We live in an era in which it is not enough to motivate employees financially. Especially in sales, which is multifaceted, complex and very interesting. The time of “I pay money, let it work” is a thing of the past. The logic of “pay more to work better” combined with attempts to motivate only with money does not give the expected result, so material motivation must go hand in hand with non-material.
About the ways of non-material motivation is the new book by Maxim Batyrev and Nikolai Lazarev “Encouragement of sales departments. In this material we talk about grades.
Grades
Grading is the division into categories within a position that provides steps for horizontal growth. For example, for the position “sales specialist” there may be four grades:
– sales specialist;
– leading sales specialist;
– expert in sales;
– leading expert in sales
.
Similarly, grades are determined for other positions, such as telemarketing specialist, VIP client specialist, and sales manager.
Grades are dynamic; they change every quarter depending on performance in the previous quarter. The better a salesperson worked for three months, the higher his/her grade will be for the next three months. And vice versa – the grade will be lowered if the results do not reach the desired level. There is always a chance to go back.
The
two components of the grading
tool include both a tangible and intangible motivational component. The material component is that the increased grade provides a raise to the salary. This is positioned as an opportunity to manage the size of his salary. If you want it higher, you are welcome! You do what you want, earn the raise grade, and it will increase.
A non-material motivational component is that as soon as an employee reaches a higher grade for the first time, he does not want to go back and does his best to keep his privileged status. After all, it is prestigious to be not just an ordinary specialist, but a leading specialist and even more so an expert. And if you suddenly became a leading expert, you will feel like a demigod, which everyone looks at with delight, envy and a gasp!
An example from the book
The key performance indicator in this case was the number of sales, not the amount of money raised, as is often the case, so the table is tied specifically to this indicator. The figures in the table are fictitious, but they allow to clearly demonstrate the logic.
Please note that the table does not provide a salary increment for the “Specialist” grade, because this is the minimum required result. If a salesperson has less than six sales in a quarter, he or she is unfortunately a candidate for termination.
In terms of non-financial motivation, grades are quite an effective tool. It engages the hierarchical instinct, the strongest after the instinct of self-preservation.
Grades are also a part of a career map, which is designed to show a person the possible stages of his growth, so he can see what to strive for and how to reach the next qualitative level (“motivation by meaning”).
Grades for customers
We should not forget that the theme of grades is perfectly applicable to customers, when depending on the volume of purchases in the current year they are assigned different categories, such as “bronze”, “silver”, “gold”, “platinum”. Each grade gives customers certain preferences or “plushkas” (birthday gifts, free participation in events, invitations to company tours, joint promotions, etc.), and the seller gets a reason to increase the amount of the deal. When the client is a little short of the grade, the salesman has the opportunity to offer him to buy more, to get a more attractive status and an appropriate set of preferences.
Prepared from the book Inspiring Salesforce.
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