You Can't Motivate Your Sales Team. Here's What Works

You Can't Motivate Your Sales Team. Here's What Works

Ep.13

About This Episode

A rep has gone quiet. Activity is down, the numbers are slipping, and your one to ones have turned into polite nothing. So you try to motivate them. A pep talk, a spiff, a bit more pressure. When none of that lands, the PIP paperwork starts looking like the only option left.

Tim Ogle's answer to leaders who ask how to motivate their team is short. You can't. Motivation is self-generated, so every action aimed at supplying it from the outside is aimed at the wrong target.

The more useful question is what "unmotivated" is actually hiding. As Steve Myers puts it, an SDR who isn't making enough calls might not know how to make good calls, might know exactly how and not be able to bring themselves to do it, or might not have the process support to do the job properly. Three different problems, one label, and most leaders act on the label.

This session is about the diagnosis, and about what you do once you've made it. Steve walks through structured goal setting, the difference between quota and target, and his process for changing behaviour without waiting for belief to catch up. Tim covers the three things a leader is actually there to do, and why a PIP is where a diagnostic failure gets formalised rather than where a turnaround begins.

You'll Learn

• Why performance is what happens and motivation is why it happens, and how that changes what you manage
• How to tell whether a drop in activity is a motivation problem, a skill problem or a process problem
• Why both the carrot and the stick have stopped working, and what replaced them
• The difference between quota and target, and why every rep needs a number of their own
• How to run a goal setting conversation that gets past "I want a big house and a nice car"
• Why you change behaviour first and let belief follow, rather than waiting to feel ready

Who is this for?

Sales leaders and managers with at least one person on the team who has gone quiet and who they're not sure how to reach. It'll land hardest if you've already tried the encouraging conversation twice and you're starting to think about paperwork. Useful too if you inherited a team and can't yet tell who's disengaged and who's simply out of their depth.

Brought to you by MySalesCoach.

Learn more about how we support leaders in building elite and consistent sales teams:

Book a call with the team to find out more about how we can support you in building an elite, high performing sales team.

Who are MySalesCoach?

MySalesCoach works with sales leaders to build the frameworks, coaching habits, and team accountability that turn a diagnosis into actual behaviour change. We evaluate your team, identify what's genuinely blocking each person, and match them with an elite sales coach who has done the job themselves. That means the rep who looks unmotivated gets an honest outside perspective, and you get a second pair of hands on the coaching rather than carrying it alone.