Recognition or Praise?

Sales managers are being told to do more with less, to work smarter to get peak performance from their sales teams, despite increasingly limited resources. As tough as it is, there is one tool in the sales manager’s portfolio that is never in short supply – Praise!

Yet for some reason, many sales managers find it challenging to show their appreciation for their sales people’s efforts, reluctantly doling out praise as if it was in short supply. The reason is not because managers are unappreciative of their team’s efforts, it’s just that too many do not realise that sales people need to hear that they are doing well and are on track.

Why?

about 20% are self driven

Around 5% to 20% of sales people have the rare characteristics of being internally driven or self (intrinsically) motivated; they have a growth mindset and understand they can control many aspect of their destiny. Whilst these sales people can enjoy receiving praise or recognition, they do not often seek it out or need it to keep them going. However many sales people do not think or feel this way. The sales people who are extrinsically motivated need frequent external praise, recognition, validation and encouragement to keep going. So what? Typically many sales managers come from the ranks of the self (intrinsically) motivated sales people pool. This means that they tend to view others through their own lens of self determination assuming that all sales people must be motivated like them. It often comes as a complete shock to them when they discover that the majority of sales people in their teams are extrinsically motivated and are in need of praise, recognition, encouragement and validation.

This can be very draining for the intrinsically motivated sales manager and very disheartening for the extrinsically motivated sales person when respective needs are not met. How do we make this work so that everyone benefits and sales results are achieved?

For the sales manager it is important to distinguish between Praise and Recognition:

• Recognition is when a sales manager holds a sales person up in front of their peers and acknowledges exceptional performance.
• Praise on the other hand is individual, applied with mindfulness, discipline and forethought to develop and encourage effective behaviour and mindset in sales people.

The use of praise is ‘best practice’ in sales management. It is used to reward behaviour that sales managers want to encourage and see repeated. To be of real merit the praise needs to be specific and relevant. Here are a few tips on giving praise…

checklist

1. Never praise and criticise (at the same time) – praise is a reward. The real value of that reward is diminished when sales managers start of by saying ‘nice things’ and the focus in on the areas that need improvement. As a result, is only given when the performance or behaviour is totally positive and when the sales manager’s intent is to encourage the sales person to repeat it.
2. Be specific – saying something like “Hey, good work there” is a meaningless statement. What was good? Why was it good? How was it good? are important to state when giving praise. So when a sales manager decides to give praise they should be able to say explicitly WHAT, WHY or HOW the person did something well and WHY it is valued by the sales manager and why it should be value by the sales person. By being specific the sales person can see why they are doing well and hopefully repeat this later on when needed.
3. Personalise Praise – indentify the aspects unique to that person that made their performance notable when they applied that specific skill or behaviour. Telling the person what special characteristics he or she has, not only personalises the praise, it also helps the salesperson identify what capabilities they have that the sales manager values. This is what makes praise so important to the person and interestingly, begins to open up those people who have been more extrinsically motivated to start to look inwardly and find what intrinsically makes them effective.

So before you think of implementing a costly sales incentives program, try praise first. Effectively praising sales people doesn’t cost a cent but can return an enormous profit in improved sales performance.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au