How to Motivate a Sales Team.
Contests fade. Managers do not. The five things that keep reps picking up the phone through a slow quarter, and almost none of them cost money.
You motivate a sales team by fixing the things a manager controls every day, not by running a bigger contest. Reps keep showing up hard when they feel backed, know why the work matters, get noticed for specific things, have people around them worth winning with, and can see themselves getting better. Contests and spiffs give you a spike. Those five things give you a team.
Every sales leader I know has run the contest.
A trip, a cash prize, a leaderboard on the big screen. For two weeks the floor is loud, the numbers jump, and it feels like it is working. Then the contest ends, and the team settles back to exactly where it was. Sometimes a little lower, because the people who were never going to win spent two weeks watching the same three names at the top.
I am not against contests. I have run them too. But after a decade leading sales and recruiting teams in healthcare staffing, and ten years before that in restaurants and beverage sales, I have stopped believing they are the lever. They are the garnish. The meal is something else.
Why do sales contests fade?
Because they work on the wrong thing. A contest is an external push. It can change behavior for as long as the push lasts, and then it stops. It also tends to reward the people who were already winning, which is fine for them and quietly discouraging for everyone else.
The reps who stay motivated through a slow quarter are not the ones chasing a prize. They are the ones who believe someone has their back, who know why the work matters, and who can see they are getting better at it. None of that comes from a leaderboard. All of it comes from how they are led.
Contests give you a spike.
Managers give you a team.
What actually motivates salespeople?
The framework I use is called SPARK. I built it for retention and engagement, and it is the core of my keynote Motivating Today’s Workforce. It applies to sales teams more than almost anywhere, because sales is the job where people hear no all day and need a reason to pick up the phone again.
SPARK is five things a leader actually controls. Run your team against all five and you will usually find the weak one fast.
Support
Whether reps believe someone has their back when a deal goes sideways. A rep who loses a big account and gets a post-mortem in front of the team learns to hide bad news. A rep who gets a manager in their corner learns to bring problems early, while they can still be fixed.
In practice: when a deal dies, the first conversation is what you can learn together, not whose fault it was.
Purpose
Whether the work connects to something the rep cares about. In healthcare staffing, that is easy to find: every placement means a unit gets a nurse it needed. Every industry has its version. Most sales leaders just never say it out loud, so reps only hear about quota.
In practice: tell the story of a customer whose problem got solved because a rep did the work. Then tell it again.
Appreciation
Whether anyone notices. Do not let reliability become invisibility. The rep who hits plan every month without drama often gets less attention than the one who swings wildly, because the steady one never creates a crisis.
In practice: recognize the specific behavior, not just the result. “You followed up four times on that account when everyone else would have stopped” lands harder than “great month.”
Relationships
Whether there are people on the team worth showing up for. Reps who like the people next to them will push through a bad week for each other. Reps who feel like they are competing with the person at the next desk will protect their own number and nothing else.
In practice: build some goals that the team wins together, alongside the individual ones.
Knowledge & Growth
Whether reps can see themselves getting better. People leave when they stop growing. In sales, that means real coaching on real calls, not a training module once a year.
In practice: give each rep one skill to work on this month, and ask about it in every one-on-one. The LAARC method for objections is a good place to start, because it is something reps can practice on every call.
Why are managers the real lever?
People quit people, not companies. I have written about it at length in People Quit People, Not Companies, and it is just as true of motivation as it is of turnover. The same comp plan, the same product and the same territory can produce a motivated team under one manager and a checked-out team under another.
That is good news, because it means motivation is not a mystery. It is a set of habits. The manager who holds a real one-on-one every week, who notices effort before results show up, who protects a rep in front of the team and corrects them in private, is doing more for motivation than any contest budget.
When we built the culture at Uniti Med, the company was recognized by Fortune as one of the Best Workplaces. That did not come from perks. It came from managers who were expected to know their people, and who were held accountable for it the same way they were held accountable for the number.
Small moments beat big events
The things that keep a rep motivated are usually small. A text from their manager after a tough call. Being asked for their opinion in a team meeting. Having a win mentioned by name to the VP. None of it costs anything, and almost none of it happens by accident.
I call these small moments. They are the idea behind my keynote The Power of Small Moments, and I have seen them do more for a team than any offsite. The reason is simple. A big event happens once a year. Small moments happen every day, and people build their sense of whether they matter from the daily stuff.
Ten that cost almost nothing
- Name the behavior, not just the number. Recognize the follow-up, the prep, the hard conversation, before the result shows up.
- Send one specific thank-you a day. Two sentences, about one thing a rep did. It takes a minute.
- Share a customer outcome every week. Show the team what their work changed for someone.
- Debrief losses as a team, without blame. Ask what the deal taught you, not who dropped it.
- Give every rep one skill to build this month. Ask about it in every one-on-one.
- Add a team goal next to the individual ones. Something everyone wins or misses together.
- Let top reps teach. Ten minutes in the team meeting. It recognizes them and lifts everyone else.
- Protect in public, correct in private. Every time.
- Make recognition reach past the top three. Most improved, best save, most consistent.
- If you run a contest, design it so more than the usual winners can win. Reward activity and improvement, not only the top of the board.
Where recognition events fit
None of this means you should cancel the awards dinner or the President’s Club trip. Those events matter. The room has earned a thank-you. They just work best when they reinforce what managers do all year, rather than trying to replace it. If you are planning one, see President’s Club and sales awards.
The same goes for the kickoff. A good sales kickoff sets the tone for the year, but the tone only holds if the first team meeting back sounds like the kickoff did. Motivation is a system, not an event. For the revenue side of the same question, see how to increase sales.
Contests give you a spike. Managers give you a team. Reps stay motivated when they feel backed, know why the work matters, get noticed for specific things, have people worth winning with, and can see themselves getting better. Those are the five drivers in SPARK, and every one of them is something a manager controls this week, at almost no cost.
Questions people ask
How do you motivate a sales team?
Do sales contests work?
What are some low-cost sales team motivation ideas?
Why do salespeople lose motivation?
Can Chris Sund speak to our sales team about motivation?
Keynotes for
sales teams.
Chris speaks at sales kickoffs, President’s Club trips and sales awards events on motivation, consistency and handling objections, drawn from leading revenue teams rather than studying them. See Sales Kickoff Speaker, President’s Club Speaker, or Motivating Today’s Workforce.
Response within one business day
You Are Capable of More.
The bestselling book behind Chris’s keynotes: ten principles for closing the gap between what people are doing and what they are actually capable of.
A signed copy makes a recognition gift people keep, and kickoffs regularly pair the keynote with a copy for every rep. Bulk pricing and signed editions are available.
