Human motivation is a complex and well-studied subject with roots in different academic disciplines including psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. The term motivation derives from the Latin word movere, which stands for movement and according to Honeycutt, Ford and Simintiras is defined as “the inner force that guides behaviour and is concerned with the causation of specific actions”.
Motivation in the workplace is a highly personal matter which is mostly influenced from the actual needs of the employee, but also from his/her values, personality, and surroundings. Moreover, it is not a fixed trait, but rather a dynamic internal state and what makes things even more challenging for managers worldwide is the fact that the employees are holding the “keys” to it and the “door” is locked from the inside.
The motivation of salespeople is one of the most researched topics in the sales management literature. The main benefit of having a well-motivated salesforce is that their members perform better, therefore produce more sales for the organization and do the job in a better way, hence keeping customers satisfied. But in order to understand what motivates salespeople, we need to remind ourselves that the best source of information is the…salespeople. Therefore, attitude surveys are the most direct approach to gather the necessary information. First though, we must familiarise ourselves with a little bit of theory.
The focus of the so-called content theories is on “what” motivates individuals, and they consider human needs as the main mechanism of motivation. One of the most classical content motivational models is the “Hierarchy of Needs Theory” of Abraham Maslow (1943), in which he claims that “man is a perpetually wanting animal”, hence he proposed a five-level hierarchy needs, namely: physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem and self-actualisation. He argues that unsatisfied needs act as motivators, but once (even partially) satisfied, they are not considered as motivators anymore.
Frederick Herzberg’s Dual Factor Theory (1959) takes a more practical approach to Maslow’s theory. It distinguishes ten hygiene (extrinsic) factors related to the context or the environment of the job that cause dissatisfaction, such as salary, company policies, job security, relationships etc. and six motivational (intrinsic) factors linked with the job content like task achievement, recognition, growth that cause positive motivation. Herzberg’s theory was the first to challenge the dominant theoretical assumption that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction should be presented on a single continuum, the midpoint of which is a neutral state. On the contrary, he claims that the opposite of both job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction is no job satisfaction.
Contrary to theories which suggested that individuals have the same internal needs, David McClelland (1962) argued that the same needs may differ from one person to another, and that motivated behaviour is mainly a function of the strength of various needs at a certain period. According to his theory, people have the following needs: Need for Achievement, which is defined as the person’s drive to excel and strive for success, Need for Affiliation which refers to the person’s desire to be accepted and liked from others, and Need for Power, which entails the desire to be influential and to have an impact on (social power) or control others (personal power).
McClelland stated that individuals with high need for achievement tend to be attracted by sales jobs and that the degree of a salesperson’s need for achievement is linked directly to salesforce motivation. He characterised the achiever as a person who sets moderate goals, takes planned risks, desires direct feedback on his performance and is highly probable to find selling a challenging and rewarding activity.
Since we have now covered the relevant theory on what motivates salespeople, in the next blog post we shall be talking about rewards, incentives and managerial implications about this matter, so stay tuned!