to get paid. So make sure that they have the best commission plan in the industry because here's the thing your top producers, they know what the competition pays. If you're not the best paying company in the industry you're gonna lose your top producers eventually. People aren't gonna stay with you for goodwill. You can recognize them all the live long day but if they can make more money somewhere else, if life can be better for them by working for someone else, if their financial situation can be better by working somewhere else, you're gonna lose your top producers. So money is a motivator. Now incentive pay is great. So when you're doing these sales contests do not only recognize the top performers, offer them some type of financial reward as a result. Financial compensation is a big deal to people. It's not number one or number two but it definitely is in the top five so make sure your salespeople are paid well, make sure their commissions are paid on time and never, ever change somebody's commission structure after they've been hired. 

People who are onboarded under a certain commission structure are counting on that money, they're planning in their head that that's what they're gonna make. So unless you're gonna make it better, never reduce it. The fourth thing that motivates salespeople four out of five is legacy. They want to be known as being the best ever. So here's how this plays hand in hand with competition. Salespeople love to break records. Salespeople love to be known as the best ever. Salespeople love to be compared to athletes. So if somebody is the Tom Brady of widget sales or somebody is the Michael Jordan of crankshaft sales they will wear that moniker like a badge of honor. So if you have the opportunity to create a hall of fame for people who sell in your company, you have the opportunity to recognize someone as being potentially the best ever, or one of the top five of all time, legacy is extremely important to salespeople because they view themselves like athletes. 

So if you can tell someone they're the Mariano Rivera of widget sales, you're going to be really well-respected by that person and by the people who are in your company. Create a program that is like a hall of fame program or the greatest of all time program or an all time ranking program and have your salespeople strive to earn their place on it because legacy is really important to them. The fifth and final thing that motivates salespeople are perks. That's right perks, extras, bonuses, that incentive trip, it does motivate them. Getting a company car does motivate them. Even having a better parking spot, having a parking spot next to the CEO, having their name on a plaque in front of the parking spot that motivates them. 

Having perks, getting extras, getting bonus stuff, being able to bring their spouse on the incentive trip because they were the top producer those types of things are extremely important. Salespeople are motivated by perks, they're motivated by breaking records in their legacy, they're motivated by financial compensation, they're motivated by recognition, they're motivated by winning. Those are the five things that get salespeople all fired up, those are the five things that get them focused, those are the five things that make them go to bat for you time and time again. If you, as a sales manager wanna motivate your team, use these five incentives to get people to do what you want them to do. I'm Dave Lorenzo. I'm here every day with a great video just like this for you. 

These are the Inside BS Sales tools to help you make a great living and live a great life. Look for our interviews, we also do an interview every day taking you inside the business strategy from a business that may be different than yours or providing you with insider secrets that can help you get an edge in your business. 

Until tomorrow, I'm Dave Lorenzo, and I'll see you right back here. Here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.
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