The Psychology Behind Successful Sales Team Motivation
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2008
by Daiv Russell
Envision Web Marketing
The biggest challenge facing Sales Managers today motivating and retaining employees. Motivated employees are needed in rapidly changing workplaces. Motivated sales teams help organizations survive simply because they are more productive. Motivation is an organization's life-blood; yet "motivation," as a business subject, is largely ignored. Seldom is a clear, coherent, and overall approach taken to the challenge of motivating people. Most organizations don't give it much thought until something starts to go wrong.
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist who was a pioneer in humanistic counseling methods and coined the term 'trans-personal psychology'. Maslow believed that the need to develop a person's basic potential can take precedence over other motivators which may appear to be more evident.
Maslow Pioneered a model commonly known as 'Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs', which sheds much light on what motivates people to seek out certain positions and therefore helps sales Resource professionals to determine how best to use these basic building blocks which encompass human nature. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a five tier model which explains human needs in the order in which they take precedence.
The first tier which is defined as physiological needs, relates to the need for survival, food, water and shelter, and is the most prominent need to shape man's motivation. Maslow believes people attempt to satisfy these needs in a specific order. A person will strive to meet physiological needs before addressing needs for safety, love, and so forth.
Moreover, Maslow considers the first four needs in his hierarchy "deficiency needs," which stop providing motivation once they are satisfied. However, the hierarchy's final need - self-actualization - is a "being" or "growth" need that drives behavior throughout a person's life. Therefore, if a business continually gives its employees opportunities to meet this high-level need, the company can expect a well-motivated workforce.
Because self-actualization is such an intangible concept, there are two theories surrounding it. One school of thought is that we never actually achieve self-actualization but are always striving to achieve our highest potential, while the second belief is that we can achieve self-actualization which lasts only a short while because we will soon find another pinnacle to surmount. Those who strive to realize their potential tend to look for positions which allow them autonomy so that they can make an impact by creating something special or putting their ideas across in an important way.
Daiv Russell is a management and marketing consultant with Envision Web Marketing. Read more Articles about Small Business Management, learn about Abraham Maslow and the Maslow theory.
This Article has been viewed 1,346 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.