Ideally, as a sales manager or executive you do not need to take extreme measures to motivate your inside sales reps. If you have a strong sales team, your reps will be self-driven and also thrive off of peer-to-peer motivation. However, from time to time it may become necessary for management to step in to motivate, whether because of recent organizational changes, new product offerings, or other business evolutions. These tips on how to motivate inside sales reps can help you formulate the right approach for your sales team.

Mentor Your Inside Sales Reps to Be the Best

In inside sales, a little mentorship can go a long way. Many sales reps choose inside sales as a long term career move, and are looking to supervisors and management to provide guidance that uplifts their career trajectory. Help motivate inside sales reps by:

• Challenging sales reps to improve incrementally, especially those who are performing well but are overwhelmed by the gap between average and top performance.
• Sharing success stories not only from inside of your organization, but from others in the inside sales arena. Share interesting articles and social media updates as appropriate to encourage sales reps and keep them aware of the possibilities.
• Provide clear career tracks that include performance and achievement milestones so that inside sales reps have an unambiguous path to advancement.

Encourage Your Inside Sales Reps to Set Their Own Goals

Although your top performing inside sales reps may regularly meet the goals you and your organization set, your average performers and your improving performers may need motivation. Encouraging your inside sales reps to start setting their own goals for common targets – such as leads contacted, pitches completed, and prospects converted – may be more effective; some individuals may be more motivated to meet self-set targets on the way to the targets that your organization expects to see. Try tying in:

• Competitions to motivate inside sales reps by publicly posting the personal goals of each rep, updated as milestones are reached.
• Time during meetings where inside sales reps can discuss whether they met their latest round of personal goals, and what they did to succeed (or what they will do to succeed next time).
• Recognition for achievements met, which can be as simple as a congratulatory email from management or a small monetary incentive.

Engage the Entire Organization to Motivate Inside Sales Reps

In most organizations, the majority of contact that inside sales reps have with prospects and clients is over the phone and on the computer. Over time, this can become monotonous if not countered with face to face contact from within your organization. Motivate inside sales reps with regular face to face contact opportunities by:

• Organizing periodic lunches or meetings with a minimum formal agenda to allow inside sales reps the opportunity to interact with managers and employees in other departments.
• Considering occasionally inviting clients to your organization’s place of business so that your inside sales reps can meet your customers and connect names with faces.
• Where business needs allow, permitting your inside sales reps opportunities to interact on a peer to peer basis. Peer discussions on progress and successes can motivate inside sales reps throughout the day.

Make Achievement Its Own Reward

You can spend a lot of time working on ways to motivate inside sales reps, but at the end of the day, the best motivation comes from within. By structuring your hiring process from the beginning to attract, identify, and recruit self-driven inside sales reps, you can form a more cohesive sales team that relies less on potentially time consuming incentives and “gamification” to motivate inside sales reps to achieve results. An experienced sales recruitment firm is the best way to find these individuals in a competitive job market. Consider contacting a sales recruitment firm with a track record of finding and recruiting successful, driven inside sales reps before you make your next hire.