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The "motivating staff" question comes up often. As regular readers will know, my usual answer is to worry less about motivating and worry more about demotivation. Most managers and managements do a lot of things to demotivate their staff, and it's a lot less trouble and a lot more effective to stop doing them than to start lots of 'motivational' activities.
Motivating people in the workplace is arguably the easiest task on the planet. People at work are motivated before they arrive - they want to earn money to feed their children and buy iphones. Then, in case the whole money thing wasn't enough, they mostly work in some kind of team, which is in and of itself motivating (for most people, most of the time). In motivational terms, the main role of management is not to get in the way.
Big demotivators include low pay, poor conditions, petty rules and incompetent managers.
I'll tell you a little story. Once upon a time, many years ago, I worked in a high-walled office cubicle. No natural light, no other people in sight. I decorated the cubicle a little, to give me a colour other than blueish-grey to look it. Then a memo came round saying 'no personal items allowed'. Naturally I threw this in the bin. But soon somebody - not junior - from HR appeared and told me to take everything down: she would return tomorrow to check.
This I regarded as a challenge. I took everything down, of course, and spent the most of the intervening time designing artwork out of company stationery - we were fortunate to have a good supply. I made a variety of things out of coloured paper and coloured paperclips and attached them to the walls, taking care to ensure that nothing was in any way damaged - I could take it all down and put it back in the stationery cupboard. The HR person came back and was very angry - my cubicle was still decorated. Not so, I said. The rule was clear - no personal items. I had none - everything belonged to the company. This of course made her even more angry, but eventually she went away and didn't come back.
The whole escapade probably cost the company about two days of my time straight off, plus maybe half an hour a day until the system was changed.
Show me a sales team with fair, open, consistent, honest, competent managers; a decent place to work; adequate resources; and market-standard pay & conditions, and I show you a motivated sales team. If yours is not motivated, which one of these things do they not have? Note that none of these things cost anything - you're supposed to be doing them all anyway.
If anybody reading this wants individual advice, send me a private message.
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