A career in selling can be one of the most rewarding, and yet challenging careers that anyone can have. It can also be difficult, exhausting and very often thankless. This has the effect on sales people in that they suffer from feeling rejection, insecurity and negativity. The most common problems that many sales people suffer from are as follows:

1. A negative attitude.
2. A fear of rejection from customers.
3. Apathy which leads to laziness and boredom.

In order to successfully motivate staff as a manager, you should first of all identify the symptoms of these issues and then apply the solution to cure them.

Negative attitude

A Sales person’s effort will be lacking if the attitude to the job is wrong. Whilst most usually accept that doctors must practice, barristers need to prepare his court case and teachers must prepare for school lessons, somehow they see their job as being very different and therefore not worth the effort and standards that they would demand in others working for them.

Selling requires a very high degree of self-belief indeed. Most sales people recognise this point. They usually they have big egos. However, if not properly directed, their ego may be their own undoing.

Fear of rejection by the customer

Almost all of us have a need to be accepted by others to varying degrees, however even the best sales person faces rejection on a regular basis. This can be hard to take day in, day out - year in, year out. So that they avoid psychological hurt, sales people often find it easier to leave a job in selling or consciously or subconsciously develop poor habits which distance them from this pain.

These issues can manifest themselves in the following ways:

- A reluctance to ask for order.

- Not seeking out new business opportunities.

- Over-sympathising with clients, which often goes against the interests of their own company they represent.

It is also an unfortunate psychological fact that rejection causes most of us to think negatively about ourselves.

Apathy/Boredom/Laziness

A common problem is a tendency for experienced sales people to take shortcuts in planning, preparation and presentations. Very often they do not even realise that they are doing so. The reason may well be that they are bored with the presentation that they are doing or they feel that they are stuck in a rut. These all point to a serious need for training and re-energising.

Very often there is stiff rejection to the need for sales training. The underlying reason is the fear that they may be exposed as not to be as good as they think and therefore, view training as damaging to their ego. This issue can be compounded by poor training and by managers that use the session as an boost to their egos.

Positive attitudes to sales training can be developed over time. In addition increased job satisfaction can be gained from working for a company where this is happens. The correct attitude is not that one is bad at the job and therefore requires training, but because one is good at the job, training is the route by which the job becomes even more rewarding as one learns to better what one already does well.

Tips for motivating the sales force towards training:

1. One of the first steps to solving attitude problems is conduct counselling interviews.

2. You can help to motivate your sales people out of depression by giving them a boost to their confidence. One of the most important attributes for a sales person is their self-esteem. You can help to rebuild this by giving suitable praise for good work, and handle problems diplomatically rather than aggressively.

3. If a member of your staff does not wish to receive sales training, highlight that you would not be willing to invest in them if they were not already good at their job.

Author Richard Stone is a director of Spearhead Training of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. Find out more about Spearhead services at www.spearhead-training.co.uk