Need to attract, hire, and keep great salespeople? We’ve written about motivational strategies before, but the truth is that motivational strategies can often be much too complex to be described in a single article. Motivation is a skill developed over a lifetime of study and experience. Here are 5 books you and your employees should read:
There’s no better way to start learning a skill than to dive right in. Marketing Strategy is a big sprawling textbook that will help you develop an overall motivational strategy. Among the parts of this book that will be most helpful:
This is the definitive book for how to train, motivate, and manage your salespeople. You should read every chapter, but particularly:
This is a good book if you already have a strong and cohesive overall marketing strategy, but just want to tweak a few details to make it a little better. All of these ideas are solid, but you should pay particular attention to the following sections:
This book describes different sales approaches and convincingly argues that the best salespeople are those who “challenge” their customers to achieve greater goals. Challengers are excited about not only their own industry and targets, but also their customer’s industry and targets. By learning to become emotionally invested in customer goals, employees gain a new source of motivation.
This is a great book to show your employees the value that salesmanship holds in society. The gist of this book is that very little ever gets done, bought, or learned, without someone selling it. Furthermore, the act of selling defines human experiences by shaping what aspects of products we focus on. This is a great book for salespeople who feel alienated from their industries or products, as it shows how they are psychologically helping to create those products.
